Free Thought and Official Propaganda
This is the preface of my latest book (in Italian) that I took from the speech of a great man of the last century (between [] there are my "updates" to adapt the text to the book and to our times)
[I met mimmo when, in high school, he first read my “The ABC of Relativity.” Since then, I have met him again and again, every time he has chosen my writings because, as a Catholic, he considers my “rationalist” attitude (which he calls “scientist” instead) useful to test his ‘religious’ attitude (which I call “superstitious” instead). Perhaps this is why I find so many of my ideas in his essays. E.g., on freedom of thought and of the individual, the subject of a talk I gave a century ago, anticipating what would happen after me, especially during the pandemic, the subject of this other essay of his.]
In regard […in recent decades] something has been gained since, but something also has been lost. New dangers, somewhat different in form from those of past ages, threaten both kinds of freedom, and unless a vigorous and vigilant public opinion can be aroused in defence of them, there will be much less of both a hundred years hence than there is now [And remember: a hundred years after me, those are precisely your years!
... This is how and why it could happen (and did happen)].
It is clear that the most elementary condition, if thought is to be free, is the absence of legal penalties for the expression of opinions. No great country has yet reached to this level, although most of them think they have.
[...As you learned to your detriment during the pandemic, however.]
Legal penalties are, however, in the modern world, the least of the obstacles to freedom of thought. The two great obstacles are economic penalties and distortion of evidence. It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions makes it impossible to earn a living. It is clear also that thought is not free if all the arguments on one side of a controversy are perpetually presented as attractively as possible, while the arguments on the other side can only be discovered by diligent search [, such as the one it was necessary to write this essay.]
[In short,] We may say that thought is free when it is exposed to free competition among beliefs — i.e., when all beliefs are able to state their case, and no legal or pecuniary advantages or disadvantages attach to beliefs.
[To understand what I mean, you have to keep in mind that, unfortunately] None of our beliefs is quite true; all have at least a penumbra of vagueness and error [that can be exploited to confuse us (e.g., there are many good reasons for or against opposing statements such as “vaccines save” or “vaccines kill”). What to do? Well,] the methods of increasing the degrees of truth in our beliefs are well-known; they consist in hearing all sides, trying to ascertain all the relevant facts, controlling our own bias by discussion with people who have the opposite bias, and cultivating a readiness to discard any hypothesis which has proved inadequate. These methods are practiced in science [which are not coincidentally called the "scientific method")], and have built up the body of scientific knowledge. Every man of science whose outlook is truly scientific is ready to admit that what passes for scientific knowledge at the moment is sure to require correction with the progress of discovery [:…] In science, where alone something approximating to genuine knowledge is to be found, men’s attitude is tentative and full of doubt. [An attitude that Mimmo often sums up in a way that I like: I believe in the scientific method, not in science, that is, in scientists because there are also incapable and dishonest ones among them!] In […] politics [(word from the ancient Greek πολιτικά (politiká) meaning “affair of the city”)] on the contrary, though there is as yet nothing approaching scientific knowledge, everybody considers it de rigueur to have a dogmatic opinion, to be backed up by inflicting starvation, prison, and war, and to be carefully guarded from argumentative competition with any different opinion [And this both in my time and in yours].
[…] How it comes about that there is so much irrational certainty in the world[?...] This seed of intellectual original sin is nourished and fostered by other agencies, among which three play the chief part — namely, education, propaganda, and economic pressure. Let us consider these in turn.
(1) EDUCATION. Elementary education, in all advanced countries, is in the hands of the State. Some of the things taught are known to be false by the officials who prescribe them, and many others are known to be false, or at any rate very doubtful, by every unprejudiced person. Take, for example, the teaching of history. [And just like] Some of the things taught are known to be false by the officials who prescribe them, and many others are known to be false, or at any rate very doubtful, by every unprejudiced person. For example, the teaching of history [everywhere tells the national one with a glorious past to be worthy of] is turned on to making defenceless children believe absurd propositions the effect of which is to make them willing to die [when adults] in defence of sinister interests under the impression that they are fighting for truth and right [(because, for example, “We are the ‘Free World’!”). Why do they do that? Because…] without an elaborate system of deceit in the elementary schools it would be impossible to preserve the camouflage of democracy. […So it should come as no surprise that] there are still some people who think that a democratic State is scarcely distinguishable from the people [: “We are the State,” they cunningly teach us and let us believe.]. This, however, is a delusion. The State is a collection of officials, different for different purposes, drawing comfortable incomes so long as the status quo is preserved. The only alteration they are likely to desire in the status quo is an increase of bureaucracy and the power of bureaucrats [becoming, year after year, what in the 21st century you have begun to call the “Deep State” that acts beyond the popular will]. It is, therefore, natural that they should take advantage of such opportunities as war-excitement [[(as with Ukraine) or any other type of emergency (such as a pandemic, for example)] to acquire inquisitorial powers over their employees, involving the right to inflict starvation upon any subordinate [and fellow citizen] who opposes them [, to the point of promoting intolerance and persecution against them. Yes, tolerance...]
[…] Religious toleration, to a certain extent, has been won because people have ceased to consider religion as important as it was once thought to be. But in politics and economics, which have taken the place formerly occupied by religion, there is a growing tendency to persecution, which is not by any means confined to one party [:…] so long as men continue to have the present fanatical belief in the importance of politics, free thought on political matters will be impossible, and there is only too much danger that the lack of freedom will spread to all other matters [[(as it later happened in healthcare with mandatory vaccinations)… Especially because] officials in charge of education [do not] desire the young to become educated[…] Education should have two objects:
first, to give definite knowledge — reading and writing, language and mathematics, and so on;
secondly, to create those mental habits which will enable people to acquire knowledge and form sound judgments for themselves.
The first of these we may call information, the second intelligence [from the Latin Intelligentem “which discerns, appreciates”, present participle of intelligere “to understand, comprehend, come to know”.]
The utility of information is admitted practically as well as theoretically; without a literate population a modern State is impossible. But the utility of intelligence is admitted only theoretically, not practically; it is not desired that ordinary people should think for themselves, because it is felt that people who think for themselves are awkward to manage and cause administrative difficulties. Only the guardians, in Plato’s language, are to think; the rest are to obey, or to follow leaders like a herd of sheep. This doctrine, often unconsciously, has survived the introduction of political democracy, and has radically vitiated all national systems of education.[…]
(2) PROPAGANDA. [As we have seen] Our system of education turns young people out of the schools able to read, but for the most part unable to weigh evidence or to form an independent opinion. They are then assailed, throughout the rest of their lives, by statements designed to make them believe all sorts of absurd propositions. [… After all] The art of propaganda, as practised by modern politicians and Governments [mine and yours], is derived from the art of advertisement. The science of psychology owes a great deal to advertisers. In former days most psychologists would probably have thought that a man could not convince many people of the excellence of his own wares by merely stating emphatically that they were excellent. Experience shows, however, that they were mistaken in this.[…] Propaganda, conducted by the means which advertisers have found successful, is now one of the recognized methods of government in all advanced countries, and is especially the method by which democratic opinion is created. [Both in my time and in yours, of course.]
There are two quite different evils about propaganda as now practised.
On the one hand, its appeal is generally to irrational causes of belief [(to feelings like terror, for example)] rather than to serious argument;
on the other hand, it gives an unfair advantage to those who can obtain most publicity, whether through wealth or through power.
[…But] The line between emotion and reason is not so sharp as some people think. Moreover [as we've seen], a clever man could frame a sufficiently rational argument in favour of any position which has any chance of being adopted. There are always good arguments on both sides of any real issue. Definite misstatements of fact can be legitimately objected to but they are by no means necessary. [For example,] The mere words “Pear’s Soap,” which affirm nothing, cause people to buy that article. If, wherever these words appear, they were replaced by the words “The Labour Party,” millions of people would be led to vote for the Labour party, although the advertisements had claimed no merit for it whatever. But if both sides in a controversy were confined by law to statements which a committee of eminent logicians considered relevant and valid, the main evil of propaganda, as at present conducted, would remain. Suppose, under such a law, two parties with an equally good case, one of whom [(e.g., the one about “vaccines kill”)] had a million pounds to spend on propaganda, while the other [(“vaccines save”)] had only a hundred thousand. It is obvious that the arguments in favour of the richer party would become more widely known than those in favour of the poorer party, and therefore the richer party would win. This situation is, of course, intensified when one party is the Government. [… So,] The objection to propaganda is not only its appeal to unreason, but still more the unfair advantage which it gives to the rich and powerful [: exactly what happened during the pandemic...]
(3) ECONOMIC PRESSURE. […] The tendency, which exists wherever industrialism is well developed, for trusts and monopolies to control all industry, leads to a diminution of the number of possible employers, so that it becomes easier and easier to keep secret black books by means of which anyone not subservient to the great corporations can be starved [(think of those in your years who are banned from social media because they oppose the dominant narrative, often depriving them of a source of income.)]. The growth of monopolies is introducing in America [and in the rest of the "free" world] many of the evils associated with state socialism as it has existed in Russia. From the standpoint of liberty, it makes no difference to a man whether his only possible employer is the State or a trust. […] Therefore the safe guarding of liberty in the world which is growing up is far more difficult than it was in the nineteenth century, when free competition was still a reality. Whoever cares about the freedom of the mind must face this situation fully and frankly, realizing the inapplicability of methods which answered well enough while industrialism was in its infancy [(such as, precisely, free competition decreasing as alliances, mergers, cartels and monopolies increase)].
[…Finally, how do you promote freedom of thought and individual freedom? By promoting tolerance!]
If there is to be toleration in the world, one of the things taught in schools must be the habit of weighing evidence, and the practice of not giving full assent to propositions which there is no reason to believe true. For example, the art of reading the newspapers [(the media for you)] should be taught. The schoolmaster should select some incident which happened a good many years ago, and roused political passions in its day [(such as the natural or laboratory origin of SARS-CoV-2)]. He should then read to the school-children what was said by the newspapers on one side, what was said by those on the other, and some impartial account of what really happened. He should show how, from the biased account of either side, a practised reader could infer what really happened, and he should make them understand that everything in newspapers is more or less untrue. The cynical scepticism which would result from this teaching would make the children in later life immune from those appeals to idealism [(such as “getting vaccinated is a duty: avoiding it puts lives at risk”)] by which decent people are induced to further the scheme of scoundrels. […] One of the chief obstacles to intelligence is credulity, and credulity could be enormously diminished by instructions as to the prevalent forms of mendacity. Credulity is a greater evil in the present day than it ever was before, because, owing to the growth of education, it is much easier than it used to be to spread misinformation [(or “fake news,” as you started calling it a while ago)], and, owing to democracy, the spread of misinformation [for propaganda purposes to create consensus] is more important than in former times to the holders of power. Hence the increase in the circulation of newspapers [(And I’m sure that, because of this, some among you will call me a “conspiracy theorist”)].
Bertrand Russell1
Russell, B.: Free Thought and Official Propaganda (1922)