history of propaganda
Stewart Ewen Meets Edward Bernays exerpts...
Then, in the mid-1980s while working on another book — this one exploring the fateful link between image and power in contemporary life — I again ran into Mr. Bernays. This time it was primarily through his writings from the forties and fifties, when — as a steadfast student of mass persuasion — he helped to educate political leaders on the uses of the mass media, and to the particular advantages of visual symbols as instruments for what he christened the "engineering of consent." While he had, over a lifetime, written extensively about democracy, and had sermonized on the important role that public relations plays in a democratic society, Bernays, himself, was clearly no democrat. He expressed little respect for the average person's ability to think out, understand, or act upon the world in which they live.
"There are strange things about the culture," he intoned. "The average IQ of the American public is 100, did you know that?" Following what, for him, was the apparent inference to be drawn from this bit of information, Bernays sketched a picture of the public relations expert as a member of the "intelligent few" who advises a client on how to "deal with the masses... just by applying psychology."
As a member of that intellectual elite which guides the destiny of society, the PR "professional," Bernays explained, aims his craft at a general public which is essentially, and unreflectively, reactive. Working behind the scenes, out of public view, the public relations expert is "an applied social scientist," one educated to employ an understanding of "sociology, psychology, social psychology and economics" in order to influence and direct public attitudes. Throughout our conversation, Bernays' hallucination of democracy was one in which a highly educated class of opinion-molding tacticians were continuously at work, analyzing the social terrain, and adjusting the mental scenery from which the public mind, with its limited intellect, would derive its opinions. selected quotes from edward bernays' Propaganda. "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our government.
"We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is the logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized.
"Our invisible governors are, in many cases, unaware of the identity of their fellow members in the inner cabinet.
"They govern us by their qualities of natural leadership, their ability to supply needed ideas and by their key position in the social structure. Whatever attitude one chooses to take toward this condition, it remains a fact that in almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons - a trifling fraction of our hundred and twenty million [USA 1920s] - who understand the mental processes and mental patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world.
"It is not usually realized how necessary these invisible governors are to the orderly functioning of our life group. In theory, every citizen may vote for whom he pleases. Our constitution does not envisage political parties as part of the mechanism of government, and its framers seem not to have pictured to themselves the existence in our national politics of anything like the modern political machine. But American voters soon found that without organization and direction their individual votes, cast, perhaps, for dozens or hundreds of candidates, would produce nothing but confusion.
"Invisible government, in the shape of rudimentary political parties, arose almost overnight. Ever since then we have agreed, for the sake of simplicity and practicality, that party machines should narrow down the field of choice to two candidates, or at most three or four.
"In theory, every citizen makes up his mind on public questions and matters of private conduct. In practice, if all men had to study for themselves the abstruse economic, political, and ethical data involved in every question, they would find it impossible to come to a conclusion about anything. We have voluntarily agreed to let an invisible government sift the data and high-spot the outstanding issues so that our field of choice shall be narrowed to practical proportions.
"Formerly the rulers were the leaders. They laid out the course of history by the simple process of doing what they wanted. And if nowadays the successors of the rulers, those whose position or ability gives them power, can no longer do what they want without the approval of the masses, they find in propaganda a tool which is increasingly powerful in gaining that approval. Therefore, propaganda is here to stay. "It was, of course, the astounding success of propaganda during the war that opened the eyes of the intelligent few in all departments of life to the possibilities of regimenting the public mind. The American government and numerous patriotic agencies developed a technique which, to most persons accustomed to bidding for public acceptance, was new. They not only appealed to the individual by means of every approach - visual, graphic, and auditory - to support the national endeavour, but they also secured the cooperation of the key men in every group - persons whose mere word carried authority to hundreds of thousands of followers. They thus automatically gained the support of fraternal, religious, commercial, patriotic, social and local groups whose members took their opinions from their accustomed leaders and spokesmen, or from the periodical publications which they were accustomed to read and believe. At the same time, the manipulators of patriotic opinion made use of the mental cliches and the emotional habits of the public to produce mass reactions against the alleged atrocities, the terror and tyranny of the enemy. It was only natural, after the war ended, that intelligent persons should ask themselves whether it was not possible to apply a similar technique to the problems of peace.
"As a matter of fact, the practice of propaganda since the war has assumed very different forms from those prevalent twenty years ago. This new technique may fairly be called the new propaganda.
"It takes account not merely of the individual, nor even of the mass mind alone, but also and especially of the anatomy of society, with its interlocking group formations and loyalties. It sees the individual not only as a cell in the social organism but as a cell organized into the social unit. Touch a nerve at a sensitive spot and you get an automatic response from certain specific members of the organism."
[We may be getting the feeling that those Bernays quotations were from 1984 rather than 1928 so let us now go to another of his books Public Relations written in 1952 where we see he is still giving examples of propaganda from the time of World War I. This shows that techniques developed in that era were still relevant]
April 6 1917, the Committee of Public Information was set up, under the direction of George Creel, former editor of the Rocky Mountain News. Other members were the secretaries of War, Navy, and State. ...
"I worked with the Committee on Public Information in the United States and in Paris. I saw it grow from an idea to an organization of enthusiastic men and women in key centers throughout the world. ..."
How words won the war: "It bombarded the public unceasingly with enthusiastic reports of the nation's colossal war effort ... Dissenting voices were stilled, either by agreement with the press or by the persuasive action of the agents of the Department of Justice.
"Intellectual and emotional bombardment aroused Americans to a pitch of enthusiasm. The bombardment came at people from all sides - advertisements, news, volunteer speakers, posters, schools, theaters; millions of homes displayed service flags. The war aims and ideals were continually projected to the eyes and ears of the populace. These high-pressure methods were new at the time, but have become usual since then. ... "The most fantastic atrocity stories were believed. ... Later, the slogan - equally true - that "Words Won the War but Lost the Peace" came to remind us never to place too great a reliance on words. ...In public relations, as in all other pursuits, actions speak louder than words.
"Public relations activities in World War I never attained their full potentialities.
"Small groups of persons can, and do, make the rest of us think what they please about a given subject. But there are usually proponents and opponents of every propaganda, both of whom are equally eager to convince the majority."
Stewart Ewen wrote Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the social roots of Consumer Culture
woodrow wilson created the 'creel committee', to influence the population during wwl. the creel committee, is also known as the committee on public information, and was established by executive order on april 13, 1917: just days after wilson read his message of war to congress. the committee had some real big-boys in it. lipmann, bernays, etc. and it's express purpose was to produce "information" which purpose was to influence the public in favor of the war. the anti-war sentiment was intense for that war - and wilson had been elected on an anti-war platform - which he betrayed within 6 months of his election. the committee produced posters, link , and placed about a $1.5 million worth of donated newspaper and magazine ads. it organized professors, novelists and public speakers. the uncle sam poster is the most famous relic of that era. the purpose of the committee was to produce "information" and that is why i call it the department of propaganda - it wasn't information they produced, but propaganda, pure and simple. the main players were very adept spinners - by the standards of the time.
http://www.bway.net/~drstu/chapter.html
http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/profiles/pr_industry/pr1.htm
http://www.beyond-the-pale.co.uk/bernays.htm
{i have essays on ludlow, homestead, race riots, civil liberties, railway strikes etc., to put here as i find them.}