Not surprisingly, such intellectual kindling was easy to ignite when World War I broke out. The philosopher John Dewey, New Republic founder Herbert Croly, and countless other progressive intellectuals welcomed what Mr. Dewey dubbed “the social possibilities of war.” The war provided an opportunity to force Americans to, as journalist Frederick Lewis Allen put it, “lay by our good-natured individualism and march in step.” Or as another progressive put it, “Laissez faire is dead. Long live social control.”
With the intellectuals on their side, Wilson recruited journalist George Creel to become a propaganda minister as head of the newly formed Committee on Public Information (CPI).
Mr. Creel declared that it was his mission to inflame the American public into “one white-hot mass” under the banner of “100 percent Americanism.” Fear was a vital tool, he argued, “an important element to be bred in the civilian population.”
The CPI printed millions of posters, buttons, pamphlets, that did just that. A typical poster for Liberty Bonds cautioned, “I am Public Opinion. All men fear me!… [I]f you have the money to buy and do not buy, I will make this No Man’s Land for you!” One of Creel’s greatest ideas – an instance of “viral marketing” before its time – was the creation of an army of about 75,000 “Four Minute Men.” Each was equipped and trained by the CPI to deliver a four-minute speech at town meetings, in restaurants, in theaters – anyplace they could get an audience – to spread the word that the “very future of democracy” was at stake. In 1917-18 alone, some 7,555,190 speeches were delivered in 5,200 communities. These speeches celebrated Wilson as a larger-than-life leader and the Germans as less-than-human Huns.
Meanwhile, the CPI released a string of propaganda films with such titles as The Kaiser, The Beast of Berlin, and The Prussian Cur. Remember when French fries became “freedom fries” in the run-up to the Iraq war? Thanks in part to the CPI, sauerkraut become “victory cabbage.”
Under the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918, Wilson’s administration shut down newspapers and magazines at an astounding pace. Indeed, any criticism of the government, even in your own home, could earn you a prison sentence. One man was brought to trial for explaining in his own home why he didn’t want to buy Liberty Bonds.
The Wilson administration sanctioned what could be called an American fascisti, the American Protective League. The APL – a quarter million strong at its height, with offices in 600 cities – carried government-issued badges while beating up dissidents and protesters and conducting warrantless searches and interrogations. Even after the war, Wilson refused to release the last of America’s political prisoners, leaving it to subsequent Republican administrations to free the anti-war Socialist Eugene V. Debs and others.
Jonah Goldberg, “You want a more ‘progressive’ America? Careful what you wish for: Voters should remember what happened under Woodrow Wilson”, Christian Science Monitor, 2008-02-05.
