Moral Man and Immoral Society

Niebuhr

The reaction that I had to Reinhold Niebuhr's Moral Man and Immoral Society was extremely complicated, but I ultimately found the implications that Niebuhr's beliefs would have for the American political system to be exceptionally troubling. The problem here comes when Niebhr endorses the necessity of propaganda in a civilized society. Since Niebuhr believes in "the stupidity of the average man" (21) and believes these people must be persuaded by means of "dogmas, symbols, and emotionally potent oversimplifications" which build "morale" (xxvii) this fundamentally believes that propaganda is the most useful tool for social control, even acknowledging that "there is an element of propaganda in all education" (245).

For me, this seems to describe perfectly a troubling trend in American politics which has been brewing for some time. What is propaganda? Well, look at the sort of stuff that Hollywood churned out during World War Two. It was part of the mobilization effort in America, which was not threatened by the war. America was mobilized purely through mass-media propaganda. This is presumably what Niebuhr had in mind when he wrote about the necessity of propaganda. But this is a German theologian, ultimately, writing about the crude means that were required to get America to invade Germany, and how it presumably shall be necessary to employ these sort of "emotionally potent oversimplifications." Reinhold Niebuhr is essentially providing justification (perhaps avant-la-lettre) for the Fox News Channel. Obviously "emotionally potent oversimplifications" -- especially those guaranteed to catch on memetically with the ornery elderly viewers of Fox News -- are the stock in trade of most Fox News coverage. However, there is also an astonishing amount of outright lying, of deliberately partisan skewing of facts, and a craven willingness to do the dirty work of a political party. This is not "the stupidity of the average man" because, in this case, the average man is actually being made more stupid by the actual propaganda being broadcast. Fox News is like educational television, except it offers not education but a form of indoctrination to an agreed-upon partisan ideology which is by no means uncontroversial: in some sense, therefore, it is basically educating its watchers into an increased stupidity.

Now why did Reinhold Niebuhr endorse nonstop propaganda? Because his most immediate example would have been the propaganda campaign that was required to get America into World War Two. Presumably Niebuhr believed, as most Americans do to this day, that World War Two was a righteous war. Therefore the ends justify the means. But in the case of something like Fox News, which represents the routinization of propaganda, the goals are a lot more questionable. Stopping a belligerent genocidal fascist regime is actually a legitimate reason for America to enter World War Two. But when Fox News is persuading its viewers that the jury is still out on climate change, etc., there is no justifiable end-goal.