The Institute for Propaganda Analysis (IPA) was a U.S.-based organization operating from 1937 to 1942, composed of social scientists, opinion leaders, historians, educators, and journalists. Created by Kirtley Mather, Edward A. Filene, and Clyde R. Miller, because of the general concern that increased amounts of propaganda were decreasing the public's ability to think critically. The IPA's purpose was to spark rational thinking and provide a guide to help the public have well-informed discussions on current issues. "To teach people how to think rather than what to think." The IPA focused on domestic propaganda issues that might become possible threats to the democratic ways of life.
For the IPA, Nazism, communism, the conservative anti-communist movement, England’s foreign policy, and Latin American dictatorships were all undemocratic. By labeling these group as such, the IPA promoted a democratic society based on freedom of speech and citizen participation in government, and also attempted to accomplish concrete goals such as preventing the rise of Nazism in the America.
The IPA's great strength stemmed from its particular fusion of academic and practical progressivism into an organized anti-propaganda critique that institutionalized the tradition of muckraking and also applied this characteristically American critical approach to the discontents of the Depression.
Genesis
Edward A. Filene had amassed a fortune in meeting a mass demand, but he feared that democracy was threatened by propaganda preying upon the unsuspecting citizenry, so he asked Kirtley Mather to help him endow an effort to save democracy. A meeting on "education for democracy" was held March 29, 1937, at the University Club in Boston which attracted Alfred Adler, Lyman Bryson, Edward L. Bernays, and Clyde R. Miller among others. At a second meeting in New York City, Filene provided Miller with a check for $10,000, presumably to finance the Institute in the first year. Filene's Good Will Fund agreed on June 9 to continue the funding for three years.
The institute was incorporated on September 23, 1937. The initial board of directors was Clyde R. Miller, Robert S. Lynd, E. Ernest Johnson, James E. Mendenhall, and Robert K. Speer. Added to the board later were Charles A. Beard, Hadley Cantril, Ernest O. Melby, James T. Shotwell, and Percy S. Brown. The board elected its officers as follows: President: Cantril, V.P.: Melby, Sec.: Miller, Tr.:Speer
In October 1937 the IPA distributed 3,000 copies of an Announcement edition of the Propaganda Analysis bulletin, soliciting subscriptions. The first two weeks produced 750, and there were 2,500 subscribers in the first year.
Father Coughlin’s radio talks were selected by the IPA for analysis since they represented "a fairly typical borrowing of foreign anti-democracy propaganda methods by an American propagandist." Seven tricks of the propagandist were outlined and illustrated by reference to the radio talks in a book The Fine Art of Propaganda, edited by Alfred McClung Lee and Elizabeth Briant Lee. As Clyde Miller explained in the Preface, "So far as individuals are concerned, the art of democracy is the art of thinking and discussing independently together." The book is presented as a "candid and impartial study of the devices and apparent objectives of specialists in the distortion of public opinions." Chapters four through ten described the following propaganda tricks: Name-calling Glittering generalities Transfer Testimonial Plain folks Card stacking Bandwagon
Publications
To get their message across, the IPA distributed flyers, wrote several issues of the Propaganda Analysis Bulletin, and published a series of books, including:
Violet Edwards (1938) Group Leader's Guide to Propaganda Analysis
Alfred McClung Lee & Elizabeth Briant Lee (1939) The Fine Art of Propaganda
James A. Wechsler & Harold Lavine (1940) War Propaganda and the United States, reprinted 1972 by Garland Publishing Propaganda Analysis Propaganda: How To Recognize and Deal With It
The bulletin Propaganda Analysis indirectly targeted the mass public through newspapers, educators, public officials, and thought leaders. The IPA directly targeted the presidents and deans of national colleges, bishops and ministers, educational and religious periodicals, and education students by sending out flyers.