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Christopher Simpson

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Science of Coercion: Communication Research & Psychological Warfare, 1945–1960 (Forbidden Bookshelf) Kindle Edition

by Christopher Simpson (Author), Mark Crispin Miller (Editor), Robert McChesney (Introduction) Format: Kindle Edition

4.2 55 ratings

Book 13 of 27: Forbidden Bookshelf

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A provocative and eye-opening study of the essential role the US military and the Central Intelligence Agency played in the advancement of communication studies during the Cold War era, now with a new introduction by Robert W. McChesney and a new preface by the author

Since the mid-twentieth century, the great advances in our knowledge about the most effective methods of mass communication and persuasion have been visible in a wide range of professional fields, including journalism, marketing, public relations, interrogation, and public opinion studies. However, the birth of the modern science of mass communication had surprising and somewhat troubling midwives: the military and covert intelligence arms of the US government.

In this fascinating study, author Christopher Simpson uses long-classified documents from the Pentagon, the CIA, and other national security agencies to demonstrate how this seemingly benign social science grew directly out of secret government-funded research into psychological warfare. It reveals that many of the most respected pioneers in the field of communication science were knowingly complicit in America’s Cold War efforts, regardless of their personal politics or individual moralities, and that their findings on mass communication were eventually employed for the purposes of propaganda, subversion, intimidation, and counterinsurgency.

An important, thought-provoking work, Science of Coercion shines a blazing light into a hitherto remote and shadowy corner of Cold War history.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"An intriguing picture of the relations between state power and the intellectual community...."--Noam Chomsky, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

"An original and important contribution...."--Science

From the Back Cover

In this provocative study, Christopher Simpson demonstrates how the government-funded psychological warfare programs of the Cold War years underwrote the academic studies that formed the basis for much of modern communication research. U.S. psychological warfare programs in the Philippines, Middle East and Southeast Asia became essential in the creation and survival of what is widely considered to be mainstream mass communication studies. They aided in forming the widely held preconceptions that persist today in communication studies, public opinion research, and in the types of counterinsurgency operations that are today known as "public diplomacy" and "low intensity conflict." Science of Coercion: Communication Research and Psychological Warfare, 1945-1960 provides the first thorough examination of the role of the CIA, Pentagon, and other U.S. security agencies in the evolution of modern communication studies. Christopher Simpson contends that it is unlikely that communication research could have emerged in its present form without regular transfusions of money from U.S. military, intelligence, and propaganda agencies during the Cold War. These agencies saw mass communication as an instrument for persuading or dominating targeted groups in the United States and abroad; as a tool for improving military operations; and perhaps most fundamentally, as a means to extend U.S. influence more widely than ever before at a relatively modest cost. Communication research, in turn, became for a time the preferred method for testing and developing such techniques. Science of Coercion outlines the history of U.S. psychological warfare between 1945 and 1960, discussing the underlying theories, activities, and administrative structure of this type of communication enterprise. In the process, Simpson documents the role played by prominent mass communication researchers including Wilbur Schramm, Ithiel de Sola Pool, Samuel Stouffer, and Paul Lazarsfield to demonstrate the links between the so-called "founding fathers" of communication studies in the United States and psychological warfare programs. Drawing on long-classified documents and extensive archival research, Simpson has produced a fascinating study in the history of science and the sociology of knowledge. Science of Coercion offers valuable insights into the dynamics of ideology and the social psychology of mass communication. It will provide informative reading for scholars and students of communication, the history of science, and social psychology, as well as the general reader.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00S7EFYQ6
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Open Road Media (March 3, 2015)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 3, 2015
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 2618 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 228 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #437,668 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #177 in Propaganda & Political Psychology
- #206 in Communism & Socialism (Kindle Store)
- #672 in Federal Government

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4.2 55 ratings

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4.2 out of 5

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visionaryprism2

Fascinating page-turner

Reviewed in the United States on September 21, 2020

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The author’s writing style is some of the most concise I’ve ever read when dealing with history genre. The book doesn’t mince words and it concentrates on the most relevant aspects of the information to back up the authors claims.

The connections the author makes for the reader in terms of seeing the big picture are extremely valuable and warrants a high rating alone.

Highly recommended.

9 people found this helpful

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Craig Edward Martinez

Knowledge

Reviewed in the United States on March 24, 2020

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Education

One person found this helpful

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j

Important piece of a larger body of scholarship

Reviewed in the United States on April 17, 2024

Regardless of the author's bias, he at least gives mention to the Reece Committee. Notwithstanding, Simpson does make an effort to discuss the legacy of this time period and gives a fair context that the center is only interested in left and right insofar as it is useful to perpetuate the "paradigm of dominance" referenced in the book.

The search for the push button millennium continues and with the hindsight of a post Covid, post IG Hororwitz Russiagate Report, post Assange, post Selfish Ledger, world - this book is good for context.

For inquirers who are interested, Simpson not only makes reference to the usual suspects, the Frankfurt School and the Congress for Cultural Freedom - but also "reformed" Bolsheviks like James Burnham.

Anyway, the reading list is far too long, but if you like Sociology and like James Burnham's Machiavellians, Stonor Sanders' Cultural Cold War, Quigley's Tragedy & Hope, Rene Wormser's Foundations and all the myriad of books that chronicle the National Security State from Miles Copeland's work to Zbig B, Glennon's Double Government, books about Truman, NSC, Church Committee and on and on... at a certain point you should have a pretty good idea of how things are ran around here.

This book is unique in that it has extensive sources, lots of footnotes - it is good for those of us who connect the dots from 1861 all the way to 1898, 1912, and on to the New Deal (see Schivelbusch), the WWII version of the New Deal, and then the institutionalization of what grew out of the New Deal and WWII up to today. Simpson chronicles the period fairly well and allows a person well read on the subject to connect the dots.

Reviewed in the United States on May 30, 2019

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You won't regret it.

One person found this helpful

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Dr. Frank Stech

An anti-US polemic, ironically prescient

Reviewed in the United States on April 20, 2007

This is a bad book. It is full of sly innuendo, tabloid reporting, and blatant propaganda: scholasticism posing as scholarship. A quotation and some facts suffice to indicate the degree of its bias. The quotation is the book's conclusion: "The role of the United States in world affairs during our lifetimes [circa 1994] has often been rapacious, destructive, tolerant of genocide, and willing to sacrifice countless people in the pursuit of a chimera of security that has grown ever more remote" (116--117). That is it. Simpson offers no balance, no counterpoint. He states that the people of the "principal battlegrounds" of the Cold War (he lists the Philippines, Turkey, Indonesia, Panama, and the former Soviet Union) are "poorer today both materially and spiritually, less democratic, less free, and often living in worse health and greater terror" than before the superpower confrontation (116). Ironically, Simpson's conclusion in 1994 is, in my view false, but it is also largely true when applied to current US world affairs.

Simpson's book presents no data anywhere to support even one of those claims. On the other hand, UN, World Bank, and Amnesty International data showed those claims false. People in these countries in 1994 were richer, more democratic, freer, and in better health than they were from 1945--1960. As for the charge of "rapacious, destructive, tolerant of genocide," Simpson's bald assessment of the United States in 1994 was not balanced by even a single negative word about the counterpart Cold War roles of the Soviet Union, Communist China, North Korea, or North Vietnam. An uninformed reader of Simpson's book would never know about the psychological warfare of the first fifteen years of the Cold War, or that these latter countries even practiced propaganda or psychological warfare from 1945--1960.

A few facts indicate Simpson's biased and false assessment of the United States role in the period from 1945 to 1960. Take his assertion of "poorer spiritually." When roll was taken in the Philippine Army, the name "Douglas MacArthur" was read, and a sergeant responded, "Present in spirit." This tradition, fifty years after the general strode ashore at Leyte, symbolizes the security, self-reliance, and national pride that the United States helped to bring to many on the Cold War battlefields Simpson noted.

Take the charge of "worse health." The American occupation's post-World War II public health programs in Japan saved more lives (2.1 million--relative pre-1945 mortality) from communicable diseases than all of Japan's wartime battle deaths and three times as many as Japan's civilian losses to the wartime bombing.

Many East Europeans firmly believe that they owe their present security from Soviet domination and their independence from communist dictatorship in great measure to United States psychological warfare. One such East European is Vaclav Havel, who stopped his motorcade in Washington personally to thank the employees at the Voice of America (VOA). Another is Lech Walesa. Yet another is Boris Yeltsin, who faxed his thanks to VOA for its help during the 1991 attempted coup.

Ironically, much of what Simpson asserted about 1945-1960 has come to pass in the consequences of US propaganda from 2001-2007. "The pursuit of security" has "grown ever more remote" in these more recent times. Many of the charges Simpson made with weaker support for 1945-1960 US propaganda effects are now clearly apparent in the results of 2001-2007 US propaganda. Indeed, we are less secure, less trusted, less respected (but perhaps more feared) in 2007 than in 2000.

So while Simpson's conclusions on United States psychological warfare from 1945-1960 cannot be accepted at face value, especially his claim that the lessening of security in that time frame, his concerns (if not his scholarship) were prescient and should inform our assessments of US propaganda today. While this book is an anti-United States polemic, its author's concerns are real and should be shared today by many. Some of his arguments and rationale might inform an examination of propaganda and public diplomacy in the Bush Administration and their effects on US security and world stability. [Originally reviewed in "Journal of Interdisciplinary History"]

14 people found this helpful

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Willy Bach

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on October 12, 2015

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Good, thanks

One person found this helpful

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Boyce Hart

A Great and Necessary Book

Reviewed in the United States on February 17, 2014

This book is something no longer permitted: a historical approach to the development of Communications Research. In our day, this topic is off limits. You can tell because there are no longer ANY middle brow books being published on communications research these days.

There used to be some.

Reading this book will immediately tell you why that curiosity has been smothered. It is a crucial book for all students of Cold War history and anyone curious about how power works in the 21st century.

28 people found this helpful

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Peter Bonenfant

Cost?

Reviewed in the United States on August 12, 2020

How is this so ridiculously expensive

4 people found this helpful

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