At the moment this column appears, Sinterklaas is preparing for Pakjesavond. Part of what emerges from the pocket of the Goedheiligman was purchased a week and a half ago with an extra discount during Black Friday. That is a day that has blown over from America that has been blowing harder and harder into the Netherlands in recent years. Shops then lower their prices and extend their opening hours to attract as many customers as possible.
The shopping spree marks the start of the high retail season, where sales in November and December are traditionally boosted by the holiday season. If we delve deeper into the origins of this shopping spree, then Black Friday loses its innocence, just like Zwarte Piet.
About the author
Martin Lambrechts is a public prosecutor at the Functional Public Prosecutor’s Office, a national part of the Public Prosecution Service specialized in fraud cases. Lambregts is a guest columnist for de Volkskrant in December, which invites someone to publish a series of columns every month on volkskrant.nl/opinie. This guest column is written in a personal capacity.
Its origins date back to the last century, when the United States decided to become involved in the First World War. To enthuse the people for this, the US government used propaganda on a large scale for the first time. Someone who helped with this was the advertising man Edward Bernays.
He had made the Italian opera singer Enrico Caruso great. After the war, Bernays realized that propaganda could also be used during peacetime, albeit for other purposes and if you gave the animal a different name: public relations. Bernays regarded the general public, partly under the influence of his uncle Sigmund Freud, as irrational beings whose subconscious desires can be aroused and directed.
This vision fell on fertile ground in post-war America. First, producers, who had been running at full capacity during the war, feared overproduction. Many Americans were supplied with most of their goods and threatened to stop buying new stuff. Second, intellectuals feared the increased democratic power of the general public.
They saw in the genesis of the First World War evidence for the Freudian idea that irrational and aggressive forces lurk in the people that can easily be released. Democracy therefore had to be reinvented. Its most prominent interpreter, Walter Lippmann, argued that the “feral herd” must be kept in check so that a small group of responsible citizens can serve the common good unimpeded.
Artificially induced desire
Bernays’ techniques met both of those fears. Advertising no longer focused on a real need for a particular product, but on an artificially induced desire for it. In this way, the masses can be tempted to keep buying products that they do not actually need and overproduction is no longer a problem. At the same time, unpredictable citizens are transformed into predictable consumers. Give the people bread and circuses and it will not trouble you; the feral herd has been tamed.
This fertilization of commercial interests with political theory led to the birth of the consumer society. US President Hoover, who took office in 1929, was the first to embrace the infant politically. In the following century it reached full maturity and stretched far beyond its native land.
Free market economics
Anyone who knows this history looks at advertising differently. Since Bernays, advertising has become propaganda, for the ideology of consumerism. A tool designed to manipulate desires and dampen genuine democratic involvement. We are given it daily in very high doses. It forces itself upon us and tempts us into irrational choices.
Advocates of a free market economy will have to be horrified. After all, a free market economy is based on individuals pursuing their own interests by making rational choices. In a free market economy, buyers are addressed by intellect rather than emotions, they are informed rather than enticed. A free market emancipates, the consumer society infantilizes.
Seen in this way, Black Friday loses its innocence, as the high mass of consumerism. However, this ideology has many fanatical followers. An afternoon of ‘shopping’ is generally accepted as a time activity, a walk-in closet is a standard wish for the home. Significant is also the enormous popularity of unboxing videos that show how someone unpacks a product. That is exactly how Bernays came up with it: the person who connects emotionally with a product in the hope of feeling better, more beautiful and happier.
But the opposite is true, according to years of research by the American psychologist Tim Kasser. The stronger the materialistic values in a society, the more unhappy and unhealthier its members. So it is high time to lose faith in consumerism; that perverse ideology can go to Spain in the bag.