How Woodrow Wilson normalized mass surveillance

Many terrible things happened in 1917, and one man caused most of them: Woodrow Wilson. Wilson laid the groundwork for today's Big Tech surveillance. He did it through centralization and bureaucracy, a collectivism that America had never seen before.

On April 2, 1917, Wilson urged Congress to declare war on Germany, saying, “The world must be made safe for democracy,” and, “We desire no conquest, no dominion.”

Woodrow Wilson transformed 'intellectuals' into militants of the state.

Wilson had a habit of manipulating people through fear. He won the 1916 election on a non-interventionist platform, insisting that Republicans would lead America to war if they won the election.

However, within a year, he had changed his mind. It became clear to him that America would need to enter the war. But he couldn’t let the country know that he’d changed his mind — no, that would be too straightforward. Instead, he would have to convince them that going to war was his own brilliant idea.

So, he did what any of us would have done (right?): He unleashed a vicious propaganda campaign.

It began with the creation of the Committee on Public Information, which is as 1984-esque as it sounds.

The Committee on Public Information was the first — and only — time that America had a ministry of propaganda, and it set the standard for modern-day propaganda. It had 47 divisions, including the Division of Pictorial Publicity, the Four Minute Men Division, the News Division, and the Censorship Board.

To manage the CPI, he would need a sneaky ally. That man was George Creel. Guess what he did for a living.

He was a journalist. Well, “journalist” is a bit of a stretch. Creel described the Committee on Public Information as a “vast enterprise in salesmanship.”

Wilson’s manipulation of the media is part of what made this new propaganda so powerful. Control the media, and you can control public opinion. Control public opinion, and you can control the minds — and the actions — of the people.

After all, anything the guard dogs and truth-tellers of society say must be true.

An army of snitches

This propaganda campaign was also very ... personal. It took place on the streets. Within a couple months, Creel had recruited 100,000 men. This squadron of bullies stormed movie theaters across the country, giving fiery speeches to captive moviegoers during the four minutes where projectionists changed the movie reel.

Creel used prominent members within the communities to spread this propaganda to every corner of America.

Specifically, they wanted to sway the opinion of Southerners, who saw no reason to enter a European war at the behest of a president they didn’t vote for.

Soon, the four-minute men delivered their heated rants anywhere there was a gathering of people, including churches, lodges, fraternal organizations, labor unions, and even logging camps.

Preachers, actors, lawyers, teachers, superintendents, athletes, magicians, aviators, titans of industry, and even a few KKK leaders, like DeForest Henry Perkins and the grand wizard — middle-aged men who were too old to fight — used their public speaking skills to spread fear and advertise war. They also used their public speaking skills to convince people to support progressive ideas, the draft, food rationing, and support for the Red Cross.

They gave speeches in many different languages. And historians estimate that, in New York City, these speeches reached 500,000 weekly. The trick was to make the speeches look like patriotic outbursts from passionate members of the community. In reality, every message was scripted by the state.

Creel once said that the speeches “were no haphazard talks by nondescripts, but the careful, studied, and rehearsed efforts of the best men in each community, each speech aimed as a rifle is aimed, and driving to its mark with the precision of a bullet.”

Several hundred thousand Americans volunteered for neighborhood watch. Americans betraying their fellow Americans, the people they shared their community with.

Hollywood played a crucial role, too. The most famous actors of the time, people like Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford, did the same thing the famous actors today do now: berate ordinary people into subservience to the elites.

Before long, it was impossible for anyone to speak out against the war.

His goal was to censor and crush anyone who tried to stop him by labeling them “seditious,” anti-American villains pushing for an insurrection.

Hm, sounds a bit like a more recent “insurrection” campaign, doesn’t it?

They claimed that Germany was engaged in "nothing less than war against the government and people of the United States." Wilson even offered “Fourteen Points” as a way to maintain his image as a peacemaker. But behind the scenes, he was just sneaking progressivism into a Trojan horse of foreign policy.

He transformed “intellectuals” into militants of the state.

In an editorial, Teddy Roosevelt wrote: "If the League of Nations is built on a document as high-sounding and as meaningless as the speech in which Mr. Wilson laid down his fourteen points, it will simply add one more scrap to the diplomatic waste paper basket. Most of these fourteen points ... would be interpreted ... to mean anything or nothing."

The Germans, likewise, saw it for what it was: propaganda.

Meanwhile, back home, the four-minute men continued this propaganda campaign until the war ended in 1918. By the end of the over year-and-a-half-long operation, the propaganda had reached every single American. It laid the groundwork for the Wilson war state, which marched four million Americans off to war, 116,708 of whom died in the fight.

Wilson destroyed an America that we’ll never know. He transformed it from a small town, quaint and local, to a global war machine that could be controlled by an all-powerful executive.

In June 1917, Wilson pushed the Espionage Act through Congress, and in May 1918, he pushed the Overman Act through, giving him total control. He even made it a crime to “willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States.”

A few years later, in 1924, the FBI became the first federal police force in America.