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uthority and, in the final analysis, he is merely the instrument of official intentions. Able to expropriate at will, and impose their ideas, the authorities lord it over the environment like children playing with bricks. “What happens in the domain of building is, therefore, not so much the consequence of economic forces, as emanations of the official mind. And, as the ideologists concede, architecture and town planning are used in order to realize political intentions and to induce a change of mentality. Destruction of the centre of Stockholm has had the effect of cutting off the past. It was done with a callousness and ruthlessness that suggests a fear or hatred mbt shoes clearance of what had gone before. When the new plan was adopted in the 1950s it was presented as a symbol of the future. ‘Everything before Cheap mbt shoes 1932 must be forgotten,’ said a city alderman. That, it will be remembered, was the year the Social Democrats came to power, but it has a symbolism beyond simple party politics. The 1930s saw the birth of modern mbt shoes uk Sweden, and the opening of the Swedish technological age. Irrespective of political creed, this to many Swedes is the era they like to commemorate, and anything else is best consigned to Umbo. Yet, there are some fitness dvds Swedes who prefer mellowed surroundings, even if not up to contemporary standards. But in Stockholm, a socialist alderman in charge of housing says he insists on demolishing all older buildings because he wants everyone to have the same high standard (equality again). A woman threatened by demolition wrote thus to a Stockholm newspaper: ‘We who live in these condemned buildings love our scruffy old quarters. And we more than willingly give up modern conveniences in order to live cheaply, centrally, and in a pleasant atmosphere. I think that we who are young and healthy should have the right to GIVE UP material standards and comfort, if we consider it worthwhile.’ The answer to her plea came, indirectly, at a conference of The Environmental Mill 283 municipal housing experts. A certain official, who knew what he was talking about, and was a power in the land, explained how ‘research’ had decided what kitchens, shape of room and lighting installations were best for people, and that these would, willy-nilly, be provided for tenants. ‘Do you mean to say,’ asked a rare, rebellious delegate, ‘that you are going to tell people how to live?’ ‘Yes,’ was the answer. ‘That’s my job.’ A Stockholm city councillor always refers to old buildings as ‘dirty’. Official propaganda and the consensus of the mass media underwrite this view. As new quarters arise, the stock cliche is that it is the ‘future rising like a phoenix from the ashes of the past’. Among the public there is a demonstrable regret over the disappearance of familiar landmarks. But this never takes the form of action. Campaigns to save threatened buildings are practically unknown; when they occur, they are weak, ineffectual and confined to a small upper-class minority. The last home of August Strindberg, architecturally and historically worth saving, was demolished with scarcely any opposition. The essential point there, as in many similar cases, is that the public would have liked it saved, but that they swallowed their regrets, because they believed that progress demanded it. Citizens looking at the bulldozed remains of a building that they have known and liked will not bitterly consider how it might have been saved. They will say that it is the inescapable consequence of change; in the appropriate cliche it is dismissed as the ‘demand of the times’. Behind this lies the usual Swedish determinism. It is accepted by the rulers, not only the ruled. A Stockholm alderman puts it in these words: ‘Town planning is a long-range question, so that even if we want to save some old houses, we can’t. What happens today was decided years ago, and the ideas of that time are only now coming into force. Technical forces are irresistible.’ 284 The New Totalitarians The centre of Stockholm has been redesigned for the motor car instead of men. It has been conceived for driving through, instead of living in. Of course, this is nothing unique, but what is peculiar to Sweden is that criticism is virtually absent. Many Stockholm inhabitants are willing to concede that the centre of their city has become sterile, charmless and uninhabitable, but this does not bother them: in the words mbt stockists of yet another popular cliche (borrowed, like so many others, from the mass media) the centre ‘functions, because at least it allows the traffic to move’. People accept the reconstruction of their cities as a necessary accompaniment to changes in society. They see no reason to preserve the old, as they see no reason to resist the advances of a new ideology. Their environment has predisposed them mbt uk to change. ‘Politicians,’ in the measured words of a Stockholm alderman, ‘undoubtedly want to influence people through town planning.’ And if Swedish architecture is the mirror of their minds, they seek to impose uniformity and regimentation. There is no dash, no individuality, nor even the unabashed vulgarity of an exuberant commercialism in modern Swedish architecture. It produces a sense of submission and restraint. Like all ‘political’ architecture, it is a monument to the party that has built it. If there are ideological thoughts behind the rebuilding, they have been notably successful. The environmental mill has ground away yet more of the desire to oppose. 13. The Mass Media as Agents of Conformity To judge solely by its mass media, Sweden appears to be run by a tolerant dictatorship. Press, radio and TV show a remarkable similarity, as if guided by some Ministry of Propaganda. Criticism of the government there may be, but it is almost exclusively confined to administrative trivialities, and covered by the formula: ‘First you decide mbt shoes sale on your goals, insanity dvds and then you discuss the means. There is no other discussion.’ Almost never is there questioning of political fundamentals, or mbt clearance critical examination of the institutions of the State. All the media seem to be of one mind, advocating the same consensus, professing the same slogans, always, it seems, following the convolution of some party line. They give the impression of existing, not to question authority, but to avoid disturbing the public peace of mind; not to criticize, but to indoctrinate with a certain point of view. If radio and TV hawk official viewpoints, that is understandable, since they are a State monopoly. The press, however, is privately owned, mostly non-socialist, its liberty guaranteed by law. Some occult powers, no doubt, have been invoked to steer editorial minds. To this, we return later. That the ether is the prerogative of the State, need not necessarily (outside a dictatorship) mean that it is the mouthpiece of the government. It was the case in Gaullist France, but the BBC, when it ruled alone, before ITV and (the threat of) commercial radio, displayed an honourable independence. The Swedish system can be compared with neither. Radio and TV are nominally independent, although 286 The New Totalitarians State-supervised; they reject all accusations of being a government organ. But they display a bias and propagate views which the government would like the population to absorb. As in so many other things, Swedish broadcasting, on superficial inspection, appears to resemble its counterparts in Western countries, but on closer examination turns out to be something rather different. The first distinction lies in its position in the organization of the State. In almost all Western democracies radio and TV are administered by departments of communications, which suggests a passive medium, but in Sweden (as in many dictatorships) they are the concern of the Ministry of Education, implying an instrument of guidance. Since, under the Social Democrats, education has become a means of tailoring minds and changing society, the ether, quite reasonably, may be expected to share those aims. In Western countries, to make another comparison, the purpose of radio and TV is, theoretically at least, to inform people; in Sweden, the official function is to form opinion. This is no quibbling over a prefix; the Swedish authorities are acutely aware of the difference between the two concepts. In opting for the cheap mbt shoes one, they have had a deliberate purpose in view. It is interesting, indeed, to note that, in the official jargon, broadcasting is always ‘an opinion-forming medium’. The power of broadcasting in Sweden is somewhat greater than in Western countries because the bulk of the population, being intellectually backward, and only just emerging from isolation, is more than usually susceptible to indoctrinating forces. ‘Swedes,’ to mbt shoes review quote Mr OrjanWallquist, head of the Swedish TV’S second channel, ‘are intellectually primitive and underdeveloped. And TV works in this way: it creates emotions and intellectual life, and therefore it creates opinions. It is an opinion-making medium.’ Mr Wallquist is a socialist, and belongs to the intellectual leadership of the Labour movement, ‘TV is a very powerful The Mass Media as Agents of Conformity 287 medium,’ he says, ‘TV sets are more concentrated in Sweden than in other countries. Aktuellt (a news programme), for example, has an audience of fifty per cent of the population. ‘TV is a very powerful indoctrinating medium, and one has to be extremely careful in using it. ‘TV would never attack the Prime Minister and government, because the average discount mbt trainers Swede identifies himself with the State and with the corporations that exercise political influence. So TV feels part of the State.’ An official admits that broadcasting is a medium of indoctrination. It has two aims, he says: to persuade the Swedes that they live in the best of all possible worlds, and to condition them to the ideology of the sitting government. To induce a nation mbt shoes australia to believe that it enjoys the happiest lot on earth is an elementary device to secure compliance with a government and forestall criticism. In reporting from abroad, the Swedish radio and TV are concerned, not so much to show how other people live, but to illuminate the superiority of things Swedish. They concentrate on the defects of foreign countries, drawing comparisons to the advantage of Sweden. The viewer is invited to see how badly off people are everywhere else and to consider how fortunate he is. Press and periodicals take the same line. It is not only that the Swede is told that he has the highest standard of living, and the best social security, but that he really is superior in all things, most particularly in politics and culture. An article on child care in France, published by a women’s magazine, seemed to have no other purpose but that of serving up a homily on how much better Swedes looked after their children. Even travel writing often contains disparaging remarks, in order specifically to draw a moral in praise of Sweden, usually concerned with poverty abroad and prosperity at home. Most nations entertain a high opinion of themselves but, unless their rulers nurse ulterior motives, official media of 288 The New Totalitarians communication do not normally insist, as a matter of policy, on advertising domestic superiority. Still less do they pursue this aim by denigrating foreign institutions. The Russians, to quote an obvious example, notoriously do so. If the Swedes act likewise, it is for a similar reason: to generate contentment among the population. Like the average Russian, the average Swede therefore has a biased view of the world outside as something inferior and undesirable, that has been formed by his mass media. In the indoctrination of the public with government policies, Swedish radio and TV has been of the greatest value. The tenor of programmes follows ministerial thinking with great accuracy. From 1968, when the government adopted an anti-American policy (mainly, but not entirely, over Vietnam), the ether followed suit. Radio and TV became almost laughably biased, colouring news reports, and broadcasting material (some emanating from Cuba) that could only be classified as unmitigated propaganda. Producers were told that no programme on the United States would be considered unless it was unfavourable. Even allowing for general feeling against American policy at that time (not, of course, confined to Sweden), the Swedes became notoriously militant in their attitudes. A popular anti-Americanism grew with the propaganda on the air. Then, in 1970, while Sweden was negotiating with the Common Market, it was a thinly veiled secret that the insanity by shaun t government was less than keen on full membership and wanted public opinion to be suitably primed. Radio and especially TV conducted a virulent and persistent campaign against the EEC until the mbt shoes online official Swedish rejection of full membership in March 1971. As the party has extended its grip on the State, so has broadcasting become an instrument of party propaganda. Towards the end of the 1960s, it took about three months for party trends to be incorporated into radio and TV programmes. Usually, this would happen before they had The Mass Media as Agents of Conformity 289 buy mbt shoes been officially adopted as party policy. The purpose, as in education, is to prepare the ground. “When the new ideas finally appear on a political manifesto, the public has accepted or at least grown used to them, and the party appears to be professing self-evident truths. In September 1969, the Social Democrats at their party congress adopted a platform of egalitarianism, in which equality of the ######es was given a leading role. For months beforehand, radio and TV imprinted the necessary concepts on the public consciousness. ‘Equality’ became a universal catchword on the air. Equality of the ######es (and its logical corollary, women’s liberation) was propagated as received dogma. Equality, although it is a perfectly unexceptional sentiment, had nevertheless become associated uniquely with the Labour movement. In every sense of the word, it had turned into party propaganda. It was incorporated into children’s broadcasts, so that those in the most impressionable age, between three and seven, were brain-washed. Even Christmas programmes were turned into mbt shoes sale pretexts for propagating the slogan of equality. Similarly, radio and TV, when the government required it, fed anti-American attitudes into children’s programmes. mbt discount A series about Red Indians, aimed at five-to seven-year-olds, for example, was so slanted as to be a grotesque attack on the United States. Obviously, the treatment of the American Indians is not entirely a credit to the white settlers, but neither is its exploitation, as in the Swedish case, to damn American society as a whole, reasonable or justifiable. A Stockholm newspaper published a number of children’s letters which suggested that this kind of propaganda was proving efficacious. ‘I think,’ wrote a six-year-old, ‘that all Americans are swine.’ Also in the name of equality, the party had launched a campaign against finance and industry. Radio and TV did so as well. All this (at least in the beginning) was exclusively the property of the Social Democrats. It was partisan propaganda, 290 The New Totalitarians not government rescript, and certainly not yet the law of the land. What was ultimately advance campaigning for the 1970 General Elections was presented as accepted truth, to be hammered securely home. Intermittent campaigns apart, the Swedish radio and TV constantly accept the evaluations of the Labour movement. In the vital field of industrial relations, the trade-union viewpoint dominates, and the employers are presented disadvantageously. It is virtually impossible for anybody opposing the government to get a hearing. Broadcasting has been turned into a servant of the party and the State. It is not inherent in its condition. Until the 1950s, the Swedish radio and TV was reasonably impartial, with the aim of being a disinterested public service comparable to the BBC. The change came with the appointment in 1962 of Mr Olof Palme, later Prime Minister, as Minister of Communications. Mr Palme had studied in the United States and, ahead of his countrymen, he assimilated and applied the work of the American communicators. He grasped the powers of TV. In Sweden, they #. Promotions Discount !! Buy Cheap Women Shoes SAND TAN - MBT ... were formidable. “When the little screen first swept into the homes of Sweden, during the 1960s, it also constituted the arrival of the outside world. It broke, for the first time in history, the isolation of the Swedish population. Many Swedes saw a foreigner for the first time on TV. The population were dragged out of mbt chapa the early nineteenth century and brought face to face with the mid-twentieth century. ‘Intellectually primitive and undeveloped,’ to quote Mr Wallquist, the Swede was terribly vulnerable to the new medium. Mr Palme understood this. He turned it into a political weapon and, when he was made Minister of Education, he took broadcasting with him. He had distilled the wisdom of the American commercial persuaders and applied mbt clearance it to a monopoly of the State. Instead of the ‘countervailing forces’ of private business, there was the untrammelled prerogative of the central government. The indoctrinThe Mass Media as Agents of Conformity 291 ating privileges thus conferred on the party were formidable. Harnessing the ether necessitated a political take-over. The Swedish radio is nominally an independent corporation and, until the Social Democrats turned their attention seriously to the control of mass communications, it was directed by men whose consensus was of the centre. Its construction, howeve RSS feed © 2011 Internet Marketing Articles