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which, in its turn, functions as one of the corporate bodies deciding the conduct of the State. During the latter part of the 1960s, the consensus was social change, technological progress, radical attitudes and equality. The communicators all agreed that society was changing, and that it ought to do so rapidly. To be acceptable, it was absolutely necessary to adopt The Mass Media as Agents of Conformity 297 the label ‘radical’. And equality, in the sense of an egalitarian society, and of levelling out all conceivable differences, was the war-cry, of both the party and the communicators. All laudable aims, but to avoid excesses some opposition might be thought desirable. It did not exist, for the reasons adduced above. Dissenting communicators could literally be counted on the fingers of one hand, virtually outcasts from society. Both left and right were represented. Mr Jan Myrdal, a Maoist and son of Professor Gunnar Myrdal, was one of them; another a Catholic and a conservative, Dr Leif Carlsson. Dr Carlsson writes in the Swedish conservative press. This is how he describes his position: ‘I am a Conservative. Therefore I am an outsider. That is because there is no opposition in mbt shoes clearance Sweden. Everybody from left to right pays lip service to the fundamental tenets of Social Democracy, because that is the government, and that, therefore, is the consensus of the time. ‘So, even though I work on a nominally Conservative newspaper, I can’t write what I think. Everybody believes in equality now – of course, but Heaven help me if I try to take the opposite view. There’s no chance that direct attack would get into print, so I have to camouflage my thoughts. <a href="http://www.mytimberlandshoe.com/products_new.html"><strong>timberland</strong></a> ‘The only way I can publish unpopular thoughts is to bury them. But if, in some book review, I mention in disguise that perhaps there is something to be said for class as a prescriptive right, rather than a meritocracy; or that tradition ought not to be dismissed out of hand, then the Conservative party will tell my editor to see that I keep my mouth shut. ‘Take another example. The only permissible way to discuss ###### roles in Sweden is to dig out a new example of discrimination and propose its abolition. You may not, say, put in a plea for preserving differences and the mystique of women.’ Conformity is accepted as a virtue. The average Swede would, indeed, be surprised to mbt clearance have it brought to his attention, 298 The New Totalitarians because it seems the natural way to act. Yet, concern there is; on rare occasions it is brought to light. The following exchange took place in the correspondence columns of Svenska Dagbladet, the conservative national daily newspaper: ‘I was on holiday,’ ran a letter to the editor, apparently written by an older reader, ‘and was for once able to listen to a youth programme on the radio, where a representative for the morning, afternoon and weekly press talked about their correspondence columns. The editor of a weekly magazine said that she never printed letters against aid to the underdeveloped countries … It seems as if discussion is banned, and permission only granted for expression of certain points of view approved by politicians. Is it true that certain questions, for example those decided by politicians above our heads, are taboo in Svenska Dagbladet’s correspondence column?’ ‘Of course, the question of technical aid may be discussed in our correspondence columns,’ ran the editorial reply subjoined to the letter. ‘Recognition of our responsibility for problems outside our own borders is, however, so general that it can be the explanation that letters to the editor criticizing technical aid are mbt shoes uk so rare. But, of course, those who want to discuss the formation and direction of technical aid are Cheap mbt shoes welcome to write to us. Other letters will swiftly be returned to their senders.’ The communicators’ sanction upholds the consensus of the governing establishment, and the median of popular unanimity. This assumes that technological advancement is the sole path to happiness, and the Gross National Product the only measure of national success.* It also assumes that the good of the collective at all times must take precedence over the good of the individual. It mbt stockists prescribes that the fundamentals of * This also is a potent weapon in the campaign to prove that the Swedes live in the best of all possible worlds. Constantly in the mass media, statistics are served up (expressed per capita) to prove that Sweden is the best or runner-up in this or that sphere of production. Those unfamiliar with local conditions might assume that it is a symptom of some collective neurosis. The Mass Media as Agents of Conformity 299 Swedish society must never be questioned or discussed. This convention gives the Swedish press (and broadcasting) a curious triviality. It lacks the vigour and questioning of the best of the Anglo-Saxon press. Taboos are correspondingly far more developed in Sweden; they are comprehensive to the point of weirdness in a country where the freedom of speech obtains. They encompass everything upon which the system rests, and the consensus is the first of them: and that covers everything else. There is a taboo on discussing the encroachment of the State on personal liberty: society has the interests of the citizen at heart and, therefore, conflict and criticism are impossible. The Saltsjobaden agreement and the foundation of labour relations are taboo. So too is the power of the trade unions. So also is questioning of any change. It has been propounded that Swedish society is now in a state of flux, and that all change is necessarily for the good. It is not permissible to cast doubt on any particular reform, because that implies the rejection of change for its own sake.* And upon neutrality lies the strictest taboo of all. By interaction between State and communicators the press, as well as government broadcasting, may be mbt clearance used in order to prepare the public for government ideas. Such was the case, for example, of compulsory pre-school training. The leading opinion-makers accepted and propagated it. Opposition was not permitted to appear in print. The government’s principal aim of bringing children into the collective at an early age * Another aspect of the power of the consensus is that opinionmakers, of most political persuasions, are afraid of being branded as ‘reactionary’ when the sanction is that of ‘progressive’. Nobody will risk <a href="http://www.mytimberlandshoe.com/timberland-8-inch-premium-c-267.html"><strong>timberland boots mens</strong></a> being so condemned. For that reason, although there are numbers of ‘reactionary’ Swedes, there are hardly any public expressions of ‘reactionary’ opinions. There is nothing, theoretically, to stop the consensus being on the right some time in the future, as it has been in the past. In the nineteen mbt uk thirties, for example, the Swedish academic world displayed considerable Nazi sympathy, and the manifesto of the trade-union movement possessed traces of Nazi terminology. 300 The New Totalitarians was presented as if it had been universally accepted. The result is described by Mrs Camilla Odhnoff, thenMinister of Family Affairs: ‘At first, there was some resistance to the idea of pre-school training, but when people had been correctly informed they dropped their antagonism. Our campaign had reduced resistance, and pre-school training is now seen to be a good thing.’ cheap mbt shoes The assumption here is that, provided a full explanation is given, the correct deduction will necessarily be drawn. There is only one ‘objective’ truth to fit given data. This attitude serves to outlaw opposition. Rejection of the approved viewpoint becomes, not valid criticism to be judged on its merits, but error. The critic becomes a heretic, and is thereby neutralized. A newspaper will rarely take issue on a matter of principle. Even if it is nominally an opposition mouthpiece, it will accept the policies of the government, quibbling over the best means of carrying them out. This simply reflects the behaviour of politicians. A formula commonly invoked by opposition representatives is that, ‘We are all agreed that such and such is desirable, but is this quite the way to carry it out?’ As in the Diet, so in the mass media, there is a settled air of triviality. Debate is confined to the minutiae of administration and social welfare. All doubt is absent, and a splendid complacency reigns. There is none of the self-searching and questioning of fundamentals that so noticeably plagues the West. At the ceremony in Stockholm where the Russian author, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, was awarded the Nobel Prize, a Swedish scientist, the late Professor Arne Tiselius, gave a speech on what he termed ‘pollution of the intellect’. He complained that ‘truth was no longer fashionable’, and that ‘words no longer mean what they used to mean. They have been manipulated in order to indoctrinate people, and give power to the already powerful mass media.’ Professor Tiselius mbt shoes sale ‘s remarks were almost completely ignored by press, radio and TV. Yet, The Mass Media as Agents of Conformity mbt shoes australia 301 a former Nobel prize-winner, he was a celebrity in Sweden, and the other speeches at the ceremony were reported to their full platitudinous extent. And his words clearly are apposite, not least at home. It was a small, but significant example of bias in Swedish reporting. With the help, if not the leadership, of the mass media, the Swedish language has been debased and manipulated so that, as in Orwell’s Newspeak, the ability to express unapproved thoughts has been eroded. When ######ual equality was promulgated, and it was decided that a woman’s place was not at home but out at work, there was a rapid change in <a href="http://www.casualphorum.com/viewtopic.php?p=1846691#1846691"><strong>mbt running shoe new sandals for 2011 cheap » Internet Marketing ...</strong></a> the language. The customary Swedish for housewife is husmor, which is honourable; it was replaced by the neologism hemmafru, literally ‘the-wife-whostays- mbt shoes review at-home’, which is derogatory. “Within a few months, the mass media were able to kill the old and substitute the new term. By the end of 1969, it was almost impossible in everyday conversation to mention the state of housewife without appearing to condemn or to sneer. Swedish had been changed under the eyes and ears of the Swedes. Husmor had been discredited; the only way out was to use hemmafru ironically. Connected with this semantic shift, there was a change in feeling. Women who, a year or so before, had been satisfied, and possibly proud, to stay at home, began to feel the pressure to go out to work. The substitution of one word for the other had been accompanied by insistent propaganda in the mass media, so that it was as if a resolute conditioning campaign had been carried out. Very few were able to recognize the indoctrination in the linguistic manipulation; in the real sense of the word, the population mbt shoes online had been brain-washed. Opposition has never been a respectable concept in Swedish, and the words associated with it have therefore almost exclusively had pejorative undertones. Nevertheless, they existed, and ideas in that field could be expressed. Now it is extremely 302 The New Totalitarian difficult, because the vehicle for doing so has been severely damaged. The language has been so manipulated that it has become virtually impossible to express opposition, particularly in the case of the State and the collective. As explained before, the word ‘collective’ can only have a favourable meaning. ‘Individual’ has a faintly derogatory ring. This applies to all words in those spheres. ‘Eccentric’ is only an insult. ‘Dissidence’ is not a nice concept. Conversely, words like ‘the State’, ‘Society’, ‘the Administration’, ‘Bureaucracy’, all have only favourable connotations. This means that it is practically impossible adequately to express opposition of the individual to the State: the State is good, and there is no simple way of putting the antithesis. A corollary is that society is better than the individual; that the individual exists to serve society: all this lies in the words themselves. Unless one of the rare Swedish dissidents is extremely sure of his discount mbt trainers audience mbt discount , he will not be certain that what he is saying will have the meaning he intends. If he thinks he is praising the individual against the collective, he will probably find that his listeners get the impression that is is committing lese-majesty against the State and therefore being offensive. Another example. In English, the word ‘uniform’ is almost always derogatory. In Swedish, on the contrary, it is one of the most prized descriptions. It is a branch of the idea of the consensus. This means, obviously, that a Swede has difficulty in expressing the idea that uniformity is bad; he is forced to say that it is good because there are no words to the contrary. If he feels strongly enough about it, he can say that ‘uniformity’ leads to ‘monotony’, but there he buy mbt shoes is on thin ice, because he is involved in a value judgement, and the retort will be that if you must give it a name ‘harmony is the better one’. Since politics in Sweden have for so long been a matter of economics alone, it is not surprising that political terms have The Mass Media as Agents of Conformity 303 become economically loaded. Such has been the fate of the word ‘democracy’. That term, so richly distorted in the machinery of human misunderstanding, may signify more or less what you want it to. Etymologically it can, with a little goodwill, be made to embrace the wildest of contradictions. In its literal sense of rule by the people, it can be persuaded to signify both parliamentary government and dictatorship of the proletariat. Given the premises of mbt shoes sale Westminster, the White House and the Kremlin, the word can cover almost opposite circumstances. It depends what you understand by ‘people’ and ‘rule’. But at least in mbt chapa these three cases the word ‘democracy’ Related posts:new sandals for 2011 orange shoes women cheap genuine mbt shoes sal outletukmbt staka san cheap tory burch shoes outlet for beaty girls of men and women old outlet sales scarpe official cheap supras cheap mbt shoes uk timberland boat shoes cheap This entry was posted on July 24, 2011 at 3:15 am and is filed under article. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.