Episode description
Episode description
“We shifted from a culture in which people said, ‘Behave and conform,’ to a culture in which people said, ‘Indulge yourself, enjoy yourself.’ That spurs capitalism.” Freud’s nephew truly believed that preying on such desires to encourage spending was key to a functioning democracy. He thought the elite should be able to manipulate the masses into feeding the economy with their many purchases. As he wrote in his 1929 book - Propaganda:
The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, and our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of…. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind.