The Public Opinion Detectors
Frank, Sebastian
The master no longer says: 'You shall think as I do or you shall die'; he says: 'You are free to think differently from me and to retain your life, your property and all your power;...
...In the country as a whole we encounter a widening gap between the mode of speaking and the mode of thinking which reflects the difference between the true conditions of life and the "American ideology...
...Actually, there is a vicious circle in which the answers to the opinion poll become less and less authentic, less and less the outcome of a clash of ideas and more and more the product of external and built-in pressure...
...Soon a majority opinion appears as the opinion...
...The readiness of people to accept ready-made opinions and the willingness of the leaders of the country to be led by the echo of these opinions has at least one common reason in the lack of a real challenge to the existing state of mind...
...If a machine could be invented scientifically to register all opinions and announce the majority opinion in each case—a Public Opinion Detector—many people would acclaim such an invention as the greatest success of our democracy...
...It has developed with the same speed as the mass communication industries themselves...
...By taking the manipulated and obsessional forms of the public mind at its face value, politicians and administrators simply exalt and confirm existing prejudice...
...They adapt themselves to the opinions they think they ought to have...
...it stems from a debased view of the people...
...As its enemies remain muteor only interchange their thoughts by stealth, they are themselves unaware for a long period that agreat revolution has actually beeneffected...
...The lack of a true opposition in America's political life is leading towards a general stagnation in political thinking...
...They gaze at public opinion but they see a distorted picture...
...But even without such a monstrous machine, we approach the condition it could create...
...Opposition to established public opin ion becomes increasingly difficult...
...The concern of people is decreasingly with the reasons for oppos ing views, increasingly with how large a percentage of the population has ex pressed the majority view...
...THE SOCIAL SCIENTIST who collects public opinions for analysis as a botanist may collect species of plants can easily misinterpret public opinion...
...I would suggest that it is this very same search for certainty arising from fear and insecurity which creates the great interest in public opinion polls...
...Without the confrontation of basically different views people are not aware of opportunities for choice...
...In the long run, no system of valuation and no way of thinking can survive changes in the structure of society...
...Inthis state it will still continue to prevail...
...NONETHELESS, DEEP-GOING CHANGES OCCUR in the public mind...
...What will happen if people still listen to the same slogans and exhortations and become confused because the facts of life have changed and their experience conflicts with the views they have so long accepted...
...These roots are deep enough to induce the Republican Administration to continue welfare policies after having attacked them as "creeping socialism" for so many years...
...Without such a challenge the issues of the day remain in the dark and no broad political concepts exist on the basis of which the individual problem can be judged...
...Looking ahead, De Tocqueville drew a gloomy picture of the citizen in a modern democracy: Not only does he mistrust hisstrength, but he even doubts of hisright...
...Because of this cleavage between prevailing ideology and the hidden feelings and latent interests of people, opinion polls cannot really discover what people think or desire...
...he says: 'You are free to think differently from me and to retain your life, your property and all your power...
...The interest they take in public opinion does not stem from a reverence for the people...
...This Public Opinion Detector would turn out to be a close relation to the lie detector about which Murray Hausknecht wrote, in a recent DISSENT, that it stems from that search for certainty which masks the totalitarian mind...
...Lacking that, conformism will grow further and may finally lead to the impasse de Tocqueville had feared: I fear that (modern society) will ultimately be too invariably fixed in the same institutions, the same prejudices, the same manners, so that mankind will be stopped and circumscribed...
...But even on the sheer level of opinion, the poll may be inaccurate: the answer received may really be yesterday's answer because today's cannot yet be expressed in precise terms...
...they convince him...
...Today, in consequence, it is quite possible to imagine a quasi totalitarian society in which the means of communication largely replace force as the apparatus of compulsion...
...The politicians waiting for the answers they can obtain from public opinion polls are like the people who count the echo or like a guide who follows it instead of showing the way...
...The newspapers, magazines, radio, television and movies incessantly implant a pattern of thought into the minds of their customers and create a climate of feeling in which the ready-made opinions they deliver can thrive the most...
...The few means for expressing dissident ideas are as to the big communication indus tries as handicraft to automation...
...THE PHENOMENA AT WHICH WE HAVE POINTED—the manipulation and idolization of public opinion—strengthen each other and form a vicious circle...
...The public opinion poll already has many dehumanizing effects on the minds of people...
...It has not beenopenly assailed, no conspiracy hasbeen formed to make war on it, but its followers one by one noiselessly secede . until at last it isonly professed by a minority...
...The manipulation of public opinion is obvious enough, but its extent is hardly recognized...
...If the mode of production alters social relations, the new relationship will be reflected in the mind of people...
...that the mind will swing backwards and forwards forever without begetting fresh ideas...
...While the "American ideology" is still beset by the "free enterprise" complex, reality has become "Un-American...
...and in this state of uncertainty they take no steps . the majority has ceased to believewhat they believed before, but theystill pretend to believe, and thisempty phantom of public opinionis strong enough to chill innovators and to keep them silent and at a respectful distance...
...and he is very near acknowledging that he is in the wrong, when the greater number of his countrymen asserts that he is so...
...More over, people resent the very idea of dis agreement...
...it presents an opinion as a definite answer which has been disengaged from all the conditions and all the reasonings that prompted it...
...It separates an opinion from its context, as from the various assumptions under which it has been conceived...
...it takes a particular opinion out of the general flow of thought in which it is imbedded...
...190 What de Tocqueville assumed as possible we experience...
...Resistance to the manipulation of the public mind could come only from an organized opposition, the very existence of which would already relieve the individual from some of the public opinion pressures...
...Once we could claim to have an infallible means for ascertaining majority opinion, the pressure as well as the willingness to submit to it would become enormous...
...The majority do not need to force him...
...191...
...De Tocqueville had such questions in mind when he wrote: Time, events, or the unaided individual action of the mind will sometimes undermine or destroy anopinion without any outward signof the change...
...By now the techniques for creating consent have been so completely "improved," that the question may seriously be raised: how genuine are the answers any public opinion poll can obtain...
...Like the psychoanalyst lie has to look for the "defense mechanism" which prevents people from expressing their desires and true thoughts...
...Slowly the "Welfare State" has taken roots in the soul of the American people...
...that man will waste his strength in bootless and solitary trifling, and, though in continual motion, that humanity will cease to advance...
...Those whose aim is to maintain the status quo are not interested in visions and political concepts unless they are forced to it by an opposing power...
...but you are nencetorta a stranger among your people.' —De Tocqueville THIRTY YEARS AGO WALTER LippMAN had already noted that the manufacture of consent is capable of great refinements and that a revolution was taking place in the techniques of this manufacture...
...The master no longer says: 'You shall think as I do or you shall die...
...Without such a concept the people and their leaders always wish to take as guidance "what other people think...
...How does a stagnating public mind react when the basis of existing beliefs has withered away...
...To share the opin ion of the nation" is to feel at least a measure of security...
...Answers are very often given in terms which conceal rather than reveal people's wishes—wishes they may not even dare confess to themselves...
...The confusion which stems from the clash between the fixed American ideology and the reality can hardly be overcome without such an organized effort to raise the general level of political awareness...
...DESPITE THIS MANIPULATION of public opinion, the assumption is widely ac cepted that the better we can explore majority opinions the more perfect will be our democratic order...
...Opinions counted scent to he elevated from the category of argument to the category of fact...
...In his isolation and insecur ity, modern man clings all the more to accepted opinions...
...We approach the condition described by de Tocqueville 189 in the passage at the head of this article: melt are unable or unwilling to take upon themselves the hardship of living as "strangers among their people...
Vol. 2 • April 1955 • No. 2
