Your Thoughts Are Not Your Own Volume Two: Marketing, Movies and Music

by Neil Sanders

One important concept presented by Lippmann was the “manufacture of consent”, which is, in short, the manipulation of public opinion to accept the specific agenda of the ruling class. In Lippmann’s opinion the general public was not qualified to reason and to decide on the most important issues. It is therefore important for the elite to decide ‘for their own good’ and then sell those decisions to the masses. “That the manufacture of consent is capable of great refinements no one, I think, denies. The process by which public opinions arise is certainly no less intricate than it has appeared in these pages, and the opportunities for manipulation open to anyone who understands the process are plain enough…as a result of psychological research, coupled with the modern means of communication, the practice of democracy has turned a corner. A revolution is taking place, infinitely more significant than any shifting of economic power. . . . Under the impact of propaganda, not necessarily in the sinister meaning of the word alone, the old constants of our thinking have become variables. It is no longer possible, for example, to believe in the original dogma of democracy; that the knowledge needed for the management of human affairs comes up spontaneously from the human heart. Where we act on that theory we expose ourselves to self-deception, and to forms of persuasion that we cannot verify. It has been demonstrated that we cannot rely upon intuition, conscience, or the accidents...