The Institutes for Propaganda Analysis and Frankfurt School Social Research on Morningside Heights: A de facto Alliance and Its Legacies

Abstract

The relationship between the Institute for Propaganda Analysis (IPA) and the exiled Frankfurt School’s Institute for Social Research (FISR) is somewhat enigmatic, despite the two entities’ physical proximity on Morningside Heights during the 1930s and 1940s. This article challenges J. Michael Sproule’s “mutual disinterest” account of that relationship. It demonstrates the influence of Alfred and Elizabeth Lee on the FISR’s Studies in Prejudice project, which anticipated a scenario in the US like the democratic crisis that exists today. Theodor Adorno’s work on demagogic propaganda is particularly indebted to the Lees’ The Fine Art of Propaganda: A Study of Father Coughlin’s Speeches (1939). Detailed archival and textual reconstruction of this relationship is presented. This focuses on the FISR’s plans for a popular manual like The Fine Art and Adorno’s reworking of the IPA’s famous “seven devices” of propaganda technique into a more elaborate theoretical and practical counterdemagogic program. This article also demonstrates that these developments in propaganda studies played a little-recognized role in the wellknown tension between Adorno and Paul Lazarsfeld regarding “administrative” and “critical” communications research. Finally, the legacies of this complex history are briefly explored in the context of current debates about research on disinformation.