Reddit reviews Selling Free Enterprise: The Business Assault on Labor and Liberalism, 1945-60 (History of Communication)

> Source?

As I mentioned, this is documented in a book called Selling Free Enterprise, and you can also read about it books like Taking the Risk out of Democracy by Alex Carey. But also, you can sort of see this in your own personal experience. Go watch a television or internet ad, for instance -- we are practically inundated with a bombardment of propaganda trying to sway us to buy one product or another. This just as true for ideas as it is for products.

There was nothing inadvertent about it - Reagan was just continuing a campaign of anti-unionism that started around 1945 and has continued to this day.

http://www.amazon.com/Selling-Free-Enterprise-Liberalism-Communication/dp/0252064399/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1345420259&sr=8-1&keywords=selling+free+enterprise

> Selling Free Enterprise by Elizabeth Fones Wolf

https://www.amazon.com/Selling-Free-Enterprise-Liberalism-Communication/dp/0252064399

Thanks. I appreciate the response.

If you listen to the 1996 lecture (on Spotify) mentioned in the OP you will hear various quotes that you can find with CTRL+F in this document.

The major book is Elizabeth Fones-Wolf (see here), and I think that it was quite coordinated.

I think that they all organized together through NAM (other channels too? like the "Advertising Council?") in order to fight the threat of "Socialism."

From the above-linked document:

>J. Warren Kinsmann, chairman of the N.A.M.'s [National Association of Manufacturers] Public Relations Advisory Committee and vice president of Du Pont, reminded businessmen that "in the everlasting battle for the minds of men" the tools of public relations were the only weapons "powerful enough to arouse public opinion sufficiently to check the steady, insidious and current drift toward Socialism...." S.C. Allyn of National Cash Register...[summarized] corporate objectives. The goal was to "indoctrinate citizens with the capitalist story."

The US and the USSR were fundamentally the same. The USSR centralized control of the economy in the Kremlin and the USA centralized control of the economy in Wall Street. According to the FTC, only 200 of the largest manufacturing corporations controlled two-thirds of all manufacturing assets... in 1970 (near the height of the Cold War). I'm not sure what more recent numbers are, but there is no question things have only become more centralized.

The USSR had the KGB and the USA had and still has the FBI, both of which play(ed) roles as the secret police. The FBI, together with the Chicago Police, assassinated Fred Hampton just like how Stalin had Trotsky assassinated in Mexico City. From its birth, the FBI illegally undermined political parties like the CPUSA and other left groups, even as J. Edgar Hoover denied the existence of the Mafia. Hoover didn't start investigating the Mafia until 1957. The FBI also carried out COINTELPRO. Today we have the CIA, HBGary, BofA working to undermine and discredit Wikileaks.

One difference is that the USA hasn't had mass death in the same way the USSR had within its own borders, the US exported death elsewhere. 2.5 million were left dead in Vietnam, the US supported death squads in Guatemala and Nicaragua. The US supported Fascist Junta's in Greece and Chile in the same way the USSR tried to spread its empire globally.

The USSR had the Soviet Information Bureau, the USA has Madison Avenue. Both play highly similar roles. The book "Selling Free Enterprise" by Elizabeth Fones-Wolf goes into depth on this subject.