Pilger: The Propaganda War on Democracy

(DV) Pilger: The Propaganda War on Democracy: "by John Pilger | www.dissidentvoice.org | May 17, 2005 | First Published in The New Statesman

In 1987, the Australian sociologist Alex Carey, a second Orwell in his prophesies, wrote "Managing Public Opinion: the corporate offensive." He described how in the United States "great progress [had been] made towards the ideal of a propaganda-managed democracy," whose principal aim was to identify a rapacious business state "with every cherished human value." The power and meaning of true democracy, of the franchise itself, would be "transferred" to the propaganda of advertising, public relations and corporate-run news. This "model of ideological control", he predicted, would be adopted by other countries, such as Britain.