Le réveil, by Laurent Gounelle: mass manipulation, the mechanisms, the mind, consciousness.
The best-selling author of “feel good” fiction has just published a fascinating book tracing the origins of mass manipulation[1].
Through the story of Tom, a young French engineer whose ordinary life is turned upside down by a series of freedom-destroying and delirious measures imposed by his government, the author demonstrates, by reductio ad absurdum, the irrationality of the management of the covid crisis. Laurent Gounelle draws on highly specialised documentary sources to awaken his readers to the daily manipulation to which the citizens of our democracies are subjected.
The author begins by setting out the mechanism of the social engineering developed in 1917 in the United States to enable the United States to enter the First World War. Let us remember: although the American people were fiercely opposed to it, and he himself had been re-elected the previous year thanks to the slogan “He kept us out of war”, Wilson managed to turn public opinion around. How? By creating a “Committee on Public Information”, better known as the “Creel Commission”, after the journalist who headed it. Since there is no point in trying to convince people with reasonable arguments, it appealed to their emotions, to massive disinformation, to collective fear. In no time at all, public opinion was turned around and gave the war its full support. This vast operation was a huge success.
The manufacture of consent
Later, it was multinationals that took an interest in this commission’s method to increase bacon consumption or to push women to smoke. “To do this, one must use the new techniques of influence and the mass media to ‘crystallise public opinion’ and ‘manufacture consent’”, in his own words. He drives the point home: “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”
An absurd tale
Tom, a young French engineer living in a small flat in Paris. An ordinary life. It is about to be turned upside down by a series of measures imposed by his government. The creed taken up by those in power is: to eradicate death. Its first objective: to wage war on car accidents. Any resemblance to the covid crisis is absolutely not coincidental.
Here are some of the measures put in place: lockdown of cars, a ban on taking one’s car out except for a valid reason, an obligation to fill in a form for every journey, an obligation to wear a neck brace at the wheel. These precautionary measures are imposed until THE SOLUTION that will ensure everyone’s safety: the autonomous car, considered more reliable, less inclined to daydream, to lose attention, to think about anything other than driving.
In order to combat excess mortality in car accidents, “restrictive and freedom-destroying” regulations are therefore adopted by the French executive. Tom accepts them without batting an eyelid or thinking too much. Tom submits to every obligation, which he considers enlightened, since it was taken by the authority that runs the country.
Finally, the countdown has begun! Large companies then strive relentlessly to find the solution. Eventually an autonomous car rolls out of the factories and obtains marketing authorisation, at breakneck speed, from the competent authorities in France. But very quickly, sceptics express doubts about the reliability of the models put into service: are they really reliable or still at the experimental stage? Ministers assert that the probability of having an accident is in any case far lower on board these vehicles than in conventional cars. We know what happens next…
What is to be done?
Faced with this gigantic mass manipulation, Gounelle quotes Noam Chomsky[2] to decode and analyse reality: “Do not take your assumptions for established facts. Begin by adopting a critical stance towards every idea. Force it to justify itself. Be ready to ask questions about everything that is considered an established fact. Try to think for yourself. There is a lot of information in circulation. You must learn to judge, to evaluate and to compare things”.
To get out of it, the author tells us, there is work to be done on oneself “aimed at raising one’s consciousness, notably by clarifying one’s thoughts and intentions, freeing oneself from one’s fears, mastering one’s impulses, developing compassion and love within oneself: love of oneself, love of others, love of Life”. “Why is this work on oneself demanding? Because it will always be easier to let ourselves be seized by our fears than to gain in confidence, it will always be easier to subject ourselves to the gaze of others than to free ourselves from it, it will always be easier to judge than to understand, it will always be easier to obey our base instincts than to free ourselves from them: it will always be easier to let ourselves be dragged down than to raise our consciousness”.
By Jean-Luc Roux, independent journalist at BAM!
[1] Le Réveil, Laurent Gounelle, Calmann Levy, March 2022, 192 pages
[2]Noam Chomsky, La fabrique du consentement, 1988
Some interesting reading
To take further the questions raised by reading this book, here are some of the references given by the author at the end of his novel:
On mass manipulation
Bernays, E. (2007): Propaganda : comment manipuler l’opinion en démocratie. Zones.
Bernays, E. (2011): Crystallizing Public Opinion. IG publishing.
Chomsky, N. (2008): Comprendre le pouvoir. Lux Éditeur.
Chomsky, N. (2013): Sur le contrôle de nos vies. Allia.
Chomsky, N. (2019): Fabriquer un consentement : la gestion politique des médias de masse. Investig’Action.
Lackland Air Force Base (NA): Communist Techniques of Coercive Interrogation. Air Force Personnel & Training Center, Lackland Air Force Base. San Antonio, Texas.
Negrea, X & A. Dumitru (2016): Group and social collective manipulations. The European Proceedings of Social and Behavioural Sciences.
Zuboff, S. (2020): L’Âge du capitalisme de surveillance : le combat pour un avenir humain face aux nouvelles frontières du pouvoir. Zulma. 2020
On Rodrik’s trilemma
Dani Rodrik is an eminent economist, Professor at Harvard and lecturer at the London School of Economics; in 2002 he received the famous Leontief Prize for advancing the frontiers of economic thought. As for his “trilemma”, Rodrik demonstrates that it is impossible for a nation to be at the same time sovereign, globalised and democratic.
Bolotnikova, M.N. (2019): The Trilemma. Harvard Magazine July-August.
Burauel, P.F. (2013): China and the Golden Straitjacket of Globalization. L’Europe en formation 370.
Rodrik, D. (2011): The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy. W.W. Norton.
On lobbying in Brussels
Chavagneux, C. (2010): Les multinationales définissent-elles les règles de la mondialisation ?. Politique étrangère. Institut français des relations internationales.
Corporate Europe Observatory (2017): Nearly half the experts from the European Food Safety Authority have financial conflicts of interest. 14 June 2017.
Dagorn, G. & S. Horel (2019): Petit guide de lobbying dans les arènes de l’Union européenne. Le Monde, 23 May 2019.
Greenwood, J. & J. Dreger (2013): The Transparency Register: A European vanguard of strong lobby regulation?. Interest Groups & Advocacy.
Lobby Control (2014): EU-Expertengruppen: Kommission lässt sich in Steuerfragen von Lux-Leaks-Tricksern beraten. 20 November 2014.
On the vision of the president of the Davos Forum on Covid-19
Schwab, K. & T. Malleret (2020): La grande réinitialisation. Forum Publishing.
On European integration
Aldrich, R.J. (1997): OSS, CIA and European unity: The American Committee on United Europe, 1948-60. Diplomacy and Statecraft 8 (1).
Evans-Pritchard, A (2000): Euro-federalists financed by US spy chief. The Daily Telegraph, 19 Sep 2000.
Heyde, V. (2008): Discussions américaines concernant l’Europe de l’après-guerre (1940-1944). Les Cahiers Irice 1.
On the biometric registration of the population introduced by the European Union
Pellegrini, F. & A. Vitalis (2018): Identification biométrique et contrôle social, l’ère du fichage généralisé. Le Monde diplomatique, April 2018.
European Union (2019): Regulation (EU) 2019/1157 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 June 2019, on strengthening the security of identity cards of Union citizens and of residence documents issued to Union citizens and their family members exercising their right of free movement. Official Journal of the European Union, 12 July 2019.
