'Deskundigen' 44

Als ik over de generatie Nederlandse intellectuelen denk met wie ik ben opgegroeid, schiet mij bijna altijd de waarnemingen van de historicus Johan Huizinga te binnen, die midden jaren dertig van de vorige eeuw schreef over wat hij 'De Nederlandse volksaard' noemde die 'tot grondtrek' had 'dat het onheroisch is.' Huizinga voegde hieraan toe dat

een staat, opgebouwd uit welvarende burgerijen van matig grote steden en uit tamelijk tevreden boerengemeenten, geen kweekbodem [is] voor hetgeen men het heroische noemt... In burgerlijkheid wortelen ook onze hinderlijkste nationale gebreken,

waarbij de grote geschiedkundige wees op het feit dat

hypocrisie en farizeisme hier individu en gemeenschap [belagen],

 en dat in de polders achter de dijken

een lichte graad van knoeierij of bevoorrechting van vriendjes,

bestaat die onherroepelijk leiden tot intellectuele corruptie.

Nu de eerste honderduizend exemplaren van Geert Mak's reisboek over de toonbank zijn gegaan is het des te urgenter dat zijn werkwijze als best-seller auteur opnieuw wordt ontrafeld. Dit keer doe ik dat aan de hand van een citaat van de vooraanstaande Amerikaanse ideoloog van het establishment, Walter Lippmann, dat Mak op pagina 197 gebruikt:

'De essentiele zwakte van onze samenleving is dat, althans op dit moment, onze mensen geen grootse doeleinden hebben die ze, in verbondenheid met elkaar, willen bereiken,' schreef de columnist Walter Lippmann. 'We praten tegenwoordig over onszelf alsof we een voltooide samenleving zijn, een samenleving die haar doeleinden heeft bereikt, en die verder geen grote zaken omhanden heeft.'

Wat opvalt aan dit fragment is niet eens zozeer de stroeve vertaling, maar vooral de wijze waarop deze vooraanstaande intellectueel wordt gebruikt en het feit dat Mak het werk van Lippmann niet heeft gelezen waardoor de lezer van Reizen zonder John niet weet binnen welke context Lippmann deze conclusie heeft getrokken. Daarom wat achtergrondinformatie:

During the 1920s, Walter Lippmann published two of the most penetrating indictments of democracy ever written, Public Opinion and The Phantom Public, valedictories to Progressive hopes for the application of 'intelligence' to social problems via mass democracy. Instead of acting out of careful consideration of the issues or even individual or collective self-interest, the American voter, Lippmann claimed, was ill-informed, myopic, and prone to fits of enthusiasm.

The government, like advertising copywriters and journalists, had perfected the art of creating and manipulating public opinion—a process Lippmann called the 'manufacture of consent'—while at the same time consumerism was sapping Americans’ concern for public issues. (Eric Foner, The Story of American Freedom, p. 181.) 

Centraal in Lippmann's denken was de overtuiging dat een echte democratie niet mogelijk is omdat het volk te stupide en te ongeinformeerd blijft, met als gevolg dat de democratie in chaos zal eindigen. In zijn tweede boek Drift and Mastery: An Attempt to Diagnose the Current Unrest stelde hij in 1914 ondermeer:

1. There is a consensus that business methods need to change. The leading thought of our world has ceased to regard commercialism either as permanent or desirable, and the only real question among intelligent people is how business methods are to be alerted, not whether they are to be altered.

2. The chaos of too much freedom and the weaknesses of democracy are our real problem. The battle for us, in short, does not lie against crusted prejudice, but against the chaos of a new freedom. This chaos is our real problem. So if the younger critics are to meet the issues of their generation they must give their attention, not so much to the evils of authority, as to the weaknesses of democracy.

Niet alleen de Amerikaan Lippmann dacht zo, maar zijn mening was en is nog steeds gangbaar onder de economische en politieke elite in het Westen. In Mein Kampf stelde Hitler het zo:

De intelligentie van de massa is beperkt, hun begripsvermogen is zwak.

Er bestaat wat betreft de opvattingen over de moderne massamens geen wezenlijk verschil tussen de Hitler  en Walter Lippmann en andere Europese en Amerikaanse ideologen van het establishment. In tegenstelling tot Mak's veronderstelling dat de 'Amerikanen... hele optimistische mensen blijven' zijn in werkelijkheid de Amerikaanse elite en intelligentsia vanaf de Amerikaanse onafhankelijkheid tot nu toe sceptisch gebleven over de mogelijkheid en wenselijkheid van een ware 'democratie.'  Zo stelde Lippmann in 1922 in zijn standaardwerk Public Opinion dat

public opinions must be organized for the press if they are to be sound, not by the press... Without some form of censorschip, propaganda in the strict sense of the word is impossible. In order to conduct propaganda there must be some barrier between the public and the event. Access to the real environment must be limited, before anyone can create a pseudo-environment that he thinks is wise or desirable... Though it is itself an irrational force the power of public opinion might be placed at the disposal of those who stood for workable law against brute assertion.

De Amerikaanse hoogleraar Stuart Ewen, gespecialiseerd in Media Studies schrijft in zijn boek PR! A Social History of Spin:

Throughout the pages of Public Opinion, Lippmann had asserted that human beings were, for the most part, inherently incapable of responding rationally to their world... For Lippmann, it was not so much people's incapacity to deliberate on issues rationally that was the problem; it was that the time necessary to pursue rational deliberations would only interfere with the smooth exercise of executive power... For Lippmann, the appeal of symbols was that they provided a device for short-circuiting the inconvenience posed by critical reason and public discussion. To Lippmann, symbols were powerful instruments for forging mental agreement among people who -- if engaged in critical dialogue -- would probably disagree. 'When political parties or newspapers declare for Americanism, Progressivism, Law and Order, Justice, Humanity,' he explained, they expect to merge 'conflicting factions which would surely divide if, instead of these symbols, they were invited to discuss a specific program.'

In tegestelling tot wat Mak met Lippmann's citaat suggereert, richtte deze adviseur van de Amerikaanse aristocratie zich niet tot de bevolking, die hij wantrouwde, maar tot de elite die de bevolking in toom moest houden. Professor Ewen:

Lippmann added that serious public discussion of issues would only yield a 'vague and confusing medley,' a discord that would make executive decision making difficult. 'Action cannot be taken until these opinions have been factored down, canalized, compressed and made uniform.' [...] The symbol, he wrote, 'is like a strategic railroad center where many roads converge regardless of their ultimate origin or their ultimate destination.' Because of this, 'when a coalition around the symbol has been effected, feeling flows toward conformity under the symbol rather than toward critical scrutiny of the measures under consideration.' In its adamant argument that human beings are essentially irrational, social psychology had provided Lippmann -- and many others -- with a handy rationale for a small, intellectual elite to rule over society. Yet a close reading of Lippmann's argument suggests that he was concerned less with the irrational core of human behavior than he was with the problem of making rule by elites, in a democratic age, less difficult. Educated by the lessons of the image culture taking shape around him, Lippmann saw the strategic employment of media images as the secret to modern power; the means by which leaders and special interests might cloak themselves in the 'fiction' that they stand as delegates of the common good.

Met de komst van de massamaatschappij, de massaproductie en massaconsumptie  werd de beheersing van de massa een steeds grotere prioriteit voor de machthebbers, een probleem waar zowel de nationaal-socialisten als de communisten en de zogeheten democraten zich uiterst bewust van waren. Hoe houdt men een massa in bedwang? de Amerikaanse denker Noam Chomsky wees op het volgende opvallende feit toen hij over de Verlichtingsfilosoof David Hume schreef:

In considering his First Principles of Government, he expressed his puzzlement over 'the easiness with which the many are governed by the few' and 'the implicit submission with which the men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers.' 'When we enquire by what means this wonder is brought about,' Hume concluded, 'we shall find, that as Force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is therefore, on opinion only that government is founded; and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free and most popular.'

Vandaar het doorslaggevende belang van de elite om te kunnen beschikken over 'betrouwbare' woordvoerders, zoals journalisten en politici die een voor de aristocratie gunstig beeld van de wereld scheppen. Stuart Ewen over Walter Lippmann:

The most compelling attribute of symbols, he asserted, was the capacity to magnify emotion while undermining critical thought, to emphasize sensations while subverting ideas. 'In the symbol,' he rhapsodized, 'emotion is discharged at a common target and the idiosyncrasy of real ideas is blotted out.' [...] This general understanding infused Lippmann's formula for leadership [...] 'The process, therefore, by which general opinions are brought to cooperation consists of an intensification of feeling and a degradation of significance.' Before a mass of general opinions can eventuate in executive action, the choice is narrowed down to a few alternatives. The victorious alternative is executed not by a mass but by individuals in control of its energy.

Lippmann's mens- en wereldbeeld wijkt  in dit opzicht niet fundamenteel af van die van Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf wanneer de nazileider met betrekking tot propaganda schrijft dat

The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands . . . [Propaganda] must be aimed at the emotions and only to a very limited degree at the so-called intellect . . . The art of propaganda lies in understanding the emotional ideas of the great masses and finding, through a psychologically correct form, the way to the attention and thence to the heart of the broad masses . . . [Propaganda] does not have multiple shadings; it has a positive and a negative; love or hate, right or wrong, truth or lie, never half this way and half that way . . . But the most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly and with unflagging attention. It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over. . . . The purpose of propaganda is not to provide interesting distraction for blasé young gentlemen, but to convince . . . the masses. But the masses are slow moving, and they always require a certain time before they are ready even to notice a thing, and only after the simplest ideas are repeated thousands of times will the masses finally remember them.

Lippmann benadrukte dat bij de verspreiding van de 'juiste' denkbeelden

public opinions must be organized for the press if they are to be sound, not by the press... Without some form of censorschip, propaganda in the strict sense of the word is impossible. In order to conduct propaganda there must be some barrier between the public and the event. Access to the real environment must be limited, before anyone can create a pseudo-environment that he thinks is wise or desirable.

Alleen de machthebbers mochten dus de grenzen van de werkelijkheid bepalen, en journalisten dienden die grenzen keurig over te nemen en moesten als opiniemakers erop toezien dat de werkelijkheid in de gewenste vorm zou worden gepresenteerd. De massa en de pers zouden niet in staat zijn om voor zichzelf te denken en om visies te ontwikkelen die de machtigen machtig hielden. In dat proces waren volgens Lippmann beelden van eminent belang omdat 'pictures have always been the surest way of conveying an idea, and next in order, words that call up pictures in memory.' De commerciele massamedia waren het perfecte medium om complexe gedachten terug te brengen tot ééndimensionale beelden die de consument dwingen partij te kiezen voor de gevestigde orde. Lippmann hamerde er keer op keer op dat de massa's

have to take sides. We have to be able to take sides. In the recesses of our being we must step out of the audience on to the stage, and wrestle as the hero for the victory of good over evil. We must breathe into the allegory the breath of life.

Het resultaat is een gemanipuleerde schijnwereld die de massa en de massamedia in het gareel te houden. Professor Ewen:

Raised in a world that looked toward fact-based journalism as the most efficient lubricant of persuasion, Lippmann turned toward Hollywood, America's 'dream factory,' for inspiration. Never before had an American thinker articulated in such detail the ways that images could be used to sway public consciousness. Appeals to reason were not merely being discarded as futile, they were being consciously undermined to serve the interests of power. It is here, at the turning point where Lippmann unqualifiedly abandoned the idea of meaningful public dialogue, that the dark side of his ruminations on the power of the image was most dramatically revealed.

Met deze kennis als achtergrond moet duidelijk zijn dat Mak de woorden van Lippmann in een verkeerd daglicht stelt in Reizen zonder John. Geert Mak schrijft ook niet over 'Amerika,' maar over zichzelf. Wie daarentegen wel de VS portretteerde was D.H. Lawrence, een van de grootste schrijvers van de twintigste eeuw, die in zijn essaybundel Studies in Classic American Literature het volgende opmerkte:

When you are actually in America, America hurts, because it has a powerful disintegrative influence upon the white psyche. It is full of grinning, unappeased aboriginal demons, too, ghosts, and it persecutes the white men, like some Eumenides, until the white men give up their absolute whiteness. America is tense with latent violence and resistence. The very common sense of white Americans of white Americans has a tinge of helplessness in it, and deep fear of what might be if they were not common-sensical. Yet one day the demons of America must be placated, the ghosts must be appeased, the Spirit of Place atoned for. Then the true passionate love for American Soil will appear. As yet, there is too much menace in the landscape.

In dezelfde periode dat D.H. Lawrence dit schreef zei Chief Luther Standing Bear feitelijk hetzelfde met iets andere woorden:

because for the Lakota there was no wilderess, because nature was not dangerous but hospitable, not forbidding but friendly, Lakota philosophy was healthy -- free from fear and dogmatism. And here I find the great distinction between the faith of the Indian and the white man. Indian faith sought the harmony of man with his surroundings; the other sought the dominance of surroundings. In sharing, in loving all and everything, one people naturally found a due portion of the thing they sought, while, in fearing, the other found need of conquest.

Maar deze subtiliteiten treft de lezer niet aan in Mak's reisboek. Voor hem gold: 'Het ging mij er in mijn boek om: wat is er in de afgelopen halve eeuw veranderd in Amerika, het droomland van mijn generatie?'