Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann's “Spiral of Silence” and the Historical Context of Communication Theory

To reach into the darkness to find the Jew who is hiding behind the Chicago Daily News is like sticking your hand into a wasp's nest. When you receive forty simultaneous stings, you stop paying attention to the individual wasps. [In the United States], Jews write the newspapers, own them, and have close to a monopoly over the advertising agencies that open and close the doors to advertisingfor each newspaper. They control thefilm industry, own the big radio stations and all the theaters. Due to their cleverness, Jew journalists are not the most noisy advocates for war [with Germany]. When they reachfor public opinion, they don't move as a group, but instead come from various directions…. The pure Jewish newspapen in America, as is commonly known, are The New York Times and The New York Post. But even there it [Jewish war propaganda] cannot be noticed immediately…. The truly powerful commentators camouflage their anti-German agenda through neutral-sounding writing. The most academic of these is Walter Lippmann, a Jew of German origin…. He is the most clever user of this neutral camouflage, who shrewdly brings his readers to the conclusion that America is surrounded on all sides. He is a spokesmanfor high finance who was once an opponent of Roosevelt, [but] who now supports intervention without reservation…. (Elisabeth Noelle, 1941e, pp. 6–7)