knowing that it’d mean more if change was brought about internally, i still say bring in the outside help. please. any catalyst that may help “un-americanize” the sheeple in time to save more lives.

Today happens to be July 4 as always, marked by lofty rhetoric about the significance of this traditional American celebration of independence and democracy (and maybe a day at the beach). Reality is not so uplifting. Independence Day was designed by the first state propaganda agency, Woodrow Wilson’s Committee on Public Information (CPI), created during World War I to whip a pacifist country into anti-German frenzy and, incidentally, to beat down the threat of labor which frightened respectable people after such events as the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) victory in the Lawrence, Mass., strike of 1912. The CPI’s successes greatly impressed the business world; one of its members, Edward Bernays, became the leading figure in the vastly expanding public relations industry. Also much impressed was Adolf Hitler, who attributed Germany’s failure in World War I to the ideological victories of the British and U.S. propaganda agencies, which overwhelmed Germany’s efforts. Next time, Germany would be in the competition, he vowed. The influence of the great generalissimo on the propaganda front, as Wilson was described by political scientist Harold Lasswell, was not slight. Independence Day was one contribution.
This particular propaganda exercise began with business-government initiatives to Americanize immigrants, to inculcate loyalty and obedience and expel from their minds alien notions about the rights of working people. Such programs would turn immigrants into the natural foe of the IWW and other destructive forces that undermine the country’s ideals and institutions, the CPI founding document read. At a major conference of civic organizations (organized labor excluded), government and private organizations of all kinds and creeds had pledged themselves to cooperate in carrying out Americanization as a national endeavor, the organizers reported, while issuing plans for a successful Americanization program for the coming Fourth of July. The CPI took up the cudgels, now using the wartime fanaticism it had helped engender as another weapon against pacifists, agitators and other anti-American groups, notably the hated Wobblies. The Generalissimo joined in with a May 1918 endorsement. The title of the indoctrination ceremonies was to be Americanization Day; on reflection, Independence Day seemed preferable.
—letter from noam chomsky to covert action quarterly

The CIA (Committee for Immigrants in America) also produced a brilliant propaganda strategy to involve every American in an annual ritual of national identification. This ritual would embed the cultural intolerance of the Americanization program within an indentification that was formally and officially sanctified. The CIA thereby launched its campaign for the fourth of July 1915 to be made a national Americanization Day, a day for ‘a great nationalistic expression of unity and faith in America.’ To ensure the success of this proposal it established a National Americanization Day Committee (NADC) comprised mainly of leading corporate executives and their wives.
…
This new committee issued a pamplet written by [Frances] Kellor which argued the need for a domestic policy on the immigrant and ‘stressed in particular the great role which American industrial organisations could assume in working out this policy’. The pamphlet welded together the various interests of the campaign into a single message. It emphasized that however well government, business and philanthropy might conceive and launch a national policy for the Americanization of the immigrant, the ultimate success of that policy would depend on how effectively the ‘average American citizen’ could be induced to bring the influence of his conservative views to bear on the immigrant. For ‘such a citizen is the natural foe of the IWW and of the destructive forces that seek to direct unwisely the expressions fo the immigrant in his new country and upon him rest the hope and defence of the country’s ideals and institutions’. Here we have a blatant industrial and partisan view fused with an intolerance of the immigrant and the values of national security, in a submission which would cement these interests and intolerances within the paraphernalia of the annual ritual of what became Independence Day. Such was the breadth and scope of this propaganda campaign.
For the fourth of July program the NADC managed to obtain the support of the Federal Commissioner of Immigration, who sent letters to the mayors of every city in the nation asking for support in observing the fourth of July as Americanization Day. A similar request was sent to school authorities nationwide. A vast amount of promotional material was widely distributed and displayed. This included a supporting article by ex-President Theodore Roosevelt, a message from President Wilson, suggestions for speech content for hundreds of speakers and 52,000 Americanization Day posters. On 4 July Americanization ceremonies covered the country:

At Pittsburg, more than 10,000 adults heard almost 1,000 school children sing patriotic airs as they formed a huge American flag. In Indianapolis, speeches in eleven different languages on the duties of American citizenship were given by newly made American citizens … In many of the churches special Americanization Day sermons were preached.

The Americanization Day generated so much new activity and interest that the NADC decided to continue in operation to guide and direct this development. Changing its name to the National Americanization Committee (NAC), it set to work on a permanent campaign for the Americanization of the immigrant.

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During 1918 the CPI set up fourteen foreign-language bureaus which were largely responsible for the petition presented to President Wilson on 21 May 1918, asking that the fourth of July be escpecially recognized as a day for the foreign-born to demonstrate their loyalty to their adopted country. Wilson agreed. With the President’s stamp of approval the CPI set to work to plan an enthusiastic celebration for what was to be called Independence Day.
The amendment to ‘Independence Day’ rather than the ‘Americanization Day’ as originally proposed in 1915 by the NAC is an interesting change. It could be argued that the cultural and ethnic intolerances inherent in the term ‘Americanization’ were too obvious in 1918 to engender overwhelming public support for a national celebration. ‘Independence Day’, while less obviously ethnocentric, does, however, suffer from a certain ambiguity. Within its historical context ‘Independence Day’ refers to both an immigrant’s separation from old cultural ties and the alienation from the new business-oriented American culture. Current Independence Day celebrations still contain the residual power and meaning of these historically dislocating circumstances, even though most people would think of the day as a celebration for national rather than ethnic independence.
–from alex carey’s taking the risk out of democracy: corporate propaganda versus freedom and liberty

Posted by: b real | Jul 4 2007 15:51 utc | 1