Disinformation Lessons from the Great Depression

In October, 1929, the NYSE crashed, and so began the Great Depression. Naturally, emotions ran high throughout the United States as people needed work to provide for their families. On March 6, 1930 (Unemployment Day), citizens hit the streets in New York, where a crowd of 75,000 gathered in Union Square. Grover Whalen, New York’s commissioner of Police met the mass of people as a show of force, and unfortunately the authorities took it too far as people were trampled by horses. Additional shows of force were executed by commissioner Whalen and none more prominent than the 25,000 strong Communist demonstration on May Day. It was soon alleged by Whalen that the Communist strikes and riots were being executed at the behest of Moscow through American spy networks. The NYPD finally presented six letters, typed in Russian, that explained how Moscow was attempting to exploit the economic crisis in America through strikes and riots. In Moscow, after receiving word of these findings, the response came that Whalen had manufactured fraudulent documents (Hey, this scenario sounds familiar).

    As the history goes, they found the individual (a Russian immigrant) who said he had printed these documents in America. He recounted to a jury that a man walked in asking for typed Russian documents for a large order, received the sample proofs, gave them his blessings, and then he never saw the man again. These were the very documents that somehow made their way into the hands of Commissioner Whalen, and also into the newspapers. The Russians understood that America was so anti-Communist that they would jump on anything that was found to be a pro-Communist agenda. Whalen made sure this was front-page news as it also provided him a valid reason to react with the amount of police force that was used. This is called the overreaction. (Making something news because it suits our beliefs, even though we do not know all the facts) Our society today does this with such ease as we follow the pendulum of horribly reported news. When tensions and emotions are high we tend to look for something or someone else to blame, remove any responsibility, and overreact so that all the energy is elsewhere away from us. During the Great Depression emotions were extremely high, and Russia has consistently used these difficult times to strike our democracy. Even the appearance of the riots being staged by Soviets undermined our democracy and created division. Imagine a world where something like this happens, the disinformation flows seamlessly through social media, national news outlets, and in comments – now add in the agenda of certain outlets and our group-think perspective, you’ve got a population that either believes everything that is said or nothing at all. Once the division is created, it is easy to simply “egg on” each side with false information about the other.

    As it turns out, the man claiming to take responsibility for the forged documents said that Moscow’s idea in the scheme was to make the public believe that all documents are forged. This would make the public question everything that came from the government, along with driving a wedge in an already emotionally drained, desperate, and divided people. There’s no way something like this could happen to the great nation of America ninety years later! Look at how ridiculous it is that throughout Covid we have had such hostile reactions from both sides. Something as simple as wearing a mask became politicized. I truly believe that today, if somebody said wearing a certain color shoe was racist, it would catch on. People would be called racist for wearing white shoes, for example. It would then be used politically because “why not”? And the poor nurses would have to purchase a different crop of kicks. After a bit, you’d see the commercials with rainbow colored shoes, because that’s the new thing. Then, somebody (Nike comes to mind) would create the campaign and we’d have professional athletes promoting the cause. You’d see the videos from the grocery store of people getting into fights because they had the wrong color of shoes on. All of this…from some made-up crap that people latched onto, and ran with. This isn’t far-fetched.

    It is extremely embarrassing and there is no place to point the finger besides oneself. We need to get better, and the only way to get better is by doing it ourselves. There is no mortal human that can change your attitude, behavior, and actions besides yourself. If we can focus on bettering ourselves instead of pointing out everybody else’s flaws, we’d be much better off. Contain the emotions, do not overreact, sit down with a nice cup of coffee and think a little. As any person driving on slippery roads may know, if you start sliding in one direction toward the ditch, you can correct the slide by staying calm and counter-steering. But, if you lose your poise and counter too much, you’ll overdo it and go into the ditch on the other side of the road. Or, you’ll find yourself fish-tailing back and forth for a long time (metaphors guys, gotta love them). I fear we are doing this today and not learning from history. Let’s change that.