democracy
The Century of the Self
The Century of the Self is a four-part video series from BBC-2 about propaganda, public relations, and their effects on society.
"A new theory of human nature was put forward by Sigmund Freud. He had discovered, he said, primitive sexual and aggressive forces hidden deep inside the minds of all human beings -- forces which, if not controlled, led individuals and societies to chaos and destruction. This series is about how those in power have used Freud's theories to try and control the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy.
"At the heart of the story is not just Sigmund Freud, but other members of the Freud family...Freud's American nephew, Edward Bernays,...was the first person to take Freud's ideas about human beings and use them to manipulate the masses...He showed American corporations...how to make people want things they didn't need by linking mass-produced goods to their unconscious desires.
The Case for Democracy
Political language is a matter of artful reinterpretation -- neutralizing and blurring the words your opponents have used against you, and making slogans out of the ones that everyone takes for granted. The word democrat has undergone both processes in its time: the first a century ago, the second in recent years.
The new cycle was signalled in President Bush's remarks last week on the recent Palestinian elections and the Iraqi elections on Jan. 30: "As a democrat, as a person who believes in democracy -- a Republican democrat, I might add -- as someone who believes that everybody has a right to live in a free society. . . January, 2005, is an extraordinary month."
