Part 1 of a 10-part Series:
Introduction to the Powell Memo and Chaos Theory
“The national television networks should be monitored in the same way that textbooks should be kept under constant surveillance. This applies not merely to so-called educational programs (such as “Selling of the Pentagon”), but to the daily “news analysis” which so often includes the most insidious type of criticism of the enterprise system.”
From the 1971 Powell Memo
A butterfly flaps its wings in the Amazon rain forest, and three weeks later there is a hurricane on the other side of the world. This is the essence of chaos theory. That is, one small and seemingly insignificant event creates a chain reaction that can produce profound effects in the future. Each event creates a juncture of sometimes only several and sometimes nearly infinite possible pathways forward. This phenomenon provides a plethora of plots for science fiction writers looking for “alternate universe” story ideas. It is also what makes the future nearly impossible to predict.
In 1952, the science fiction author Ray Bradbury wrote a story he called A Sound of Thunder. In the fictional year 2055, time travel is possible. An enterprising company called Time Safari, Inc. takes wealthy hunters back to the past to hunt dinosaurs. Specific animals are selected who are known by the tour company to have died soon afterward. However, hunters are instructed to never leave a levitating path which has been constructed to literally minimize their footprint, because they could potentially cause a disruption in the timeline and change the future. How this levitating pathway was constructed without doing the same is never explained.
In the beginning of the story, we meet a hunter who has paid $10,000 for the privilege of shooting a tyrannosaurus rex. The Time Safari guide is explaining the instructions about “not leaving the path” and potential for disruption to the timeline. The conversation turns to a recent election, where a fascist candidate has been narrowly defeated. Everyone expresses thankful relief and then the hunting party departs in the time machine. When they arrive in the late Cretaceous period and spot a T-Rex, the hunter gets scared. The main guide instructs him to return to the time machine. Meanwhile, the two guides shoot the dinosaur shortly before a tree falls on it (the event that would have killed it in the current time).
The hunter hears the shots and returns to the spot where the dinosaur has been killed. The guides find out he has stumbled off the path in his haste, and threaten to kill him if anything is “changed” upon their return. They travel back to 2055 and at first, everything seems normal. However, some of the words on signs appear to be misspelled. The head guide inspects the hunter’s shoe and discovers a crushed butterfly. Someone asks who won the election, and they learn that the fascist is now in charge. The “sound of thunder” is the sound of the guide’s gun, as he carries out his threat.
January 6th did not happen in a vacuum, but—as chaos theory suggests—was pushed by something that started a chain of causation that led to its inevitability. Here I make the argument that the “butterfly moment” happened on August 23, 1971, with the publication of a memo written by Lewis Powell and published through the Chamber of Commerce. At that time, Powell was a corporate attorney practicing in Richmond Virginia, where he also represented the Tobacco Institute. As most of us know, Powell was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Nixon less than a year later, where he served until 1987.
The Powell Memo is noted for its brilliant creation of a (mostly) false narrative that is nonetheless extremely compelling. The memo deftly targets the base emotion of fear—more specifically the fear of losing privilege and power—couched in tones of moral righteousness and victimhood. Within this infamous Powell memo is a call to arms that today might seem mild when frothing hate-filled white supremacist groups are roaming public spaces with assault weapons. Yet, the memo contains unambiguous war-themed language: “The American economic system is under broad attack;” The Greening of America, a book by Yale Professor Charles Reich constituted “a frontal assault…on our government.” Powell proclaimed that American business had a duty to “conduct guerilla warfare with those who propagandize against the system.”
Another effective device is the demonization of anyone who opposes you. Powell points a finger at Ralph Nader, labor unions, the ACLU, and anyone else who dared to call out corporate abuse of workers, consumers, or the environment as “shotgun attacks on the system…which undermine confidence and confuse the public.” The charges incorporated tactics and strategies borrowed from the McCarthy era; e.g., branding one’s enemies as communists, “Leftists,” or Soviet sympathizers. Indeed, the interests of business elites, Wall Street and the corporatocracy were made synonymous with America and all it stands for.
According to Powell, nothing less than the “survival of the free enterprise system” was at stake. He called for the Chamber of Commerce to make “significantly increased” investments on a broad front of (1) restoring “balance” on university campuses with instructors who would champion the free enterprise system rather than challenge it; (2) train a new generation of intellectuals who would bring the “right” ideology to news media, government, and regulatory agencies; (3) monitor the content of textbooks for “fair” comparisons of socialism, fascism and communism; and (4) maintain a system of “constant surveillance” of textbooks, television, radio and other media.
Notwithstanding the bellicose framing, we can also discern a subtle whine of victimhood in Powell’s memo. The most powerful, wealthy, and privileged members of society are under attack and must defend themselves to survive!!! We see a nascent form of too much and never enough. The rhetoric definitively connects corporate self-interest to national welfare—the “what’s good for GM is good for America” trope. We also see the beginnings of a style of demonization—anyone who is concerned about the environment, working people, consumer safety, voting rights, or anything else that involves the welfare of the “little people” against the corporatocracy is an enemy of America.
In order to accomplish this broad and multi-front war, Powell recommended that “American business” should earmark 10% (an amount that is analogous to religious tithing) of its total annual advertising budget to this purpose. American business also should get over its aversion to “confrontation politics…[and] consider assuming a broader and more vigorous role in the political arena.” Although nothing changed immediately, we know today that business responded to Powell’s call.
