Spinning Pig Tales
Warrick Kemp (b 1968)
Spinning Pig Tales
Bronze - Edition of 6
Height: 71,5 cm
R79 000
Envisage a blinded public with flags over their eyes.
In 2002, the US government started to behave, as political analyst Anatol Lieven puts it, ‘an endangered right-wing oligarchy which is to divert mass discontent into nationalism’.
The use of nationalism has been very effective in the coercion and management of civilian populations in countries as diverse as Germany, South Africa, the Soviet Union and the United States of America.
Walter Lippmann, the writer, journalist and political commentator, played an integral part, along with Edward Bernays in the U.S Committee on Public Information during WWI, in selling the war to the American people. The CPI became a powerful propaganda machine during WWI - its marketing strategies, which involved nationalism, were used to sell future US wars to the American public.
Lippmann found the civilian population ‘ignorant’, ‘usually irrelevant’ and unable to see the complete vision of government. He felt that ‘Only the insider can make decisions’, and found public involvement ‘meddlesome’.
Lippmann referred to the public as, ‘the bewildered herd’, and felt that it ‘must be put in its place’.
‘The responsible men’, who are the proper decision-makers, must tame and manage ‘the bewildered herd’, and this could be done through the new revolution in the art of democracy; the ‘manufacture of consent’.