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PROPHETS OF DECEIT A Study of the Techniques
of the American Agitator by
LEO LOWENTHAL and
NORBERT GUTERMAN
HARPER & BROTHERS NEW YORK
FOREWORD TO STUDIES IN PREJUDICE
At this moment in world history anti-Semitism is not manifesting itself
with the full and violent destructiveness of which we know it to be capable. Even a social disease has its periods of quiescence during which
the social scientist, like the biologist or the physician, can study it in the search for more effective ways to prevent or reduce the virulence of the next outbreak. Today the world scarcely remembers the mechanized persecution and extermination of millions of human beings only a short span of years away in what was once regarded as the citadel of Western civilization. Yet the conscience of many men was aroused. How could it be, they asked each other, that in a culture of law, order and reason, there should have survived the irrational remnants of ancient racial and religious hatreds? How could they explain the willingness of great masses of people to tolerate the mass extermination of their fellow citizens? What tissues in the life of our modern society remain cancerous, and despite our assumed enlightenment show the incongruous atavism of ancient peoples? And what within the individual organism responds to certain stimuli in our culture with attitudes and acts of destructive aggression? But an aroused conscience is not enough if it does not stimulate a systematic search for an answer. Mankind has paid too dearly for its naive faith in the automatic effect of the mere passage of time: incantations have really never dispelled storms, disaster, pestilence, disease or other evils; nor does he who torments another cease his torture out of sheer boredom with his victim. Prejudice is one of the problems of our times for which everyone has a theory but no one an answer. Every man, in a sense, believes that he is his own social scientist, for social science is the stuff of everyday living. The progress of science can perhaps be charted by the advances that scientists have made over commonsense notions of phenomena. In an effort to advance beyond mere commonsense approaches to problems of intergroup conflict, the American Jewish Committee in May, 1944, invited a group of American scholars of various backgrounds and dis-
ciplines to a two-day conference on religious and racial prejudice. At
this meeting, a research program was outlined which would enlist V
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ThREWORD TO STTJDIES IN PREJUDICE
scientific method in the cause of seeking solutions to this crucial problem.
Two levels of research were recommended. One was more limited in
scope and geared to the recurring problems faced by educational agencies; e.g., the study of public reaction to selected current events, and the evaluation of various techniques and methods such as those involved in mass media of communication as they impinge upon intergroup relationships. The other level suggested was one of basic research, basic in that it should eventually result in additions to organized knowledge in this field. The first level frequently consists of a large number of small studies, limited in scope and focused sharply on a given issue. In practice, we have found that the "goodness" of our smaller studies
was proportional to our ingenuity in so devising them that they, too, could contribute basically to knowledge. The chief difference between the two levels of research—sometimes loosely called "short-range" and "long-range" research—seems largely to be due to the immediacy of implementation of findings as program-related or unrelated, rather than to differences in methodology, skills and techniques. On both levels, it is necessary to pursue an interdisciplinary approach to research problems. To fur