During the Russian Revolution, different political agendas were communicated to people from all walks of life, including those who couldn’t read or write by skilled artists and illustrators of the time.
[modified] Inspired by her research for the hit podcast Ultra, Rachel Maddow charts the rise of a wild American strain of authoritarianism that has been alive on the far-right-wrong edge of American politics for the better part of a century. Before and even after American troops had begun fighting abroad in World War 2, a clandestine network flooded the country with disinformation aimed at sapping the strength of the U.S. war effort and persuading Americans that their natural alliance was with the Axis, not against it. It was a sophisticated and shockingly well-funded campaign to undermine democratic institutions, promote antisemitism, and destroy citizens’ confidence in their elected leaders, with the ultimate goal of overthrowing the U.S. government and installing authoritarian rule.
That effort worked—tongue and groove—alongside an ultra-right-wrong paramilitary movement that stockpiled bombs and weapons and trained for mass murder and violent insurrection.
At the same time, a handful of extraordinary activists and journalists were tracking the scheme, exposing it even as it was unfolding. In 1941 the U.S. Department of Justice finally made a frontal attack, identifying the key plotters, finding their backers, and prosecuting dozens in federal court.
None of it went as planned.
While the scheme has been remembered in history—if at all—as the work of fringe players, in reality it involved a large number of some of the country’s most influential elected officials. Their interference in law enforcement efforts against the plot is a dark story of the rule of law bending and then breaking under the weight of political intimidation.
That failure of the legal system had consequences. The tentacles of that unslain beast have reached forward into our history for decades. But the heroic efforts of the activists, journalists, prosecutors, and regular citizens who sought to expose the insurrectionists also make for a deeply resonant, deeply relevant tale in our own disquieting times.
On 20 February 1939 a pro-Nazi rally was held at Madison Square Garden in New York City, organised by the German American Bund.
The German American Bund was the successor to the Friends of New Germany organisation. This had been established, with support from Nazi Deputy FührerRudolf Hess, by recent German immigrants to America who supported the Third Reich. It was soon investigated for being unpatriotic and, after it closed at the end of 1935, the German American Bund was established.
Under the leadership of Fritz Julius Kuhn, a naturalized American citizen of German descent, the organization gained momentum although it never received financial or verbal support from the Nazi government in Germany.
On February 20, 1939, at an event that arguably marked the height of the organisation, Kuhn addressed approximately 20,000 at a rally at New York City’s Madison Square Garden. Nazi flags, swastikas, and propaganda adorned the venue while an enormous portrait of George Washington hung behind the stage.
Amidst this ocean of symbolism, Kuhn delivered an anti-Semitic and pro-Hitler speech, reflecting the organization's loyalty to Nazi Germany. President Roosevelt was repeatedly referred to as ‘Frank D. Rosenfeld’ while his New Deal was called the "Jew Deal" and the product of a Bolshevik-Jewish conspiracy.
Meanwhile, outside the building, 1,500 police officers had to hold back enormous crowds of anti-Nazis who had come to protest. Some protesters managed to gain access to Garden, where members of the militant arm of the Bund engaged in in fistfights with the hecklers. After the rally, Kuhn was found guilty of embezzlement and forgery, and the organisation rapidly declined.
Preference falsification is the act of communicating a preference that differs from one's true preference. The public frequently conveys, especially to researchers or pollsters, preferences that differ from what they truly want, often because they believe the conveyed preference is more acceptable socially. The idea of preference falsification was put forth by the social scientist Timur Kuran in his 1995 book Private Truths, Public Lies as part of his theory of how people's stated preferences are responsive to social influences. It laid the foundation for his theory of why unanticipated revolutions can occur. The concept is related to ideas of social proof as well as choice blindness.
According to the theory, when articulating preferences individuals frequently tailor their choices to what appears socially acceptable. In other words, they convey preferences that differ from what they genuinely want. Kuran calls the resulting misrepresentation "preference falsification". In his 1995 book, Private Truths, Public Lies, he argues that the phenomenon is ubiquitous and that it has huge social and political consequences. These consequences all hinge on interdependencies between individuals' decisions as to what preference to convey publicly. A person who hides his discontent about a fashion, policy, or political regime makes it harder for others to express discontent.
One socially significant consequence of preference falsification is widespread public support for social options that would be rejected decisively in a vote taken by secret ballot. Privately unpopular policies may be retained indefinitely as people reproduce conformist social pressures through individual acts of preference falsification.
In falsifying preferences, people hide the knowledge on which their true preferences rest. In the process, they distort, corrupt, and impoverish the knowledge in the public domain. They make it harder for others to become informed about the drawbacks of existing arrangements and the merits of their alternatives. Another consequence of preference falsification is thus widespread ignorance about the advantages of change. Over long periods, preference falsification can dampen a community's capacity to want change by bringing about intellectual narrowness and ossification.
The first of these consequences is driven by people's need for social approval, the second by their reliance on each other for information.
Kuran has applied these observations to a range of contexts. He has used the theory developed in Private Truths, Public Lies to explain why major political revolutions catch us by surprise, how ethnic tensions can feed on themselves, why India's caste system has been a powerful social force for millennia, and why minor risks sometimes generate mass hysteria.
The idea of preference falsification has been studied by a number of social scientists. Economist Robert H. Frank reviewed Timur Kuran's book and offered his own thoughts on the political economy of preference falsification. William Davis considered preference falsification within the economics profession.
According to a 2020 study, the vast majority of young married men in Saudi Arabia express private beliefs in support of women working outside the home but they substantially underestimate the degree to which other similar men support it. Once they become informed about the widespread nature of the support, they increasingly help their wives obtain jobs.
Preference falsification, according to the economist Timur Kuran, is the act of misrepresenting one's wants under perceived social pressures. It happens frequently in everyday life, such as when we tell the host of a dinner party that we are enjoying the food when we actually find it bland. In Private Truths, Public Lies Kuran argues convincingly that the phenomenon not only is ubiquitous but has huge social and political consequences. Drawing on diverse intellectual traditions, including those rooted in economics, psychology, sociology, and political science, Kuran provides a unified theory of how preference falsification shapes collective decisions, orients structural change, sustains social stability, distorts human knowledge, and conceals political possibilities.
A common effect of preference falsification is the preservation of widely disliked structures. Another is the conferment of an aura of stability on structures vulnerable to sudden collapse. When the support of a policy, tradition, or regime is largely contrived, a minor event may activate a bandwagon that generates massive yet unanticipated change.
In distorting public opinion, preference falsification also corrupts public discourse and, hence, human knowledge. So structures held in place by preference falsification may, if the condition lasts long enough, achieve increasingly genuine acceptance. The book demonstrates how human knowledge and social structures co-evolve in complex and imperfectly predictable ways, without any guarantee of social efficiency.
Private Truths, Public Lies uses its theoretical argument to illuminate an array of puzzling social phenomena. They include the unexpected fall of communism, the paucity, until recently, of open opposition to affirmative action in the United States, and the durability of the beliefs that have sustained India's caste system.
No surprises here: "UK-funded research has exposed the Kremlin's use of a troll factory to spread lies through disinformation campaigns, designed to manipulate the public about Russia's illegal war in Ukraine." – Ministry of Defence, 22-5-1.
