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International Political Communication: Elite vs. Mass

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Hans Speier
Affiliation:
German Radio Propaganda
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Extract

In the second half of the seventeenth century, European philosophers began to regard the enlightenment of ignorant and prejudiced people as a means of reducing persecution and of promoting just and reasonable government. In international affairs, the first dramatic application of this doctrine occurred during the wars of the French Revolution when diplomacy, the traditional form of elite communication, was supplemented by missionary appeals to the common man on the enemy side. Since that time, the technology of communication has greatly improved; ever larger literate masses of the population participate in politics and war; the social homogeneity of the political elites in various nations has been lost, and in the West the ideas of liberty and equality have been drained of their revolutionary power.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1952

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References

1 For a critical discussion of the opinion that the origins of war can be found in the minds of the masses of men, see Dunn, Frederick S., War and the Minds of Men, New York, 1950.Google Scholar

2 Kennan, George, “America and the Russian Future,” Foreign Affairs, XXIX, No. 3 (April 1951), 368–69.Google Scholar

3 For a broader context of the problem under review, cf. Speier, Hans, Social Order and the Risks of War, New York, 1952Google Scholar, Chapter 32.

4 Bor-Komorowski, T., The Secret Army, London, 1951, pp. 164 ff.Google Scholar

5 Kris, Ernst and Leites, Nathan, “Trends in Twentieth Century Propaganda,” Psychoanalysis and the Social Sciences, Vol. I, New York, 1947.Google Scholar