- Noam Chomsky: The world's two major propaganda systems, of the West and the Sovjet Union, they both decided to use the word 'socialism' to refer to the totalitarian system of the Sovjet Union. The West did it to discredit socialism, the Bolsheviks did it to try to gain some of the credit associated with genuine socialism. And when the world's two propaganda systems agree, it's going to be very hard for people to extricate themselves from it. So now the term 'socialism' has been degraded to mean the form of totalitarianism instituted by Lenin and carried through by Stalin.
- title card: The nature of the universe is such that ends can never justify the means. On the contrary, the means always determine the end. - Aldous Huxley
- [first lines]
- title card: If there is a devil in history, it is the power principle. - Mikhail Bakunin
- narratress: Give me a baby, and I can make any kind of man.
- Noam Chomsky: The Leninist system was one of the greatest blows that socialism suffered in the 20th century, maybe second only to fascism. As Lenin took power, one of his first acts was to destroy the socialist institutions that had arisen in the pre-Bolshevik period: Soviets, factory councils, constituent assembly, which was dominated by left-social revolutionaries and largely peasant-based, and of course he went to war against the Anarchists, a major war, he tried to wipe them out.
- Howard Zinn: Scapegoats!... The hope is that by deflecting the anger of people, which might be directed against the system itself, deflecting the anger against these other people, the system would save itself. In the South the black people became scapegoats, and directed the anger of white people. Poor white people in the South were the people who joined the KKK. These poor white people might have rebelled against the governmments of the South and against the national government, but now they were told that black people were the source of their problem.
- Elliott Layton: While it's interesting to look into the nature of modern society and see its fissures and fractures and stresses through multiple murderers, it should *not* be considered that these are the primary killers. Governments and politicians are the main killers.
- [last lines]
- narratress: During the Cold War and beyond, TV programming would increasingly resemble an experiment in fear-based conditioning applied on a global scale. The thesis of John B. Watson that fear, not love, is the guiding force in human society, would no longer be confined to the realm of theory. It would become our reality.