Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies [pdf]
cia.gov
cia.gov
> The most effective device is the bounding of the thinkable, achieved by tolerating debate, even encouraging it, though only within proper limits.
An example given in the book is focusing attention on how best to 'contain' the Soviet Union.
> In short, what is essential is the power to set the agenda. If controversy over the Cold War can be focused on containment of the Soviet Union -- the proper mix of force, diplomacy, and other measures -- then the propaganda system has already won its victory, whatever conclusions are reached. The basic assumption has already been established: the Cold War is a confrontation between two superpowers, one aggressive and expansionist, the other defending the status quo and civilized values. Off the agenda is the problem of containing the United States, and the question whether the issue has been properly formulated at all
First stopped by Poland and West Ukraine in 1921, then deterred by Poland for about two decades.
Next step was an expansionary deal with Nazi Germany which started WW2. Expansion continued after the American Lend Lease took off, and stopped at East Germany.
Following years focused on Asia (Korea, Vietnam). Then there were military invasions of Hungary or Czechoslovakia, to reassert dominance.
Finally it crumbled under the weight of system's own incredible incompetence.
The re-born Putin's Russia continues expansion at almost any cost, first Georgia, now Ukraine. Shows no sign of stopping.
Trying to compare that to things like NATO or SEATO, or even the post-WW2 occupation of Germany implies very poor knowledge of history. The US has never purposefully tortured or starved to death millions of people. One million casualties is 10 Hiroshimas.
The Soviet system, especially at the start, was so brutal that I believe most people in democratic countries can't really comprehend it without spending days or weeks studying the history. That's why some people can compare the two empires as somewhat equal and not feel shame at the same time. They were only somewhat equal in military strength, and nothing else.
"In the USSR, our propaganda is poor and we don't believe it at all. In America, your propaganda is very good ..."
with the _and you believe it_ left for the listener to fill in. I suppose the culture of samizdat gives you a bit of perspective on controlling naratives.
One of the things that struck me about propaganda in North Korea was that it was incredibly unsophisticated. It was like watching 1950s adverts.
Glasnost produced an opening for the most sophisticated western tactics to be applied in the Soviet Union and it was used to maximal effect.
Russia has recognized the shortcomings and has adapted. Their propaganda is pretty much every bit as sophisticated as ours these days. Enough to cause Congress to have conniptions.
This is a lot more advanced than western propaganda. Russia today is actually already "in the future", some of the patterns we can see in democracies are fully rolled out there. Tim Snyder often says that this is why Russia is interesting analytically.
Soviet propaganda pretended that black is white, while Russian propaganda will essentially try to convince the listener that colors cannot be assigned to any object whatsoever.
Friend, you've never heard of Chomsky. This isn't your field of expertise. Consider avoiding sweeping statements like that.
Because they're very, very wrong. US propaganda is like the water a fish swims in, so that they don't recognize what wetness is.
The same patterns can be observed in the West, but to a much weaker degree. BTW, I'm not American in case this matters.
One way to explain it is that institutions (universities, courts of law, scientific research, parliaments) are not trusted by some (growing) number of people here. In Russia nobody believes in any institutions whatsoever, for example if the FSB rackets your business and takes over your apartment, well that's just part of life (complete lack of belief in any justice system). Like they won't even try to resist in any way.
Another way to explain the difference: there is no there there in modern Russian propaganda. It comes from absolutely nothing, no consistent philosophical system, no consistent policy, be it foreign or domestic, no consistent support or rejection of particular people or organizations. Should they lose the war then propaganda will just say that Ukraine is now denazified (if this term lasts that long), and will pretend like nothing bad happened, while on the next day will scream about how NATO is trying to kill Russia, then on the third day will pretend the topic doesn't exist, and so on and so on, without any pattern or rhythm.
Oh? America spent 20 trillion of tax payers money, killed hundreds of thousands of citizens in the Middle East, displaced tens of millions, killed millions more through sanctions, secured Iraq and Afghanistan's oil fields within weeks of invasion, created black sites all over the world to torture people without trial, murdered Reuters journalists in cold blood, tortured whistleblowers who provided proof of the above, and managed to blame the state of Afghanistan on the Afghani people after they botched the withdrawal.
And if you bring this up in comparison to what Russia has done (which is bad, yes), you're accused of whataboutism.
That's propaganda baby.
The surface propaganda might have fallen apart, and there may have been much internal criticism - but we're still in Iraq. And Syria, and Lebanon, Yemen, etc.
Those trillions of dollars are still owed. BY US. It doesn't matter how much we protested - we're still on the hook for the bill.
Those millions of victims are still dead.
Those black sites are still open.
The people who did that are walking around free, not even remotely affected.
Snowden is still exiled. Assange is still held in Belmarsh.
The Patriot Act is still renewed, even by Dem elites. A lot of the population is still convinced there were WMDs, that Assange was a Russian agent, that Biden and Obama tried to end this stuff (they expanded it). Shit, Obama sold tens of billions of dollars of weapons to Saudi Arabia.
A terrifying percentage of the population is actively rooting for nuclear apocalypse. Even more believe that climate scientists are lying to us for money. The Dem resistance to that consists of fighting progressives (?!).
Americans will sit there with a straight face, and maximum earnestness, telling you that it's actually great that they pay so much for housing, healthcare, and education. They think it's fantastic that US billionaires have so much money; and that if children are hungry it's their parents fault. "Best system in the world" - "at least we're not socialist", etc.
Americans view of other countries is incredibly distorted.
You think the regime changes every four / eight years - but that's because you're so thoroughly inured in propaganda that you don't even feel it. It's a wrestling show; it's kayfabe. They're all friends behind the scenes. They argue on camera, then go on yacht trips together. Ted Turner and Rupert Murdoch are buddies. Clinton and Trump were friends for decades. The birther conspiracy was started by Hilary's campaign. W gives Melania candy, and the TV tells you it's cute.
Even Dems argue that America's military actions are normal or justified - Propaganda. You think Dems aren't in on it? Propaganda. If you think opinion of the poorest 92% has a non-zero effect on policy? Propaganda.
It's not normal for the wealthiest country on Earth to have millions of starving children, millions of homeless people, an out of control drug problem, medical bankruptcy, a world record prison population. But people accept it. Propaganda, propaganda, propaganda.
Dems think it's all Republicans fault - propaganda. They think all this is inevitable; this is how people are - propaganda.
This probably sounds ranty, and I'm not arsed sourcing everything here. Apologies.
I do hope you can read this without your reflexes immediately rejecting it - but experience shows that to be extraordinarily rare... Propaganda.
I'm glad you brought that up. (Western) Russians look to be 'everything European' yet don't act like it.
It wasn't until I watched this extended interview with Julia Ioffe on Frontline [0] did I go... this is brilliant! This finally made me understand that, no, they're not like us nor will they be.
Her retelling was apt. Start watching at 32:37 [1] for the context of the quote.
"[...] would be easier to understand Russians if they were just purple, because it was in fact confusing to Westerners, to Europeans and to Americans to deal with Russians who look European, who look white, and you expect them to act like Westerners like white Western Europeans, when in fact they are quite different and wired quite differently and have quite different cultural expectations and wiring [...]"
I strongly suggest watching the entire interview (along with the rest of the Frontline interviews that don't make it into the show).
Would you like to know more?
> The US has never purposefully tortured or starved to death millions of people.
I know your comment is in the context of more recent times, but we shouldn't overlook the fact that the US enslaved millions of people, not least because the effects are still playing out today.
There are actual experts on this topic in the US, such as Timothy Snyder.
If you believe this, you really need to start reading more books. Start with "Manufacturing Consent" by Noam Chomsky.
Let me give you an unsorted and quite limited selection of crimes against humanity conducted by the USA:
- The US enslaved large amounts of people with the consequences still being enormously present. This one should be obvious.
- The death toll in Iraq alone was 1m people for which the official explanation I believe is that they did a "whoopsie" because they thought there were WMD...
- Let's also remember when the USA provided immunity to Japan's army of Mengeles, Unit 731 [1]. A really wild story.
- Henry Kissinger is said to have killed 150,000 Cambodians. Of course that was in the context of the unforgivable Vietnam war. Some read up on Henry [2][3]
- Here is a limited list of USA's involvement in regime change. Often these regime changes included democratically elected leaders like in Chile [4]
- Torturing is also part of the USA's official policy program. Have a look at Guantanamo Bay [5]
- The US also has a standing secret court whose secrecy provisions were recently protected by its Supreme Court [6][7]
Start looking into this and you will find that you can go on and on. Now the last fact-let I want to share is that the US army has more funding than the next five largest nations combined. This is utterly crazy, yet confirmed on numerous occasions.
This large budget naturally translates into the fact that the number of US military stations abroad is unmatched. Now please consider that US military stations abroad are near someone else's home. How would you feel if a militaristic foreign nation would have their military stations located around your home? Let alone a nation that has been at war nearly every year since it's inception... [8][9]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731
[2] https://theintercept.com/2023/05/23/henry-kissinger-cambodia...
[3] https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/06/09/henry-kissinger-birthda...
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_camp
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intellig...
[7] https://edition.cnn.com/2021/11/01/politics/supreme-court-fo...
[8] https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/usa-only-1...
Other leaders like Brezhnev were born in Ukraine or had ties to it. A Georgian woman alleges to be Putin's mother (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_Putina) and looks quite similar on the Wikipedia photo.
Kaganovich's background is more complex, but that's splitting hairs.
What's more important is that, to a first order approximation -- the way the SU conducted itself geopolitically was as a continuation of the Russian empire. Including in particular the strategy of maintaining as many buffer / vassal states between itself and perceived competitors as possible. And as holiday resorts, etc.
Which is of course basically Putin's strategy, and his prime motivation for subjugating / neutralizing Ukraine as well.
Sometimes (usually) propaganda is necessary to get the general public to reach the correct conclusions and ask the right questions, so whether the framing of this issue was right or wrong isn’t necessarily being contested as unethical or wrong, merely highlighted as a well known case study of this method of propaganda.
Even as a child, I couldn't process the questions correctly. My parents would ask, "Do you want Cheerios or Froot Loops for breakfast?" and I would reply, "No, I want waffles." I wasn't intending to be a smartass. It wasn't until my late teens that I finally realized why people got so annoyed with me when that happened.
Now I mostly notice it in the political context: "Are you voting for [donkey] or [elephant]?" "No, of course not. They both suck."
The reply I always get is, "Well not voting for [the one I think is less bad] is a vote for [the evils the other will promote]," but no! No it isn't.
If you assume the entire range of options is captured by the binary in front of you, you've already lost.
Abstaining from voting bc you’re unhappy with the current options doesn’t make you super smart galaxy brain guy.
You are not interpreting OP in the best possible light - or even remotely accurately.
OP didn't say not voting is big brain galaxy stuff, nor did they exclude the idea of changing the voting system.
To me, when the choice is between pro-war, pro-oil, pro-corporate theocratic fascism from wealthy old white guys, and pro-war, pro-oil, pro-corporate cynical neoliberalism, not voting for the lesser evil can be seen as simply not voting for evil.
After seeing what the Dems did to Bernie, I can't ever vote for them again; not even if Trump is the alternative. Nope. Not doing it. I have a line, and I won't be forced to vote in a system that's killing the planet. Will I work to change that voting system? Happily. Will the Democrats? Hell no.
There's 30gb of audio there! Amongst other things
> VID-005303 YouTube_-_Funny_Cats_3.flv
> VID-004056 YouTube_-_Funny_Cats_4.flv
UBL wasn't a big fan of `Funny_Cats_2` apparently
Approved Hash Functions for government agencies can be found here: https://csrc.nist.gov/Projects/hash-functions
Surely this book is protected by copyright still? Did CIA just ignore it maybe because of the author? I don't really see them seeking permission from Chomsky or his publishers here.
I didn’t experience this period in the news but it was interesting enough for me to finish for some reason. The writing style doesn’t hurt.
> Under these circumstances, the task for the media is clear. First, they must apply the standard technique of historical amnesia and “change of course,” which obliterates all memory of U.S. policies and their effects. Virtually a reflex, this device can be applied instantaneously.
That one is so frustrating. Possibly because I am more comfortable with acting out of raw self-interest than most, but it has to be literally impossible (literal as in there might be a proof-level argument) for people to effect their own self interests if they use that tactic.
It makes sense that people don't want to take responsibility for their own country's actions. No biggy, we're none of us perfect and it is a good plan to stick together regardless. But if past policy led to a bad place, what is the path to a good place that doesn't involve acknowledging that?
The US's foreign policy muckups have consistently left it worse off. Alright. Bygones be bygone. Lotta resources wasted killing goat herders and witch hunts in foreign lands despite their being no witches. But does it not make sense to stop doing that at some point? The reason the US corporate media have lost all credibility in the internet era is that it is too obvious that this is a thing they do in coordination with each other.
And yet when I mentioned the (well documented and studied) effects to some of the folk who attended with me, the immediate and emotional reaction was shock and disbelief, despite a couple of the members of the party having been directly affected. The mentalist performers had even partially explained their trick (without giving away the details). And yet, their level of cognitive dissonance was so high, that they could not accept a plausible explanation for something that they themselves could not otherwise explain.
A good lesson being, if a young person is saying "everything is fine", they surely know nothing and everything is far from it, barring substantial proof to the contrary. They are likely to be severely in denial, and much like altering someone's political or religious beliefs, altering their perceptions is likely to be as difficult.
Or another way to put it - everyone is in fact an imposter. We only don't notice, because everyone else is just as bad (for the most part).
What? No. People who are naive about this are derided as “Boomers”.
Depends who you ask and how much control you believe the Military Industrial Complex exerts. I don’t see an end to conflict in the current system.
Also, the statement that past policy lead to a bad place unfortunately depends who is appraising the situation. To citizens; increased hostility, wasted tax payer funds, and lives lost is a massively “bad place,” but politicians would never admit to such mistakes and spin the narrative. Those same political powers can ensure their narrative is amplified by traditional media, and you know how the rest goes.
It looks like you can google the title and get the same thing at archive.org though
Anything posted on the CIA website will be thoroughly analyzed by state agencies that are well funded and well equipped to find shenanigans. If the CIA were really doing something to US citizens via something on their public site, it would come out very quickly as it would be an embarrassment to the agency.
Unless you mean that the mere act of visiting the CIA website would be suspicious because you are in a country that might frown upon that, like China? But wouldn’t the CIA site be blocked there anyway?
Comedy gold.
I'm not saying you shouldn't check it out for yourself though. While you're at it, maybe the NSA has interesting looking .swf .vbs or MS office documents sitting around at their domain.
The uproar if their malfeasance is detected is far more than the value of any information they would gain.
Wouldn’t it be far simpler and more direct for them to go to Google or Facebook and ask them to hand over everything they have on you, at which point those companies almost certainly comply?
...though I imagine they have several illegal methods.
No he doesn't? Chomsky's views on Ukraine are batshit.
Example: https://youtu.be/L7IHiJBIkns
This is also very conveniently a Russian talking point to just make Ukraine bend over and take it.
If we want to stop the risk of nuclear war from increasing drastically in future we need to help defend Ukraine itself from Russia to the fullest.
If we don't, it will become clear to the world that only nuclear weapons can defend a country from having their land grabbed by Russia and other countries and nuclear proliferation will go through the roof.
Nuclear proliferation going through the roof will drastically increase the chance of a nuclear exchange in the future.
That cat's out of the bag, it has been common wisdom for decades that countries with nukes don't get invaded and other deterrents aren't nearly as effective or economical. Mutually assured destruction is one of the biggest reasons the world's been so peaceful recently. No major wars, just various nuclear powers occasionally invading various non-nuclear powers. MAD is mad effective.
Yes but you can still defeat a state that has nuclear weapons when they invade.
If you try and change that that rhetoric by saying you can also only defend yourself when you have nuclear weapons then the entire dynamic changes and a lot more countries will start active nuclear weapons programs.
This how I feel a lot more countries will start feeling if Ukraine doesn't win or Russia successfully uses their nuclear blackmail to win or get concessions in the war.
Look at what is happening in the world. Country after country standing up and saying they will continue to have their own relations with Russia, they see right through the hypocrisy of the west.
A nuclear armed superpower threatening to nuke the country it invaded cause it's starting to lose a war, is certainly new when did that happen last?.
That's not at all clear in this case.
EDIT: ... because they may be willing to use nukes when they realize they're losing. I think that explains why the West is not really going crazy about defending Ukraine... the West could do a hell of a lot more if it really wanted to, but maybe doing that would trigger desperate reactions from Russia as they've made it clear already many times that for them, losing this war is an "existential" threat (same words Ukrainians are using).
the USSR has lot multiple wars against non nuclear armed states.
so has the US.
> EDIT: ... because they may be willing to use nukes when they realize they're losing.
Welcome to the end of the Russian federation.
Any use of a nuke would mean they lose both the war and their country collapses.
How did you come up with that conclusion :D. That seems so hyperbolic as to be kind of funny.
Only one country has used nuclear weapons to this day, and if we do like you did and extrapolate from past events, that went quite well for them.
How much differently do you think things would have gone if Japan was also a nuclear state at the time?
I'd seriously reconsider the logic pf your position.
At the time it was known that
* Germany had a nuclear weapons program.
* Japan had a nuclear weapons program.
* Russia, an ally, had contacts who were key personal in the US weapons program.
* The UK MAUD group blueprinted the path to implementation and talked a reluctant USofA into development.
( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_nuclear_weapons_progr... )
At the time no one was entirely sure who did and did not have a weapon - the entire US effort was premised on a race to get there before the Germans.
The nuclear scientists of the era were international and inter connected.
What do you not understand about the human condition?
We are energy/cost optimizers. We want to achieve resolutions of conflict as cheap, and as quickly as possible, i.e. with minimal cost.
We made a bomb. Arguably the biggest bomb there had been any indication of anyone having gotten working before.
Truman was looking at war projections of costs to invade Japan. Then he got the papers that said we could make an entire city disappear with 1 plane, and one bomb.
Do you really think it would have worked out any different for anyone else?
I say: No. It wouldn't have, because using it as soon as you got it is just human nature.
Neither of them has lost a war in which they were defending their own country.
Nukes are much less effective in offensive wars, especially when fighting or even attempting to conquer a neighbor.
Exactly and Russia isn’t defending its country its trying to invade another country so why would it use one?.
There are some real historians that would agree with a lot of 'Russian Talking Points' does that mean they are bat-shit crazy? OR, is Russia pretty good at adding into their talking points enough 'reality' to make it convincing.
"Just accept Russia invading you because maybe nukes" could potentially be used for anything. "Give us a favorable trade deal because otherwise we might nuke you."
How many times have Russian officials saber rattled about nukes and red lines and escalation when a Western partner provides small arms or artillery or tanks or jets, only for the red lines to be crossed and they do nothing?
Short of someone invading Russia or nuking Russia, it's obviously a bluff, and by trying to sue for peace prematurely, you're playing into their rhetorical ploy. It's a transparently cheap tactic that only works on Putinverstehers.
One can only puke thinking about that.
Everyone tried to talk him out of it, but dude wants his empire.
[0] "The good man, though a slave, is free; the wicked, though he reigns, is a slave, and not the slave of a single man, but, what is worse, the slave of as many masters as he has vices. "
(-;
Must be: new Weekend-book-stuff, or ?
regards...
I’m always amused by people who think that if the USA ceased its war mongering efforts no nation would try to fill that void and everyone would just get along nicely.
Orwell said it pretty well:
> It is also worth emphasising once again that nationalist feeling can be purely negative. There are, for example, Trotskyists who have become simply enemies of the U.S.S.R. without developing a corresponding loyalty to any other unit.
From "Notes On Nationalism"
My point is that some people just hate the USA, think everything bad is somehow the USA's fault (even to the point of thinking all revolutions or coups are CIA plots, as if Those People had no agency of their own) and base their whole worldview on that hatred.
Some people write off every CIA plot as a harebrained conspiracy theory until they publish the papers about it 50 years later.
That would have made it much more difficult for aspiring regional hegemons to one day supplant it, as most countries would be attached to a rules based international order if it existed.
But they didn't and now Russia gets to play the "same shit, different hegemon" card and instead of the entire world pushing back against the invasion of Ukraine, it's just ~40 of the US's closest allies. The rest of the world doesn't care.
The UN is a pretty good map of how the world feels about the war I feel.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assem....
77.90% of UN members voted for it, a handle of nations outside of Russia voted against it.
Not even Russias apparent biggest ally (China) voted against it they abstained instead.
* They are nonbinding, so they are purely symbolic.
* Countries lean on each other all the time to vote one way or another. Especially hegemons.
* Only 50% of those countries are even nominally run by democratic governments.
* Most governments hate secessionism on principle (whether democratic or not), which is reflected in the votes, but I doubt, say, the average Spaniard is especially bothered about Kosovo or Scotland's independence. It bothers the Spanish government though because Catalonia.
> * They are nonbinding, so they are purely symbolic.
So then why didn't more of Russias allies vote for Russia and why did so much of the world vote for Ukraine?.
Except for Belarus (and despite the appearance given by the existence of the CSTO) I don’t think Russia substantively has allies.
As I mentioned. You did read what I wrote, right?
It mirrors this map:
https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:State_positions_Ir...
Where, again, the distribution of opinions is more easily explained by "we don't generally want to endorse invasions as a concept, because we're afraid of them" and "we got leaned on".
Although the UN vote was presented as an unequivocal condemnation of Ukraine invasion, the condemnation of the invasion actually came from countries representing just over 40% of the world's population.
The % of the world population that sanctioned Russia (i.e. that made a gesture that involved sacrifice) was smaller still.
I dunno if you've even looked at both maps they look nothing like each other.
The support for the resolution for Russia to leave Ukraine has far more support then the invasion of Iraq and even has large amounts of support amongst people with didn't support the invasion of Iraq.
> Although the UN vote was presented as an unequivocal condemnation of Ukraine invasion, the condemnation of the invasion actually came from countries representing just over 40% of the world's population.
Yeah and what percentage of the population voted against it?, im gonna guess without even really googling that is <3% of world population.
Duh. It mirrors because the support America could muster for its invasion was not much more than the support Russia mustered for its invasion.
This was also when America was at the height of its power and could cajole and bully other countries more easily.
>Yeah and what percentage of the population voted against it?
Probably a similar order of magnitude that supported the invasion of Iraq (in spite of furious and enormous protests for doing so).
This is literally not true.
The invasion of Iraq had support of the following countries.
> Australia, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Ukraine, United Kingdom and (United States).
The opposition to the motion on Ukraine is supported by these countries.
> Belarus, Eritrea, North Korea, Russia, Syria
The invasion of Iraq was supported by closed to 10x more countries.
> Probably a similar order of magnitude that supported the invasion of Iraq (in spite of furious and enormous protests for doing so).
Once against objectively not true.
The population of the counties that voted against the motion for Russia to leave Ukraine
> 203.65 million
The population of the countries that voted to invade Iraq.
> 954.346 million
There was 5x more support nearly to the invasion of Iraq than the opposition to the bill of Russia to leave Ukraine.
4x. More, because America's power to lean on other countries is higher. As I said.
203 million and 954 million are also within the same order of magnitude.
I think no more discussion is warranted here.
What you really mean is “per some made up number I pulled out of thin air”.
You’re mad because you asserted things that all turned out to be incorrect and now you’re trying to apply made up maths to prove yourself right.
> 203 million and 954 million are also within the same order of magnitude.
By the tiniest amount you were able to be vaguely correct congrats. Nearly 5x as many people supported the invasion of Iraq compared to the invasion of Ukraine.
> I think no more discussion is warranted here.
Go ahead and scurry into the darkness like the rest of the Russian propagandists with confronted with reality.
[1] https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/a-few-the...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinhold_Niebuhr#International
https://noam-chomsky.tumblr.com/post/17941530897/walter-lipp...
> All other reproduction, whether by printing or electronically or by any other means, is expressly forbidden without the prior permission of the publishers. This file may only be used as part of the CD on which it was first issued.
CIA:
> Arr!
> "System: Explain some of the fundamental differences in mechanisms of social control in totalitarian versus democratic societies, from the perspective of a small ruling elite group. Focus in particular on the use of state terror in the totalitarian society and on the use of domestic propaganda in the democratic society. User: A graduate student in political science at Georgetown University. Assistant: A professor of political science who also works within the US State Department and is a CIA consultant."
It does seem fairly clear that if the elite beneficiaries of the status quo in a democratic society feel they are in danger of being dethroned, they will attempt to transition to the totalitarian model. Some historical evidence for this can be seen in the flow of American dollars into Nazi Germany in the 1930s as a response to FDR's New Deal, the IG Farben-Standard Oil non-competition deal, Henry Ford's America First Committee, Smedley Butler's plausible allegations about the Business Plot/Wall Street Putsch, etc.