Third Saturday Seminar – 19 June 04 – “Selling Free Trade.” – James Pyland

The premise is that culturally and economically, America is regressing to a new age similar to the Gilded Age of the late 1800’s.  He briefly describes what this period was like economically for the vast majority of the population and highlight the trends of stagnant or falling wages and salaries as corporate profits and incomes on capital are being removed from the tax base and shifted onto the bottom 90% of the population.  Commonly available economic statistics and quotations from business publications are used.

The development and use of public relations as a method of securing public opinion favorable to commercial interests is discussed. Numerous quotations of business leaders and public intellectuals from around the turn of the century up to modern times that conclusively demonstrate big business’s obsession with creating a favorable atmosphere of public opinion are provided.

It will be shown that commercial interests have also consciously promoted latent ideas of racial, sexual, and cultural discord through lobbying and the use of third party advocacy groups.  Such groups are commonly known as front groups in that they are not the community, grass roots organizations that they appear to be.  Their use is part of a larger “war of ideas,” which is sometimes referred to as the “culture wars.”

Reference, “PR! The Social History of Spin.”