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http://members.tripod.com/~american_almanac/polls.htm
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For Whom The Polls Toll
by L. Wolfe
Printed in The American Almanac, May 5, 1997.
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In the 1996 national political conventions, ABC television unveiled
what it called the latest "breakthrough" in polling -- the
"Insta-poll." A small "focus group" of selected individuals,
supposedly a statistically valid demographic representation of the
American population, sat in a room watching live telecasts of the
Dole and Clinton acceptance speeches. In their hands, they held a
rheostat-like device with which they registered their pleasure or
displeasure with statements made by the candidate as he was
speaking. These responses were fed into a computer, which then
converted the aggregate responses into graphic representations,
fluctuating on the screen as opinions instantly changed. The ABC
commentators proclaimed that this "new" technology enabled them to
break down the speech, to analyze what parts of it "played in
Peoria." [1]
Graphic representations aside, the technology was hardly new.
Some 60 years ago, a similar device had been developed as part of
a Rockefeller Foundation-funded project, using the U.S. networks
of Freudian brainwashers from the Frankfurt School's Institute for
Social Research [2], and other operatives allied with the London
Tavistock Institute, to study radio's impact on society and its
potential for mass brainwashing. Directing the so-called Radio
Research Project, based at Princeton University, was one of the
fathers of public opinion polling, Paul Lazersfeld, along with
three others who were to become prominent in that "black art": the
Tavistock-linked Gordon Allport, from Harvard; Hadley Cantril, who
established one of the leading polling-profiling operations out of
Princeton; and Frank Stanton, then the director of research for
the CBS radio network, who was later to rise to head CBS's News
Division, and still later to head both CBS network and the RAND
Corporation.
The crowning achievement of the Radio Research Project was the
Stanton-Lazersfeld Program Analyzer, the so-called "Little Annie"
-- a rheostat-like device with which test audiences could register
the intensity of their likes and dislikes of radio programs, or
commercials, on a moment-to-moment basis; the brainwashers were
able to determine what particular characters or situations produced
the desired, momentary feeling states in the target audience. [3]
---------------------------------------------------------
In The Beginning...
All public opinion polling has its origins in "sociometrics," or
statistical sociology, as developed in the early part of this
century by Frankfurt School-linked operatives, including Max Weber.
[4] It is based, as with ABC's Insta-Poll, or the Radio Research
Project's "Little Annie," on the measurement of momentary feeling
states, or opinions, on given subjects. This provides a detailed
profile of the prejudices and assumptions of a targetted
population; as such, polls can be useful for mass brainwashing
campaigns to shift opinions to those desired by those who run them.
The mass media, as they developed through this century, from print,
to radio, to television, became the principal vehicles for the
promotion of such shifts.
Creative thinking defies measurement in quantifiable terms. It is
impossible to come up with a statistical correlation, based on
polling, that could determine whether one creative idea is better
or more valid than another, whether it can be accepted by society
as useful, important, or true. As those involved with the Radio
Research Project, and such American pollsters as George Gallup and
Lou Harris, or Elmo Roper, "proved," opinions can be easily
counted; other-directed Americans, always concerned about what
their neighbors think, as determinant of what they should think
about given subjects, were shown to be readily susceptible to
manipulation by poll results, accepting the poll numbers as true,
and being guided in their own actions by the perceived "majority
opinion."
Polling of the type that most Americans are familiar with began in
the 1930s, becoming featured material on radio and in newspapers.
At that time, most polls were conducted by national polling
agencies, such as Gallup, Roper, or Harris, with specialized
contracting handled through Cantril's operation at Princeton and,
later, Allport's at Harvard. By the late 1940s and early 1950s,
the key U.S. nodes of Tavistock were conducting specialized polling
operations, under contract from government agencies and the private
sector. In the 1960s, the television and radio networks linked up
with major newspapers, such as the Washington Post and the New York
Times, to run their own polling operations; they are now a staple
of the nightly television news broadcasts on all networks,
including the cable news channels, such as CNN. [5]
---------------------------------------------------------
Shifting Policy
There has always been a more covert, secret side to these polling
operations. The results of the Radio Research Project had
demonstrated the effectiveness of public opinion polling for
profiling populations, to determine their subjective weaknesses,
for purposes of manipulation. This was put to work during World
War II, as Tavistock-linked brainwashers conducted extensive
polling of the enemy, and allied populations, operating from the
Army's Psychological Warfare Directorate and the Committee on
National Morale, to determine the effectiveness of brainwashing
propaganda. [6] The findings became the basis of detailed country
and regional population profiles that were used by the British
oligarchy and its American lackeys to shape post-World War II
policy. [7]
Immediately after World War II, the most extensive profiling of
the American population to date took place under the auspices of
a project run jointly through the Tavistock-Frankfurt School
networks, ostensibly to study "prejudice" in the United States.
The study, whose most notorious volume was titled The Authoritarian
Personality, was used to promote the still widely-held belief that
fascism derives from certain "personality types," and its quack
measurements and description of this personality type have since
been used to target any enemy of British policy interests. [8]
The database assembled from the tens of thousands of interviews,
provided a compilation of manipulable proclivities and fears of
Americans, that was used in the following decades. [9]
Another major polling-profiling operation was undertaken by
Tavistock networks in the 1960s, under a NASA grant, ostensibly
to examine the impact of the space program on the population.
The findings of the semi-secret Rapoport Report, of which only one
volume was published, found that the space program had produced
a "dangerous" outbreak of cultural optimism and belief in the
capability of creative scientific thinking to solve problems; this
was dangerous to the British policy of post-industrialism, then
beginning to be implemented. [10] The reports, which found their
way into the highest policy circles of the British Empire, led to
a decision to shut down the U.S. space program as rapidly as
possible, even as it was achieving its crowning success with the
1969 manned lunar landing.
To build public support for this shutdown of the space program,
starting in that same period, an effort was launched through
public opinion polling, by agencies such as Gallup and Harris,
and promoted in the media, including television, to "show" that
Americans were opposed to the continued expenditures for manned
space flight; the fraudulent results of these polls helped shape
the 1970-72 election campaigns, in which such a scale-back was
debated. [11]
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Big Business
Today, public opinion polling is a multibillion-dollar industry,
involving tens of thousands of operatives, and hundreds of
thousands of polls annually. Aside from the daily appearance of
poll results in the print and electronic media, corporate and other
business leaders use polls to guide their decisions on everything
from when to best announce layoffs, to what color next year's cars
should be. [12] Political figures, from the President on down,
unfortunately rely on polls and pollsters to determine what they
should say and how they should act; in the most recent election
campaign, approximately 15% of the vast sums of money spent went
to pollsters and their analysts. [13]
"Polls prove that people are stupid," said Hal Becker, who headed
the Connecticut-based Futures Group, an outfit which specialized in
sophisticated polling of the U.S. and other national populations.
"If you want an American to believe something, then all you
have to do is get a poll taken that says it is so (and believe
me, that is an easy thing to do, if you know how), and then
get it publicized. You can tell somebody the Moon is made of
green cheese -- if the poll numbers say it is so, then the
jerk reading them or watching them on the boob tube will
believe it. Guaranteed."
Becker made those comments in 1981. They are just as true today.
However, no matter how many people believe that something is true,
this doesn't make it true, but only the prevailing opinion. Ted
Turner, the media magnate now conjoined with Time-Warner, believes
that the future of U.S. politics lies in the instant polling of
Americans, which he calls the ultimate form of participatory
democracy; new forms of interactive cable and the Internet, he
says, will make all this possible. [14] He is not alone in such
professed beliefs; a 1991 Tavistock-initiated study on, among
other things, new forms of world government, reached a similar
conclusion. [15] Our Founding Fathers, in their infinite wisdom,
designed a Republican government, based on seeking the truth,
and resisting the whims of ill-informed or manipulated "mass
democracy." We have already come too far down the path plowed by
the pollsters, and their backers such as Turner -- a path which
leads straight to fascism.
---------------------------------------------------------
Notes
1. While the commentators had clearly hoped for some dramatic
results, the graphic data showed hardly any "connection"
between the focus group, split between "Democrats,"
"Republicans," and "Independents," and the acceptance
speeches: The graphs were mostly horizontal lines, similar to
the "flatliner" readings of the vital signs of dead patients.
2. See Michael Minnicino, "The New Dark Age: The Frankfurt School
and `Political Correctness,'" Fidelio, Winter 1992.
3. To this day, CBS maintains "program analyzer" capabilities in
both New York and Hollywood; other networks and production
studios use similar devices. It is said that they correlate
85% to A.C. Nielsen polling-ratings for television viewership.
4. While the concept of public opinion was discussed during the
last century, the idea of statistically measuring it with
polls is new to the 20th century. The first interpretive
public opinion poll was conducted in 1912, with the advice of
Max Weber, to determine for a German trade union leader what
his members thought about certain subjects, so that he could
take the position on them that the majority would favor.
5. It was Frank Stanton who introduced polling as a component of
the "Evening News" during his reign at CBS.
6. One of the key profiling operations revolved around the study
of war bond sales, and the effectiveness of the various
promotional campaigns. Among its findings, was that the
American population had little belief in anything that
political figures said, with the exception of President
Franklin Roosevelt; however, they tended to look favorably
upon the same statements made by movie stars and similar
figures of popular culture.
7. Some of the results of the polling was published in journals,
such as Public Opinion Quarterly, edited by Cantril, and
directed toward pollsters and their controllers. These and
other classified data revealed that Americans, while still
fearing "communism," looked forward toward working with Russia
as a continuing ally in President Roosevelt's proposed postwar
"grand design" for peace and prosperity. There was also a
great deal of distrust of the colonial powers, most notably
the British Empire, and support for a policy of emancipation
for all colonial peoples, and an accompanying economic
improvement -- provided that American prosperity could be
insured; the overriding fear of a new depression was noted, as
well. After Roosevelt's death, British-inspired efforts split
the potential alliance between the Russians and the United
States, and a new wave of anti-communist hysteria was cranked
up leading to the obscenity of McCarthyism. Simultaneously,
the country was plunged into a new depression, and its
profiled response had Americans retreating into their own
fearful lives, giving up, for that crucial moment, the hopes
for a better world, free of colonialism, that had been
inspired by Roosevelt and the victory over fascism.
8. The Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith and the British-
controlled and -influenced U.S. media have used this method
against Lyndon LaRouche.
9. Interestingly, Frankfurt School-directed profiling of the
German population in the 1930s found that anti-Semitism was
not a feature of the German character, that Germany was not
anti-Semitic as a nation, nor was anti-Semitism even the most
important feature of Nazism. Those findings proved a great
embarrassment, that had to be covered up, for the
"authoritarian personality" hoax to play out.
10. A portion of the so-called Rapoport Report was published under
the title, Social Change: Space Impact on Communities and
Social Groups (see also EIR, Jan. 12, 1996, "The Tavistock
Roots of the `Aquarian Conspiracy'").
11. The cited polls usually asked questions that compared
expenditures for the space program to funds needed for mass
transit, new housing, and similar "down to earth" programs.
At first, there was no direct question about support for the
space program itself, or even for the lunar landing; those
questions were asked later, after the initial poll results
were publicized, and after various "scientists" were brought
into public view to claim that unmanned space exploration was
the cheaper and more effective use of funds. Never was anyone
told about the vast benefits to the domestic economy caused
directly and indirectly by the Apollo program.
12. Walter Lippmann's associate at the British Wellington House
psychological warfare unit during World War I, Sigmund Freud's
nephew Eduard Bernays, was the first to emphasize the value of
polling data for determining public taste. Bernays is
generally regarded as the father of "Madison Avenue"
advertising.
13. Much of the political polling is complete fabrication. As
some of the work of Roy Cohn-linked Dick Morris demonstrated,
it is intended to manipulate candidates into spending money
for media, with the appropriate kickbacks to the pollsters.
14. Turner's partner, Warner Communications, had experimented with
mass interactive democracy during the 1980s, using its
interactive cable system, Qube, to provide instant referenda
for local governments.
15. The 1989-91 Case Western Reserve-directed study on mass
participatory democracy, proposed using technology that became
the Internet, as a mechanism for doing away with the
nation-state. See EIR, May 24, 1996, "Tavistock's Imperial
Brainwashing Project."
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+ The Media Cartel That Controls What You Think, by L. Wolfe,
The American Almanac, May 5, 1997.
+ The Cartelization of the Media, by Jeffrey Steinberg,
The American Almanac, May 5, 1997.
+ Direct British Control of the U.S. Media, The American
Almanac, May 5, 1997.
+ Brainwashing: How The British Use the Media For Mass
Psychological Warfare, by L. Wolfe, The American Almanac,
May 5, 1997.
+ British "Fellow Travellers" Control Major U.S. Media,
by Jeffrey Steinberg, The American Almanac, May 5, 1997.
+ Tavistock's Language Project: The Origin of "Newspeak",
The American Almanac, May 5, 1997.
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The preceding article is a rough version of the article that
appeared in The American Almanac. It is made available here with
the permission of The New Federalist Newspaper. Any use of, or
quotations from, this article must attribute them to The New
Federalist, and The American Almanac.
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