How Think Tanks Became Engines of Royal Propaganda
tabletmag.com
tabletmag.com
Propaganda comes from the Church and means "Spreading the news", basically what Jesus told disciples to do. The meaning later changed to spreading partial information with the objective of controlling the masses.
The real propaganda comes from mass media, so it really starts with Gutenberg press, but it gets really powerful with the invention of the offset printing method.
Before that, it was just the law of the strongest, if you were against the king or Emperor, Ceasar, khan or the Senate, they will simply kill you, people spent most of the time working because life was extremely hard. No much propaganda as we know it.
Scientists being propaganda? Give me a break! After french revolution(revolutionaries were the first to identify the mass of the people as powerful, before that they were nobodies), all the scientific institutions in France were closed for being Royalist.
This actually meant France to lag in scientific matters against England, even when it was France who started it.
American think tanks have nothing to do with this as they come from industrialists, that did not even exist in Europe at the time of the Royal institutions.
Which isn't surprising, I suppose. You couldn't eat scholarship, so one was certainly beholden to one's patron.
But it's more nuanced than the personal relationship; sociologically over time institutions develop out of these relationships with complex motivations and histories. Out of good things more nebulous structures may evolve, over time.
A good grist-for-the-mill read, I thought.
That's exactly the point though, isn't it? That American think tanks are sources of industrial propaganda (for major oil companies in particular)?
.... because the Royals were paying their salaries?