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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, FEBRUARY 18, 1983
PAGE 9
means first and foremost control of the means of communication
and socializati.on--schools, universities, churches and, above
all, the mass media.
It's in these institutions that public
opini�is shaped and articulated and the national ethos, the
idea a society holds of itself, is molded. It's where decisions
are made about what will be talked about--El Salvador or the de
ployment of cruise missiles--or played down--Afghanistan and the
Soviet arms buildup•..•
When in 1967 the German student leader Rudi [ "the Red"] Dutschke
was asked how he and his small bunch of revolutionaries thought
they could achieve their ambitious goals, he answered, "By a long
march through the institutions." And that's exactly what has
been happening during the last 15 years or so..••
The ascendancy of the left in the mass media and in so many
schools and universities has led to a cultural revolution, a
radical change in values, attitudes and ideological outlook. The
new conventional wisdom is that equality is more important than
freedom; capitalism is a system based on greed and gross inequal
ity and hence morally inferior to socialism; the poverty of the
so-called Third World is the result of Western exploitation; the
most important conflict of our age isn't between Western demo
cracy and Marxist totalitarianism but between the rich North and
the poor South. [Note: The very same themes appear over and over
in every issue of NEW TIMES, the English-language Soviet news
weekly.]
How is it possible that so many people accept these dangerous
misconceptions? The answer is simple.
On matters that are of
immediate concern, the man in the street is quite capable of
making up his own mind. But when it comes to matters of which he
knows next to nothing, arcane issues pertaining to foreign
policy, nuclear energy or defense, he is completely dependent on
the information he gets from the communications industry. If the
media constantly play down the Soviet military threat or depict
guerrillas in El Salvador as freedom fighters against a fascist
regime, then it can only be expected that even dyed-in-the-wool
conservatives will start wondering whether the deployment of new
missiles in Europe is necessary and whether America is backing
the right side in Central America.••.
There is a moral to the story. The European right must finally
grasp that electoral victories will be of little avail as long as
they leave the institutions of the consciousness industry to the
left.
Unless the present attitude changes, even the best of
policies will fail. There is no doubt that the battle for the
preservation of .e, free Europe will be won or lost � in the
parliaments but in schools, churches, universities, newspapers
and radio and television stations.
The Not-too�surprising Attitudes of Television Executives
In this column in the March 26, 1982 issue of the PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT,
we published the findings of research into the social and political