The Orgins of The Modern Advertising Industry

Noam Chomsky via last.fm

Advertising permeates the majority of our interactions with even the most insignificant portions of our lifestyle. Its newest breed is targeting ways to attack our subconscious, subliminally installing conventional mainstream views and values. The most disturbing aspect of this new spawn is evident in its ability to go completely unrecognized and thus unchallenged. Advertising has already won half the battle while we slept in our four thousand square foot mansions. It has convinced us that it is completely harmless, a nuisance if anything. It has attacked our ability to challenge and think. There is one other industry that displayed striking similarities with modern advertising today. This piece will address striking similarities and almost complete parallels between the advertisement industry and the now extinct propaganda industry.

What is advertising? Advertise: to promote publicly; broadcast to increase sales. Advertisement: public notice or announcement. -- The Oxford American Desk Dictionary. Propaganda: an organized program of publicity. -- The Oxford American Desk Dictionary

In the years before Nazi Germany, 1900-1935 specifically, the term propaganda was very openly used, without the connotation it has today. Even liberal intellectuals in the then prospering Socialist party called their newspapers and pamphlets 'propaganda'. It was a rather neutral term until The National Socialist Party took power in Germany. They began to use the conventional tool of 'propaganda' to lie, throw things out of proportion, and thus completely control public opinion. Nazi Germany had not only control of the news, Josef Goebbels was the head of the entertainment industry and fine arts as well. This destroyed the neutral idea that was propaganda and replaced it with radically different connotations. The Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda in Germany was the single driving force behind the unprecedented rise of Nationalism in Europe in a century. The German people harbored not only hate for the European Jews, but the unwavering belief that they were just. Moreover, this came from the fact that 90% of their interaction was propaganda.

This illustrates the strength of any kind of program that involves public opinion or even economic inclination. In American politics, it is a known fact that the candidate that can put his/her face on more posters or surfaces than his or her opponent, is going to win the election.

Propaganda has not ceased to exist. The open industrialization of propaganda has disappeared. What party does not hurl the brand of ‘propaganda’ at the media of the opposition, and when has the reproach not been hurled back? The term has reached an all-pervading use; the correct application of the term is rare. Under these circumstance, no matter how much the elite would dream doing so, an organized form of propaganda in the interest of the elite is not possible. Simply because, everyone is paranoid of open propaganda of his or her opposition party, and thus acutely tuned to the use of propaganda, seeing it everywhere, challenging it constantly.
This is my contention. The elites have chosen a new medium. They have left the masses to their squabbling, their identity-politics, and have taken the industry underground.

The elites of the capitalist system of bred a new system of propaganda. This new form of propaganda has been allowed to permeate or daily lifestyles. Advertisements adorn bottles, cars, buses, enormous signs, 60% of TV and radio, and other daily objects. The pen you may be writing with may be adorned with a private business. The drive to work is accompanied by enormous billboards along the freeway. The TV show you love and Idol-ize (get it?)is permeated with sponsors and then commercial breaks. The social networking site you use to idly chat and gossip with friends has been completely spread with dozens of ads a minute. It is everywhere.

Advertisement is crucial to the market; it is needed to promote widespread sales and is another venue for competition. Advertisement itself is a large industry, providing jobs, college degrees, market enhancement, competition between firms and even artistic output. It allows any business, should they have the funds, to promote themselves freely and increase sale. It is key to the capitalist system...

Who are these elites? They are the rich, simply put. They are the people who benefit from your exploitation, the people who benefit from your misfortune. They have many names. The bourgeoisie, the aristocrat, the capitalist, the CEO, are all names for the same group of people. They are the ten percent, who wield ninety percent of the wealth and power in this country.

The elites have made a new institution, one who’s task in to lambast the people of America with economic inclination from every direction. The advertisement industry is simply the elites new medium for completely replacing independent thought with mainstream partiality to materialism. These billboards deliver one message. Buy, buy, buy. Consumerism at its finest, blind purchase into the capitalist system, the open exploitation for our joy in visual stimulation.
Advertisement in Modern Society
a. Exploits the masses joy for visual entertainment, the chemical need the human brain has for stimulation, to make profit.
b. Exploits the talents of people in the system to perpetuate its own means i.e. jobs, college, degrees, training the people to make the advertisement for them.

Advertisement has taken the place of propaganda in society. The industry has adapted to barrage us with materialistic goods and new superficial desires and fashions. It has become the new way to train the American people to conform to the devises of capitalism. It has become the new form of "off-job control", an off-shoot of the Tayloristic practices of modern manufacturing, a way to influence our choices and actions in more and more venues of our lives. Advertisement is not just the silly Six Flags man jumping up and down to a bouncy beat. It is a new form of manufacturing desires and needs in the public. It is the new, organized program of publicity of a thousand different interests from a thousand different interest groups. And it is all about how YOU have new attitudes and opinions based on these interests. This subliminal attack on our personal agency will result in the complete dependency on materialism, superficial objects, until we truly will define our worth my the amount of money or things we have. Look in the mirror. Do you not already see glimpses of this specter, haunting your very features?

After all, when the elites are trying to run the show, the last thing they want is interference from the masses. What better way to keep them out of the way than organizing a publicity industry focused on refocusing our attention and lifestyle on things like fashionable consumption and what new toy/tool they will tell you is a "necessity".

Let the people who are supposed to be running the show do so without interference from the mass of the population, who [being unintelligent and ignorant] have no business in the public arena. And from that idea grew enormous industries, ranging from [private] universities to advertisement, all very consciously committed to the belief that you must control the attitudes and opinions, because otherwise the people are just too dangerous.-- Noam Chomsky

Realize what they are doing to you, that is the first step. Then, we must take up arms against it. We must beat back this greedy intrusion into our lives and fight the exploitation that has been so deviously disguised, we must break free.

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