Description
In this speech, Du Bois speaks to a contemporary paradox of American democracy, the idea that a great democracy has mobilized its forces and appropriated funding for wide-scale war. Why is it, he wonders, that most Americans believe in a criminal conspiracy by the Soviet Union against U.S. interests when most Europeans know this is not the case? He blames the "deliberate machination of organized business" that controls the "gathering, distribution and interpretation of news." Furthermore, "the United States too often has tampered with the truth for temporary advantage," as in the case of the founding declaration that all Americans are equal while African Americans were held in slavery. He frames the demands of radical Reconstructionists as a desire for a socialist system. He also wonders about the dilemma of contemporary African Americans. "Today America is doubtless loosening the chains of our bondage to some extent. In return for this America wants us to testify to the correctness of its present policies." Du Bois cannot endorse an American society dominated by anti-communist propaganda and corporate control of the media.
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