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Hardt and Negri's (2005) hopeful thesis about the oppositional 'multitude' challeng-
ing (often nakedly corrupt) political, economic and cultural elites, I don't myself see
much evidence of a power shift towards ordinary people, new social movements or
oppositional non-governmental bodies. The media theorist John Thompson (2011)
is right that mass mediated forms of epistemic dependence are not inferior to more
face-to-face forms of epistemic dependence, but these mass mediated forms - so char-
acteristic of our 'information age' - are only of real use if people have the means to
use the informational resources they offer to conduct rich discussions and to act in
politically effective ways in respect of 'public affairs'.
14
Demagogues, of course, can thrive in conditions where audiences are gullible or
accustomed to favouring simple solutions over complex and conditional answers.
The problem of demagoguery in democratic societies came to the fore in the 1920s
and 1930s, especially in Weimar Germany. Because power cannot be exerted without
popular consent, non-democrats and anti-democrats realised that the way to govern
democracies was through persuasion. Adolph Hitler, taking advantage of the social
and economic turmoil of the Weimar period, used his skills as a public speaker to
prey on the fears and anxieties of ordinary Germans. As one of the first analysts
of propaganda, Edward Bernays, realised at the time, 'The conscious and intelligent
manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important
element in democratic societies. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of
society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our coun-
try
...
we are governed, our minds moulded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested,
largely by men we have never heard of ' (Bernays, 1928: 5). Of course, Germans - and
the rest of the world -
had
heard of Hitler because he aspired to become (and, of
course, did become) Germany's supreme leader. But Bernays's key point was that
demagogues require a wider 'invisible college' of people - especially in the mass
media - who influence the public by reproducing the arguments and values of those
demagogues so that they come to seem like common sense. Some critics argue that, in
the early twenty-first century, demagoguery is less of a threat to modern democracies
than is
distraction
. Distraction involves increasing the time ordinary people devote to
entertainment, leisure and shopping so that they spend ever less time taking political
affairs seriously.
15
Such negative scepticism is currently evident in many Western democracies, especially
Britain. For a variety of reasons, many members of the British public are currently very
cynical indeed about the claims made by their national politicians and by many busi-
ness leaders. Fundamentally,
trust
has been eroded: the belief that elected politicians
and many business people act in the
wider
interest, rather than their
personal
interest,
has been weakened. This may, for many citizens, be linked to a dawning realisation
that 'representative democracy' in large-scale, technological, complex societies renders
them fairly impotent in terms of exerting any
real
influence on politics. Focussing on
the United States, Jeffrey Goldfarb (1991) argued that the roots of cynicism are more
sinister, lying, at least in part, in the conscious efforts of large corporations and adver-
tising agencies and sections of the media to actively manipulate public opinion and
debase public debate (see the previous endnote).
16
Interestingly, John Hartwig, the philosopher who coined the term 'epistemic depen-
dence', places little faith in my first option and seems to favour lay individuals
'out-sourcing' reasons for their attitudes, beliefs, values and actions to various
epistemic communities. While I think the quality of epistemic communities' self-
governance is of critical importance, I don't share Hardwig's apparent disinterest in
having a well-educated citizenry possessed of critical sensibilities. It invites the pos-
sibility, in E. E. Schnattscheider's inimitable words, that 'Democracy
...
is a form
of collaboration of ignorant people and [powerful] experts' (1975: 137). One way in
which political theorists have sought to address the 'democratic deficit' in erstwhile
democratic societies is to find ways of increasing citizen participation
outside
elections
and in the 'non-political' arenas outside the state apparatus.
