Horkheimer planned empirical propaganda research as cover to fund long-term theoretical work.

Evidence

My plan … is as follows. I need a couple of assistants who can initiate research in the style customary here as quickly as possible: intensive testing of radio programmes which are directly or indirectly arranged by the Committee, testing the more drastic propaganda materials which are used by other organizations and which the Committee considers inappropriate. In addition, interviews in regional and social groups before and after the application of single or combined propaganda methods proposed by the Committee. Once this sort of research is operating, I am hoping that an atmosphere suitable for preparing our own long-term studies of principles will develop. … There is therefore absolutely no point in starting any work in which the Institute is to be involved before that. Since Lewin’s [the psychologist Kurt Lewin’s] people are already developing feverish activity, I don’t want to stand before the Committee now with empty hands. The position is complicated by the fact that there are simply no competent experts in testing on the market. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1566

Categorization

• XREF: The Institute’s wartime dilemma over empirical research recalls the AJC’s Committee on Jewish Prejudice funding prop described in the broader American exile period; also echoes Lazarsfeld’s model from the Princeton Radio Project. — connects to: Horkheimer sought applied topics that could present his theory as expert social knowledge — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1338
• SEED: An essay angle: how exile funding pressures forced critical theorists to perform ‘usable’ empirical research as a cover for their real theoretical commitments — academic patronage as ideological disguise.

Broader Connections

• Horkheimer sought applied topics that could present his theory as expert social knowledge #expands (0.82) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1338