Propaganda

This book describes in detail exactly what we are experiencing today, even though written 100 years ago.

This work from 1922 explains the new 'science' of propaganda discovered in WW1. They found the ability of professionals to persuade the populace to die and suffer for - What? ''From his observations on the Allied propaganda drives’ immense success (and his own stint as a U.S. war propagandist), and from his readings of Gustave LeBon, Graham Wallas and John Dewey, among others, Lippmann had arrived at the bleak view that “the democratic El Dorado” is impossible in modern mass society, whose members—by and large incapable of lucid thought or clear perception, driven by herd instincts and mere prejudice, and frequently disoriented by external stimuli—were not equipped to make decisions or engage in rational discourse.'' (I just read Gustave Le Bon’s “The Crowd: A Study Of the Popular Mind”. Great!) Wow! Society ''incapable of lucid thought''. Now what? '' 'Democracy' therefore requires a supra-governmental body of detached professionals to sift the data, think things through, and keep the national enterprise from blowing up or crashing to a halt. Although mankind surely can be taught to think, that educative process will be long and slow. In the meantime, the major issues must be framed, the crucial choices made, by 'the responsible administrator.' '' Requires a ''supranational governmental body''! Who is that? “It is on the men inside, working under conditions that are sound, that the daily administration of society must rest.” While Lippmann’s argument is freighted with complexities and tinged with the melancholy of a disillusioned socialist, Bernays’s adaptation of it is both simple and enthusiastic: “We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.” ''These “invisible governors” are a heroic elite, who coolly keep it all together, thereby “organizing chaos,” as God did in the Beginning. “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.” While Lippmann is meticulous—indeed, at times near-Proustian—in demonstrating how and why most people have such trouble thinking straight, Bernays takes all that for granted as “a fact.” ‘Pull the wires on the puppets!’ What? As God did? Who is this? ''It is a sort of managerial aristocracy that quietly determines what we buy and how we vote and what we deem as good or bad. “They govern us,” the author writes, “by their qualities of natural leadership, their ability to supply needed ideas and by their key position in the social structure.” Man . . . this is . . . bad . . . right? It . . . is . . . so . . . scary! I - ORGANIZING CHAOS II - THE NEW PROPAGANDA III - THE NEW PROPAGANDISTS IV - THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PUBLIC RELATIONS V - BUSINESS AND THE PUBLIC VI - PROPAGANDA AND POLITICAL LEADERSHIP VII - WOMEN’S ACTIVITIES AND PROPAGANDA VIII -PROPAGANDA FOR EDUCATION IX - PROPAGANDA IN SOCIAL SERVICE X - ART AND SCIENCE XI - THE MECHANICS OF PROPAGANDA WW1 changed everything - ''It was not until 1915 that governments first systematically deployed the entire range of modern media to rouse their populations to fanatical assent. Here was an extraordinary state accomplishment: mass enthusiasm at the prospect of a global brawl that otherwise would mystify those very masses, and that shattered most of those who actually took part in it. The Anglo-American drive to demonize “the Hun,” and to cast the war as a transcendent clash between Atlantic “civilization” and Prussian “barbarism,” made so powerful an impression on so many that the worlds of government and business were forever changed.'' Propaganda now rules! ''Today, however, a reaction has set in. The minority has discovered a powerful help in influencing majorities. It has been found possible so to mold the mind of the masses that they will throw their newly gained strength in the desired direction. In the present structure of society, this practice in inevitable. Whatever of social importance is done today, whether in politics, finance, manufacture, agriculture, charity, education, or other fields, must be done with the help of propaganda.'' ‘Minority dominates the majority’! Mold the mind of the ‘masses’! Wow! ''Propaganda is the executive arm of the invisible government. Universal literacy was supposed to educate the common man to control his environment. Once he could read and write he would have a mind fit to rule. So ran the democratic doctrine. But instead of a mind, universal literacy has given him rubber stamps, rubber stamps inked with advertising slogans, with editorials, with published scientific data, with the trivialities of the tabloids and the platitudes of history, but quite innocent of original thought.'' ‘Education kills original thought’! What deceit! How . . . so . . . demeaning! ''Each man’s rubber stamps are the duplicates of millions of others, so that when those millions are exposed to the same stimuli, all received identical imprints. It may seem an exaggeration to say that the American public gets most of its ideas in this wholesale fashion. The mechanism by which ideas are disseminated on a large scale is propaganda, in the broad sense of an organized effort to spread a particular belief or doctrine.'' ‘Everyone approves . . . wants . . . believes . . . exactly the same thing! Even if destructive! The balance of this book explains how this new 'propaganda' can/does function. Fascinating! (Rebecca Goldstein notes in her book on Gödel - ''He came to believe that there was a vast conspiracy, apparently in place for centuries, to suppress the truth “and make men stupid.” Those who had discovered the full power of a priori reason, men such as the seventeenth-century’s Leibniz and the twentieth-century’s Gödel, were, he believed, marked men.'' (Is this so different than Bernays? One sophisticated influence peddler, the other an ivory tower world famous logician! Amazing!) (See - ''Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes'', by Jacques Ellul. This focuses on the psychological/philosophical basis of propaganda. Outstanding!)

I have been doing investigations into the governing structure for a couple years. Books like The Unseen Hand, None Dare Call It Conspiracy, etc are all very interesting to me. I bought this book looking for an overview of how propaganda is utilized by the ruling elite. The material in this book largely centered around defining propaganda, and explaining its function in modern society, not about how people are "fooled" by propaganda. Quite the opposite actually, Bernays makes a strong case for why propaganda is not only not harmful, but is absolutely necessary; it needs to be used by politicians, organizations, religious groups in order to spread their message. Mark Crispin Miller summed it up great in the introduction: this book is basically propaganda for propaganda. One thing that shocked me about this book is the shear volume of typos and grammatical errors. I can say with no reservation that I have never read a book with so many mechanical errors. There is a misspelling just about every page. I've theorized why this could be, but that's a whole different story. All in all, it is a good introduction to the machinations of propaganda, but is by no means an all-encompassing outline of how it is used. I gave it four stars because some of the main points are repeated throughout the book, which makes it tiresome at times, but there are a lot of information that I previously had not known. The four star rating also takes into account the mechanical issues.

A classic showing propaganda and persuasive subterfuge are not new

The book prompted me to think deeper about every purchase decision, social interaction, and consumed news. I’ve read my fair share of sales and marketing books, and well familiar with the concept of purchasing decision based in emotions, impulses, habits, and group think. I’m also familiar with various cognitive biases, such as confirmation bias, selection bias, and illusion of control. So the book didn’t change my world, but rather confirmed and systematized what I already knew. The book provided theoretical underpinning of propaganda: how it came about in a complex and constantly evolving society a century ago, and where it evolved to by now. How propaganda methods started being used in political campaigns, continued into routine way of doing business in large corporations (aka public relationship), and permeated every sales & marketing strategy, and social media by now. The book starts with the phrase: “The conscious and organized manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society”. So there is nothing wrong with propaganda per se. It’s just a way to manage complex society by applying well-hidden selective filtering, and a means to organize chaos. Writing this review at the end of tumultuous 2020, the COVID19 year, it's interesting to reflect on the events on the society thru the lens of propaganda. What is objective information, and what are hidden influences, manipulations, half-truths, or plain lies. Well, time will tell. And this book is going to be helpful as well.

Propaganda seems like it is all around us and permeates our existence. It is one reason people get a bad taste in their mouth when the hear politics being discussed. Propaganda, otherwise known as Consumer Relations, as Bernays carefully lays out, is taught in our universities, and the ability to create and relay propaganda is virtually required from anyone in media or marketing. Propaganda is absolutely integral to political messages, including laying out justifications for wars, taxes, and new laws. It is used by District Attorneys in describing cases where they do prosecute, seemingly unfairly, or do not wish to prosecute, such as cases of police violence. It is used by politicians, soldiers, and the media to defend our attacks on foreign countries and to justify the immense expense involved in maintaining our multi-level armed forces. Believe it or not, Barneys, a nephew of Sigmund Freud, honed his expertise in the First World War creating the hatred towards Germans and slogans like, "The war to end all wars," in order to move a complacent, safe American public to move overseas and tip the scales of history. He was later employed by large corporations to change public perceptions of a wide range of products, from tobacco to cake mix. An easy, essential high school-level read, I believe it should follow "The Autobiography of Ben Franklin" in the curriculum.

The kindle version looks to be 128 pages whereas the in print version is 168. This may be a byproduct of font issues. There is an interesting first chapter title "order out of chaos." It makes me want to tear into morals and dogma. This is not the densest of reads. Honestly the first chapter is the densest where he tells you essentially "none of your thoughts are yours, because you are so damn propagandized." The first 50 or so pages of the book are where the meat is there are some interesting bits later on so don't do yourself a disservice and not at least skim it. He kinda points to a potential of collusion between education and media for the sake of wholesome propaganda or whatever in his chapter on education and in the conclusion he hints at the propaganda zinc force of film, but much of it past the first 50 pages will be autopilot skimming as he re-frames propagandistic if tools to fit the explored domain. He is a slime ball who thinks you are unworthy to govern your thoughts. This book is a great eye opener.

This is a shining example of the phrase, “He wrote the book on the subject” Aristotle literally wrote the book on “The Politics” and actually invented the word “politics” This book is the definitive work on Propaganda but is far shorter and easier to read than Aristotle. It is so good that I have given it to select friends as birthday presents, with the following note: Once you learn to see it, you will always see it and never not see it, so you hopefully “won’t get fooled again.” (quoting The Who)

Der Urtext zum Thema Propaganda, der Urtext zur Public Relation und der Urtext der Werbung. Das was wir immer und immer wieder hören wird zur Wahrheit, auch wenn es der größte Blödsinn ist. Der Neffe von Sigmund Freud analysierte die amerikanische Gesellschaft und propagierte Freuds Psychoanalyse auch in den USA. Freud untersuchte den einzelnen Menschen, Bernays die Massen und ihre Funktionsgesetze. — Edward Bernays „Die bewusste und intelligente Manipulation der organisierten Gewohnheiten und Meinungen der Massen ist ein wichtiges Element in der demokratischen Gesellschaft. Diejenigen, die diesen unsichtbaren Mechanismus der Gesellschaft manipulieren, bilden eine unsichtbare Regierung, die die wahre Regierungsmacht unseres Landes ist.“ Interessant ist es, dass es erst jetzt eine deutsche Übersetzung dieses Buches aus 1928 gibt. Als ob die Verlage und Medien dieses wichtige Buch im deutschen Sprachraum verschweigen wollten? Hat doch gerade Hitler und sein Propaganda Minister alles was Bernays beschreibt mit Punkt und Beistrich angewendet. Gerade wenn es Missbrauch der Grundlagen der Prinzipien der Propaganda gibt, sollten diese Prinzipien so vielen Menschen wie möglich zugänglich gemacht werden. Dieses schmale Buch mit seinen weniger als 90 Seiten sollte als Pflichtlektüre jedem Schüler durch ein derzeit in Schulen vernachlässigtes Fach “Medienerziehung“ zugänglich gemacht werden. Oder ist Totschweigen dieser Prinzipien der Werbung, der PR, der Manipulation der Massen, für die politischen Parteien und die Werbewirtschaft wichtiger als die Manipulation der öffentlichen Meinung transparent zu machen? Gerade jetzt, wo fake news überall auftauchen, ist dieses Buch ein Segen, zeigt es doch auf, dass die veröffentlichte Meinung einer direkten beabsichtigten Zielsetzung folgt und die hat sehr viel mit Macht und Kontrolle zu tun.

Me gusto ver la manera en que pueden controlar a las masas, y hacerles creer lo que quieran.

Publicado nos EUA em 1928, este livro se tornaria no manual de doutrinação político ideológica e faria de Edward Bernays, seu autor e sobrinho de Freud, o pai da profissão de relações públicas. Ele fundou essa ciência que prometia controlar as massas e vender de cigarros e mercadorias em geral a ideologias, candidatos e plataformas políticas. Essa é uma obra obrigatória a todos que desejam conhecer as estruturas invisíveis que governam nossas vidas!

This is a briliant CV. If you want to know the core reason why you are feminist, pro-gay, pro-human rights ... In sum, lobbies influence governments. But who influence lobbies and why. Here Bernays promotes his accomplishments.

This is the most amazing book of you want to understand about human psychology and how one would react