Broadcasting May King the DeathKnell of the Demagogue

Radio Record, 27 May 1938, Page 6

Broadcasting May King the DeathKnell of the Demagogue

WY HEYTHER or mot you agree with J/\/ him, W. Philip Carman in this unusual article brings a new light to bear on broadcast electioneering. The laws of mob psychology, he says, do not apply to the elector sitting quietly in his home. And one day the world may be a better place for it.

a great deal about the use of tadio broadcasting for political purposes. Some hold that broadcasting is a legitimate and inevitable ally of democracy in practice-a means by which everyone with a sense | AYVELY we have heard

of civic and national responsibility can make himselt familiar with the pros and cons of opposed policies and vote awording to the dictates of his conscience and intelligence. Others hold that, in its political uses at least, the air is merely a stamping ground for conflicting propaganda and private electioneering. For my own part I take a more optimistic view than either of these. I think that, even if they who so eagerly use it now do not realise it. the air will prove the graveyard of the demagogue. The mass meeting strained through the microphone loses its magic. A vast number of listeners is relatively unaffected by the tension of the crowd gathered in a hall. A crowd, as a crowd, is easily stirred, its power of intellectual analysis dulled. But the man at the listener’s end of the radio is more mentally alert and more emotionally quiet. ‘That remote and unexcited view of party politics given by broadcasting emphasises mercilessly the logical weaknesses of the party system. Too often it provides us with a spectacle of adult men outvying one another in a vote-catching

competition. One leader addresses us with earnestness, sincerity and idealism. Yet. to satisfy the disinterested and intelligent listener there is in his speech too much sentimentality, too many half-truths, and too blatant a spirit of myopic disparagement of his

opponents. His political opponent replies soundly and high-mindedly, but again this myopic viewpoint discloses a thinly-veiled appeal to man’s materialistic self-interest. Intent upon scoring a point off the other party; painting themselves white and their opponents black, it is still apparent that both are really a mixture of various shades of grey! Like schoolboys, ‘‘our gang"’ is always the ‘‘goodies’’; the other gang is the ""baddies’’! : . We shall not grow up so long as we cling fearfully to the type of democracy in which all parties have one eye on the votes and one on the affairs of the country. | If the democratic principle is to survive, a Parliament must legislate fearlessly, resolutely, justly, without fear of alienating the electors ! We must face the fact, and face it clearly, that humankind is not yet mature enough to inherit the promised land. It has not wandered long enough in the wilderness. It has not yet learned the lessons of experience. It has not yet learned not to put its trust in princes-even though the princes may be elected to power by a democracy.

But science. it seems, is making it possible for us to examine ourselves and our "‘princes’’ a little more clearly. (Continued on next page.)

(Continued from previous page.)

We are all bound by the cruel prejudices of the herd-and as cruelly bound by the jrrational conviction that we must be unconyentiunal, As D. H. Lawrence said, we run round like the ass, either in one direction or another. treading round and round in the treatmill. "The ass goes one way and threshes out the corn from the chai. The ass goes the other way round ang kicks the corn into the mud." What are we going to do about it? Well, perhaps the first thing is to let the object lesson of radio electioneering sink in-and realise from it that parties, factions, classes, puliing one against the other will never make our country truly prosperous and truly happy. So long as We think exclusively in terms of eapitalist, communist, socialist, nationalist, atheist, pacifist, militarist "ideology" we can never learn to pull together. Perhaps one day soon we shall transcend the halterled conceptions of life to which we have hitherto been bound by lack of detachment and start fo learn the art of living together, in the way that rationai human beings certainly will do when the human race has reached maturity