You Too Can Be a Locust

Anyone who addresses people with an intent to persuade is being demagogic. I am demagogic this minute. But my power to enlighten or deceive, to promise or bewilder, is least able to abuse when my medium has the smallest range. Socrates was a demagogue, but his medium was word-of-mouth. Listeners are best safeguarded against speakers when the latter cannot be heard by too many at once. The printed word is qualified by the fact that it can be read at different times. It is when the greatest number can hear the same thing at the same time that the greatest mischief is possible.

Oddly, when we think of 20th century “masses,” we still think of Russia. But it was here, in this country, that the greatest “masses” were first created. It was here, and after 1930, that (in spite of a depression) the standard of living enabled technocracy to disseminate radio and television on a mass scale. It was here that entirely unprecedented enterprises which we now call “public relations” and “advertising” developed to harness these “new masses.” And it was here, in the form of a “fireside chat,” that this technocratic baby was first used politically.

RP

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Robert Phelps

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Anyone who addresses people with an intent to persuade is being demagogic. I am demagogic this minute. But my power to enlighten or deceive, to promise or bewilder, is least able to abuse when my medium has the smallest range. Socrates was a demagogue, but his medium was word-of-mouth. Listeners are best safeguarded against speakers when the latter cannot be heard by too many at once. The printed word is qualified by the fact that it can be read at different times. It is when the greatest number can hear the same thing at the same time that the greatest mischief is possible.

Oddly, when we think of 20th century “masses,” we still think of Russia. But it was here, in this country, that the greatest “masses” were first created. It was here, and after 1930, that (in spite of a depression) the standard of living enabled technocracy to disseminate radio and television on a mass scale. It was here that entirely unprecedented enterprises which we now call “public relations” and “advertising” developed to harness these “new masses.” And it was here, in the form of a “fireside chat,” that this technocratic baby was first used politically.