Noam Chomsky: Prospects for Democracy Part 5 - Corporate Propaganda (1994)

March 10, 1994 http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.... Watch the full lecture: http://thefilmarchived.blogspot.com/2010/08/noam-chomsky-on-prospects-for-dem...

Harold Dwight Lasswell (February 13, 1902 — December 18, 1978) was a leading American political scientist and communications theorist. He was a member of the Chicago school of sociology and was a student at Yale University in political science. He was a President of the World Academy of Art and Science (WAAS) and the American Political Science Association (APSA). Along with other influential liberals of the period, such as Walter Lippmann, he argued that democracies needed propaganda to keep the uninformed citizenry in agreement with what the specialized class had determined was in their best interests. As he wrote in his entry on propaganda for the Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, we must put aside "democratic dogmatisms about men being the best judges of their own interests" since "men are often poor judges of their own interests, flitting from one alternative to the next without solid reason."

He is well known for his comment on communications: Who (says) What (to) Whom (in) What Channel (with) What Effect

and on politics: Politics is who gets what, when, and how.

and on aberrant psychological attributes of leaders in politics and business: Psychopathology and Politics

Lasswell studied at the University of Chicago in the 1920s, and was highly influenced by the pragmatism taught there, especially as propounded by John Dewey and George Herbert Mead. More influential, however, was Freudian philosophy, which informed much of his analysis of propaganda and communication in general. During World War II, Lasswell held the position of Chief of the Experimental Division for the Study of War Time Communications at the Library of Congress. He analyzed Nazi propaganda films to identify mechanisms of persuasion used to secure the acquiescence and support of the German populace for Hitler and his wartime atrocities. Always forward-looking, late in his life, Lasswell experimented with questions concerning astropolitics, the political consequences of colonization of other planets, and the "machinehood of humanity."

Lasswell's work was important in the post-World War II development of behavioralism.

Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin (30 May [O.S. 18 May] 1814 - 1 July 1876) (Russian: Михаи́л Алекса́ндрович Баку́нин; IPA: [mʲɪxɐˈil ˌbaˈkunʲin]) was a well-known Russian revolutionary and theorist of collectivist anarchism. - Bakunin is a character in Tom Stoppard's 2002 trilogy of plays The Coast of Utopia. - A character in the TV show Lost was named after him (joining the list of several LOST characters named after philosophers and/or scientists, including John Locke, Danielle Rousseau, Desmond David Hume, Jeremy Bentham and Daniel Faraday). - After the first ever TV appearance of the Sex Pistols, on the Granada Television show So It Goes in August 1976, presenter Tony Wilson's immediate reaction to their performance of 'Anarchy in the UK' was: "Bakunin would have loved it." - Quoted in KMFDM's song "Stray Bullet" from their album Symbols, specifically the quote "even if God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish him." - Bakunin is named among a list of other historical political figures in a line of the nihilistic song, Nothing by The Fugs: "Karlos Marx nothing, Engels nothing, Bakunin Kropotkin-- nyuthing! Leon Trotsky, lots of nothing; Stalin less than nothing!" - Bakunin's The Patriotism is the book Mallory (James Coburn) throws into the mud as a result of a discussion with Juan Miranda (Rod Steiger) in Sergio Leone's 1972 film Duck You Sucker. - The song "Bakunin", by the punk/ska band Against All Authority, is about the biography of Bakunin. - Canadian post-rock band Bakunin's Bum. - Bakunin, along with Lenin, Marx, and Trotsky is one of the existing last names in the novel Brave New World. - Revolutionary Chinese writer Ba Jin took his nom de plume from the first syllable of Bakunin, and the last syllable of Kropotkin. - Boris Akunin chose his pen-name as a reference to Bakunin. - Punk band Rancid's socially critical album Life Won't Wait features several spoken word quotes from "Bakunin on Anarchism" used throughout the album to demonstrate their anarchist ideals. - In the Miniatures wargame Infinity, one of the 3 Nomad Motherships is named after Bakunin, depicting a largely collective anarchist society with minimal governance to enforce basic laws and facilitate trade beyond the ship. Bakunin is regarded as the seat of Nomad culture and produces much media that is derided or censored by the O-12 Nations.

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