Edward Bernays Quotes

Men (people) are rarely aware of the real reasons which motivate their actions.

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 country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...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...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.

The great enemy of any attempt to change men's habits is inertia. Civilization is limited by intertia.

We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.

Modern business must have its finger continuously on the public pulse. It must understand the changes in the public mind and be prepared to interpret itself fairly and eloquently to changing opinion.

The public is not cognizant of the real value of education, and does not realize that education as a social force is not receiving the kind of attention it has the right to expect in a democracy.

There are invisible rulers who control the destinies of millions. It is not generally realized to what extent the words and actions of our most influential public men are dictated by shrewd persons operating behind the scenes.

Propaganda is the executive arm of the invisible government.

In place of thoughts it has impulses, habits, and emotions.

But being dependent, every day of the year and for year after year, upon certain politicians for news, the newspaper reporters are obliged to work in harmony with their news sources.

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.

The only propaganda which will ever tend to weaken itself as the world becomes more sophisticated and intelligent, is propaganda that is untrue or unsocial.

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 country.

The great enemy of any attempt to change men’s habits is inertia. Civilization is limited by inertia.

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. Each man's rubber stamps are the duplicates of millions of others, so that when those millions are exposed to the same stimuli, all receive 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.

Propaganda mainly tells us that Bernays’s true métier was to help giant players with their various sales and image problems.

No serious sociologist any longer believes that the voice of the people expresses any divine or specially wise and lofty idea. The voice of the people expresses the mind of the people, and that mind is made up for it by the group leaders in whom it believes and by those persons who understand the manipulation of public opinion. It is composed of inherited prejudices and symbols and cliches and verbal formulas supplied to them by the leaders.

Big business will still leave room for small business.

Now “public opinion” stood out as a force that must be managed, and not through clever guesswork but by experts trained to do that all-important job.

It is asked whether, in fact, the leader makes propaganda, or whether propaganda makes the leader. There is a widespread impression that a good press agent can puff up a nobody into a great man. The answer is the same as that made to the old query as to whether the newspaper makes public opinion or whether public opinion makes the newspaper. There has to be fertile ground for the leader and the idea to fall on. But the leader also has to have some vital seed to sow. To use another figure, a mutual need has to exist before either can become positively effective. Propaganda is of no use to the politician unless he has something to say which the public, consciously or unconsciously, wants to hear.

No matter how sophisticated, how cynical the public may become about publicity methods, it must respond to the basic appeals, because it will always need food, crave amusement, long for beauty, respond to leadership. If

The history of the industrial revolution shows how that power passed from the king and the aristocracy to the bourgeoisie. Universal suffrage and universal schooling reinforced this tendency, and at last even the bourgeoisie stood in fear of the com- mon people. For the masses promised to become king.

The great political problem in our modern democracy is how to induce our leaders to lead.

The three main elements of public relations are practically as old as society: informing people, persuading people, or integrating people with people. Of course, the means and methods of accomplishing these ends have changed as society has change. -Public Relations (1952)

That propaganda easily seduces even those whom it most horrifies is a paradox that Bernays grasped completely; and it is one that we must try at last to understand, if we want to change the world that Edward Bernays, among others, made for us.

Continuous interpretation is achieved by trying to control every approach to the public mind in such a manner that the public receives the desired impression, often without being conscious of it. High-spotting, on the other hand, vividly seizes the attention of the public and fixes it upon some detail or aspect which is typical of the entire enterprise.

Like its wartime prototype, the post-war propaganda drive was an immense success, as it persuaded not just businessmen but journalists and politicians that “the manufacture of consent,” in Walter Lippmann’s famous phrase, was a necessity throughout the public sphere.

It is the purpose of this book to explain the structure of the mechanism which controls the public mind, and to tell how it is manipulated by the special pleader who seeks to create public acceptance for a particular idea or commodity. It will attempt at the same time to find the due place in the modern democratic scheme for this new propaganda and to suggest its gradually evolving code of ethics and practice.

The only difference between “propaganda” and “education,” really, is in the point of view. The advocacy of what we believe in is education. The advocacy of what we don’t believe in is propaganda.

The great Allied campaign to celebrate (or sell) Democracy, etc., was a venture so successful, and, it seemed, so noble, that it suddenly legitimized such propagandists, who, once the war had ended, went right to work massaging or exciting various publics on behalf of entities like General Motors, Procter & Gamble, John D. Rockefeller, General Electric.

Bernays’s tone is managerial, not millenarian, nor does he promise that his methodology will turn this world into a modern paradise. His vision seems quite modest. The world informed by “public relations” will be but “a smoothly functioning society,” where all of us are guided imperceptibly throughout our lives by a benign elite of rational manipulators.

People accept the facts which come to them through existing channels. They like to hear new things in accustomed ways. They have neither the time nor the inclination to search for facts that are not readily available to them.

Truth is mighty and must prevail, and if any body of men believe that they have discovered a valuable truth, it is not merely their privilege but their duty to disseminate that truth. If they realize, as they quickly must, that this spreading of truth can be done upon a large scale and effectively only by organized effort, they will make use of the press and the platform as the best means to give it wide circulation. Propaganda becomes vicious and reprehensive only when its authors consciously and deliberately disseminate what they know to be lies, or when they aim at effects which they know to be prejudicial to the common good.

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.

Using Maslow’s insights, you can define higher-level values appropriate to your message, brand, and audience. Then, using what we learn from Joseph Campbell, you can turn those values into a resonant moral of the story and create a story structure that will appeal to the heroic potential in your audiences. These models show us a clear alternative to the dark, limited view of human nature inspired by Freud and brought to the marketplace by men like Edward Bernays.

control

no matter how objectionable the character of a paper may be, it is always a trifle better than the patrons on whom it relies for its support.

Instead of assaulting sales resistance by direct attack, he is interested in removing sales resistance.

Man's thoughts and actions are compensatory substitutes for desires which he has been obliged to suppress.

The truth is that while it appears to be forming the public opinion on fundamental matters, the press is often conforming to it.

Propaganda is aimed mainly at Bernays’s potential corporate clientele. And yet the author variously masks that plutocratic bias.

The myth of the detached manipulator and compliant crowd has, since the Twenties, also been abundantly re-echoed by academic students of mass suasion.

propaganda tended not to be the damning term we throw around today. The word had been coined in 1622, when Pope Gregory XV, frightened by the global spread of Protestantism, urgently proposed an addition to the Roman curia. The Office for the Propagation of the Faith (Congregatio de propaganda fide) would supervise the Church’s missionary efforts in the New World and elsewhere: “They are to take account of and to deal with each and every concern for the spread of the faith throughout the world.

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.

In accordance with the prevailing conceptions in the U.S., there is no infringement on democracy if a few corporations control the information system: in fact, that is the essence of democracy. In the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, the leading figure of the public relations industry, Edward Bernays, explains that “the very essence of the democratic process” is “the freedom to persuade and suggest,” what he calls “the engineering of consent.” “A leader,” he continues, “frequently cannot wait for the people to arrive at even general understanding … Democratic leaders must play their part in … engineering … consent to socially constructive goals and values,” applying “scientific principles and tried practices to the task of getting people to support ideas and programs”; and although it remains unsaid, it is evident enough that those who control resources will be in a position to judge what is “socially constructive,” to engineer consent through the media, and to implement policy through the mechanisms of the state. If the freedom to persuade happens to be concentrated in a few hands, we must recognize that such is the nature of a free society.

If low price is the only basis of competition with rival products, similarly produced, there ensues a cut-throat competition which can end only by taking all the profit and incentive out of the industry. The logical way out of this dilemma is for the manufacturer to develop some sales appeal other than mere cheapness, to give the product, in the public mind, some other attraction, some idea that will modify the product slightly, some element of originality that will distinguish it from products in the same line. Thus,

Edward Bernays, ojciec Public Relations, powiedział: “stwórz odpowiednie środowisko dla pragnień, a produkty będą sprzedawały się same”.

The public is not an amorphous mass which can be molded at will, or dictated to. Both business and the public have their own personalities which must somehow be brought into friendly agreement.

The average citizen is the world’s most efficient censor. His own mind is the greatest barrier between him and the facts. His own “logic-proof compartments,” his own absolutism are the obstacles which prevent him from seeing in terms of experience and thought rather than in terms of group reaction.

A man sits in an office deciding what stocks to buy. He imagines, no doubt, that he is planning his purchases according to his own judgment. In actual fact his judgment is a melange of impressions stamped on his mind by outside influences which unconsciously control his thought. He buys a certain railroad stock because it was in the headlines yesterday and hence is the one which comes most prominently to his mind; because he has a pleasant recollection of a good dinner on one of its fast trains; because it has a liberal labor policy, a reputation for honesty; because he has been told that J. P. Morgan owns some of its shares.

…men are very largely actuated by motives which they conceal from themselves…It is evident that the successful propagandist must understand the true motives and not be content to accept the reasons which men give for what they do.

Undoubtedly the public is becoming aware of the methods which are being used to mold its opinions and habits. If the public is better informed about the processes of its life, it will be so much the more receptive to reasonable appeals to its own interests. No matter how sophisticated, how cynical the public may become about publicity methods, it must respond to the basic appeals, because it will always need food, crave amusement, long for beauty, respond to leadership. If the public becomes more intelligent in its commercial demands, commercial firms will meet the new standards. If it becomes weary of the old methods used to persuade it to accept a given idea or commodity, its leaders will present their appeals more intelligently. Propaganda will never die out. Intelligent men must realize that propaganda is the modern instrument by which they can fight for productive ends and help to bring order out of chaos.

The systematic study of mass psychology revealed…the potentialities of invisible government of society by manipulation of the motives which actuate man in the group…[these studies] established that the group has mental characteristics distinct from those of the individual, and is motivated by impulses and emotions which cannot be explained on the basis of what we know of individual psychology. So the question naturally arose: If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it?

Bernays sold the myth of propaganda as a wholly rational endeavor, carried out methodically by careful experts skilled enough to lead “public opinion.” Consistently he casts himself as a supreme manipulator, mastering the responses of a pliable, receptive population. “Conscious and intelligent manipulation,” “invisible governors,” “they who pull the wires which control the public mind,” “shrewd persons operating behind the scenes,” “dictators exercising great power,” and, below them, people working “as if actuated by the touch of a button”—these are but a few expressions of the icy scientistic paradigm that evidently drove his propaganda practice, and that colored all his thinking on the subject. The propagandist rules. The propagandized do whatever he would have them do, exactly as he tells them to, and without knowing it.

The Century of the Self delineated expertly how the theories of Sigmund Freud were deployed by his nephew Edward Bernays to create the profession of PR and generate the consumer boom of the fifties. Prior to the inclusion of psychological principles in sales, products were sold on the basis of utility:

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.

The public relations counsel must deal with the fact that persons who have little knowledge of a subject almost invariably form definite and positive judgments upon that subject.

It is axiomatic that men who know little are often intolerant of a point of view that is contrary to their own.

What are the true reasons why the purchaser is planning to spend his money on a new car instead of a piano? Because he has decided that he wants the commodity called locomotion more than he wants the commodity called music? Not altogether. He buys a car, because it is at the moment the group custom to buy cars. The modern propagandist therefore sets to work to create circumstances which will modify that custom . . . He will endeavor to develop public acceptance of the idea of a music room in the home. This he may do, for example, by organizing an exhibition of period music rooms designed by well-known decorators who themselves exert an influence on the buying groups . . . Then, in order to create dramatic interest in the exhibit, he stages an event or ceremony. To this ceremony key people, persons known to influence the buying habits of the public, such as a famous violinist, a popular artist, and a society leader, are invited. These key persons affect other groups, lifting the idea of the music room to a place in the public consciousness which it did not have before. The juxtaposition of these leaders, and the idea which they are dramatizing, are then projected to the wider public through various publicity channels . . . The music room will be accepted because it has been made the thing. And the man or woman who has a music room, or has arranged a corner of the parlor as a musical corner, will naturally think of buying a piano. It will come to him as his own idea.

If you represent the plumbing and heating business, you are the mortal enemy of the textile industry, because warmer homes mean lighter clothes. If you represent the printers, how can you shake hands with the radio equipment man?…

In World War One it was the propaganda of our side that first made “propaganda” so opprobrious a term. Fouled by close association with “the Hun,” the word did not regain its innocence—not even when the Allied propaganda used to tar “the Hun” had been belatedly exposed to the American and British people. Indeed, as they learned more and more about the outright lies, exaggerations and half-truths used on them by their own governments, both populations came, understandably, to see “propaganda” as a weapon even more perfidious than they had thought when they had not perceived themselves as its real target. Thus did the word’s demonic implications only harden through the Twenties, in spite of certain random efforts to redeem it.

People accept the facts which come to them through existing channels. They like to hear new things in accustomed ways. They have neither the time nor the inclination to search for facts that are not readily available to them. The expert, therefore, must advise first upon the form of action desirable for his client and secondly must utilize the established mediums of communication, in order to present to the public a point of view. This is true whether it is that of a majority or minority, old or new personality, institution or group which desires to change by modification or intensification the store of knowledge and the opinion of the public.

The state university is supported by grants from the people of the state, voted by the state legislature. In theory, the degree of support which the university receives is dependent upon the degree of acceptance accorded it by the voters. The state university prospers according to the extent to which it can sell itself to the people of the state. The state university is therefore in an unfortunate position unless its president happens to be a man of outstanding merit as a propagandist and a dramatizer of educational issues. Yet if this is the case--if the university shapes its whole policy toward gaining the support of the state legislature--its educational function may suffer. It may be tempted to base its whole appeal to the public on its public service, real or supposed, and permit the education of its individual students to take care of itself. It may attempt to educate the people of the state at the expense of its own pupils. This may generate a number of evils, to the extent of making the university a political instrument, a mere tool of the political group in power.

Никой сериозен социолог вече не смята, че гласът на народа изразява някаква божествена или особено мъдра и възвишена идея. Гласът на народа изразява съзнанието на народа, а то от своя страна е моделирано от груповите лидери, в които народът вярва, и от тези, които умеят да манипулират общественото мнение. То е съставено от унаследените предразсъдъци, символи, клишета и словесни формули, предоставени от лидерите.

It is axiomatic that men who know little are often intolerant of a point of view that is contrary to their own. The bitterness that has been brought about by arguments on public questions is proverbial. Lovers have been parted by bitter quarrels on theories of pacificism or militarism; and when an argument upon an abstract question engages opponents they often desert the main line of arguments in order to abuse each other.

What are the true reasons why the purchaser is planning to spend his money on a new car instead of a piano? Because he has decided that he wants the commodity called locomotion more than he wants the commodity called music? Not altogether. He buys a car, because it is at the moment the group custom to buy cars. The modern propagandist therefore sets to work to create circumstances which will modify that custom. He appeals perhaps to the home instinct which is fundamental. He will endeavor to develop public acceptance of the idea of a music room in the home. This he may do, for example, by organizing an exhibition . . . key people, persons known to influence the buying habits of the public, such as a famous violinist, a popular artist, and a society leader, are invited. These key persons affect other groups, lifting the idea of the music room to a place in the public consciousness which it did not have before. The juxtaposition of these leaders, and the idea which they are dramatizing, are then projected to the wider public through various publicity channels . . . The music room will be accepted because it has been made the thing. And the man or woman who has a music room, or has arranged a corner of the parlor as a musical corner, will naturally think of buying a piano. It will come to him as his own idea.

When the interval between the intellectual classes and the practical classes is too great,” says the historian Buckle, “the former will possess no influence, the latter will reap no benefits.” Propaganda bridges this interval in our modern complex civilization. Only through the wise use of propaganda will our government, considered as the continuous administrative organ of the people, be able to maintain that intimate relationship with the public which is necessary in a democracy.

It is obvious that politics would gain much in prestige if the money-raising campaign were conducted candidly and publicly, like the campaigns for the war funds. Charity drives might be made excellent models for political funds drives. The elimination of the little black bag element in politics would raise the entire prestige of politics in America, and the public interest would be infinitely greater if the actual participation occurred earlier and more constructively in the campaign.

How does the public relations counsel approach any particular problem? First he must analyze his client's problem and his client's objective. Then he must analyze the public he is trying to reach. He must devise a plan of action for the client to follow and determine the methods and the organs of distribution available for reaching his public. Finally he must try to estimate the interaction between the public he seeks to reach and his client. How will his client's case strike the public mind? And by public mind here is meant that section or those sections of the public which must be reached.

It is chiefly the psychologists of the school of Freud who have pointed out that many of man’s thoughts and actions are compensatory substitutes for desires which he has been obliged to suppress. A thing may be desired not for its intrinsic worth or usefulness, but because he has unconsciously come to see in it a symbol of something else, the desire for which he is ashamed to admit to himself. A man buying a car may think he wants it for purposes of locomotion…He may really want it because it is a symbol of social position, an evidence of his success in business, or a means of pleasing his wife.

These are really only obvious forms of what I have called the new competition. The old competition was that between the members of the each trade organization. One phase of the new competition is that between the trade associations themselves—between you gentlemen who represent those industries. Inter-commodity competition is the new competition between products used alternatively for the same purpose. Inter-industrial competition is the new competition between apparently unrelated industries which affect each other or between such industries as compete for the consumer’s dollar—and that means practically all industries…

It is chiefly the psychologists of the school of Freud who have pointed out that many of man’s thoughts and actions are compensatory substitutes for desires which he has been obliged to suppress. A thing may be desired not for its intrinsic worth or usefulness, but because he has unconsciously come to see in it a symbol of something else, the desire for which he is ashamed to admit to himself. A man buying a car may think he wants it for purposes of locomotion, whereas the fact may be that he would really prefer not to be burdened with it, and would rather walk for the sake of his health. He may really want it because it is a symbol of social position, an evidence of his success in business, or a means of pleasing his wife.

The other pioneer of political public relations was Edward Bernays, a nephew of Sigmund Freud, who sharpened his skills writing prowar propaganda for the Committee on Public Information during World War I. After the war he decided that the word “propaganda” had a negative ring, due to its use by the defeated Germans; he came up with a new phrase, “public relations,” which has a distinctly more Madison Avenue sound. In 1928, in his influential Propaganda, Bernays claimed that manipulating public opinion was a necessary part of democracy. According to his daughter, Bernays believed the common people were “not to be relied upon, [so] they had to be guided from above.” She would later say that her father believed in “enlightened despotism”—a system through which intelligent men such as himself would keep the mob in line through the clever use of subliminal PR campaigns. His clients included not only such megacorporations as Procter & Gamble, the United Fruit Company, and the American Tobacco Company (through clever advertising campaigns, he sought to remove the traditional stigma against women smoking), but also Republican president Calvin Coolidge. Bernays did not feel it would be strategic to allay the public’s fear of communism and urged his clients to play on popular emotions and magnify that fear. His work laid some of the foundation of the McCarthyite hysteria of the 1950s. Life magazine named Bernays one of the one hundred most influential Americans of the twentieth century.

For society, the interesting outcome of this situation is that progress seldom occurs through the abrupt expulsion by a group of its old ideas in favor of new ideas, but rather through the rearrangement of the thought of the individuals in these groups with respect to each other and with respect to the entire membership of society. It is precisely this interlapping of groups—the variety, the inconsistency of the average man’s mental, social and psychological commitments which makes possible the gradual change from one state of affairs or from one state of mind to another. Few people are life members of one group and of one group only. The ordinary person is a very temporary member of a great number of groups. This is one of the most powerful forces making for progress in society because it makes for receptivity and open-mindedness.

« Nous sommes toujours en 1929 et, cette année-là, George Washington Hill (1884-1946), président de l’American Tobacco Co., décide de s'attaquer au tabou qui interdit à une femme de fumer en public, un tabou qui, théoriquement, faisait perdre à sa compagnie la moitié de ses profits. Hill embauche Bernays, qui, de son côté, consulte aussitôt le psychanalyste Abraham Arden Brill (1874-1948), une des premières personnes à exercer cette profession aux États-Unis. Brill explique à Bernays que la cigarette est un symbole phallique représentant le pouvoir sexuel du mâle : s’il était possible de lier la cigarette à une forme de contestation de ce pouvoir, assure Brill, alors les femmes, en possession de leurs propres pénis, fumeraient. La ville de New York tient chaque année, à Pâques, une célèbre et très courue parade. Lors de celle de 1929, un groupe de jeunes femmes avaient caché des cigarettes sous leurs vêtements et, à un signal donné, elles les sortirent et les allumèrent devant des journalistes et des photographes qui avaient été prévenus que des suffragettes allaient faire un coup d’éclat. Dans les jours qui suivirent, l’événement était dans tous les journaux et sur toutes les lèvres. Les jeunes femmes expliquèrent que ce qu'elles allumaient ainsi, c'était des « flambeaux de la liberté » (torches of freedom). On devine sans mal qui avait donné le signal de cet allumage collectif de cigarettes et qui avait inventé ce slogan ; comme on devine aussi qu'il s'était agi à chaque fois de la même personne et que c'est encore elle qui avait alerté les médias. Le symbolisme ainsi créé rendait hautement probable que toute personne adhérant à la cause des suffragettes serait également, dans ta controverse qui ne manquerait pas de s'ensuivre sur la question du droit des femmes de fumer en public, du côté de ceux et de celles qui le défendaient - cette position étant justement celle que les cigarettiers souhaitaient voir se répandre. Fumer étant devenu socialement acceptable pour les femmes, les ventes de cigarettes à cette nouvelle clientèle allaient exploser. » Norman Baillargeon, préface du livre d’Edward Bernays, « Propaganda ». (É. Bernays était le neveu de S. Freud)

I’ve been discussing elite attitudes toward democracy. I sketched a line from the first democratic revolution, with its fear and contempt for the rascal multitude who were asking for ridiculous things like universal education, health care, and democratization of law, wanting to be ruled by countrymen like themselves who know the people’s sores, not by knights and gentlemen who just oppress them. From there to the second major democratic revolution establishing the US Constitution, which was, as discussed last time, a Framers’ Coup, the title of the main scholarly work, a coup by elites that the author describes as a conservative counterrevolution against excessive democracy. On to the twentieth century and such leading progressive theorists of democracy as Walter Lippmann, Edward Bernays, Harold Lasswell, and Reinhold Niebuhr, and their conception that the public has to be put in its place. They’re spectators, not participants. The responsible men, the elite, have to be protected from the trampling and the roar of the bewildered herd, who have to be kept in line with necessary illusions, emotionally potent oversimplifications, and, in general, engineering of consent, which has become a gigantic industry devoted to some aspects of the task, while responsible intellectuals take care of others. The men of best quality through the ages have to be self-indoctrinated, as Orwell discussed. They must internalize the understanding that there are certain things it just wouldn’t do to say. It must be so fully internalized that it becomes as routine as taking a breath. What else could anyone possibly believe? As long as all of this is in place, the system functions properly, with no crises. This picture, I think, captures crucial features of thought control in the more free societies, but it is misleading in essential ways. Most importantly, it largely omitted the constant popular struggles to extend the range of democracy, with many successes. Even in the last generation, there have been quite substantial successes. Such successes typically lead to a reaction. Those with power and privilege don’t relinquish it easily. The neoliberal period that we’re now enduring, long in planning, is such a reaction.

CONTROLAR EL DESEO DE DEMOCRACIA Todo eso ocurrió hace ciento cincuenta años; en Inglaterra, antes. Se han dedicado esfuerzos enormes a inculcar el Nuevo Espíritu de la Época y hay industrias fundamentales consagradas a la labor: relaciones públicas, publicidad y márketing en general, todo lo cual suma una parte enorme del producto interior bruto. Esas industrias se aplican en lo que el gran economista político Thorstein Veblen llamó «fabricación de deseos».14 En palabras de los propios empresarios, la labor consiste en dirigir a la gente hacia «cosas superficiales» de la vida, como el «consumo en moda». De esa forma la gente puede atomizarse, se pueden separar unos de otros, ya que solo se busca el beneficio personal, y se aleja a las personas del peligroso esfuerzo de pensar por sí mismas y enfrentarse a la autoridad. Edward Bernays, uno de los fundadores de la industria moderna de las relaciones públicas, denominó «ingeniería del consentimiento» al proceso de modelar opiniones, actitudes y percepciones. Bernays era un respetado progresista, al estilo de Wilson, Roosevelt y Kennedy, igual que su coetáneo, el periodista Walter Lippmann, el intelectual público más destacado de Estados Unidos en el siglo XX y alabó «la ingeniería del consentimiento» como «un nuevo arte» en la práctica de la democracia. Ambos reconocieron que la ciudadanía debe ser «puesta en su lugar», marginada y controlada; por su propio interés, por supuesto. La gente era demasiado «estúpida e ignorante» para que se le permita gobernar sus propios asuntos. Esa tarea tenía que dejarse a una «minoría inteligente», a la que hay que proteger «de las trampas y el rugido [del] rebaño desorientado» los «independientes ignorantes y entrometidos»; la «multitud traviesa», como la llaman sus predecesores del siglo XVII. El papel de la población general en una sociedad democrática que funcionara como es debido consistía en ser «espectadores» no «participantes en la acción».15 Y a los espectadores no se les debe permitir ver demasiado. El presidente Obama ha impuesto nuevos criterios para salvaguardar este principio. De hecho, Obama ha castigado a más gente que tira de la manta que todos los presidentes anteriores juntos, todo un éxito para un gobierno que llegó al poder prometiendo transparencia. Entre los muchos temas que no son asunto del rebaño desorientado están las relaciones exteriores. Cualquiera que haya estudiado documentos secretos desclasificados habrá descubierto que, en gran medida, su clasificación se concibió para proteger a las autoridades del escrutinio público. A escala nacional, la plebe no tenía que oír el consejo de los tribunales a grandes empresas: que deberían consagrar algunos esfuerzos muy visibles a buenas obras, de manera que una «opinión pública excitada» no descubriera los enormes beneficios que el Estado niñera les proporcionaba.16

Entrambi sostenevano (Edward Bernays e Walter Lippmann) che i cittadini devono essere <>, ossia marginalizzati e tenuti sotto controllo, nel loro stesso interesse ovviamente. La gente è troppo <> per consentirle di gestire autonomamente i propri affari. Quel compito spetta invece alla <>, che va protetta <>, dagli <>; insomma dalla <>, come la chiamavano i loro predecessori del diciassettesimo secolo. I cittadini devono essere <>, non <>, in una democrazia che funzioni a dovere.

We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. —EDWARD BERNAYS

Однако американские избиратели быстро при- шли к выводу, что их индивидуальные голоса, отдаваемые десяткам и сотням различных кандидатов, обернутся разве что путаницей для всех, если руковод- ство процессом не будет организовано должным образом. Почти мгновенно по- явились первые политические партии как видимое воплощение тайного пра- вительства. С тех пор мы ничего не имеем против того, что поле выбора должно быть сужено до двух, максимум трех-четырех кандидатов из чисто практических соображений, для удоб- ства и простоты. Теоретически каждый гражданин принимает собственные решения любым вопросам по и личным, и обще- ственным. Однако на практике если бы всем людям приходилось всякий раз са- мостоятельно разбираться в экономиче- ских, политических и нравственных премудростях, то в результате они вряд ли пришли бы к какому-либо заключе- нию о чем бы то ни было. Поэтому мы добровольно позволили незримому пра- вительству отсеивать ненужную инфор- мацию и делать акцент на значимых мо- ментах, что сузило наше поле выбора до практически приемлемых размеров.

(...) спрос рождал предложение, в наши дни предложение должно активно создавать соответствующий уровень спроса. Фабрика, потенциально способная снабдить своим товаром целый континент, не может позволить себе ждать, пока общественность соизволит попросить об этом товаре; с помощью рекламы и пропаганды она должна поддерживать постоянный контакт с широкой общественностью, чтобы гарантировать себе постоянный спрос (только он и может обеспечить рентабельность дорогостоящего производства). Для этого требуется гораздо более сложная, чем раньше, система дистрибуции. Создание потребителей вот новая проблема. Производитель должен разбираться не только в собственном бизнесе - производстве конкретного товара, но и в структуре, в личностных характеристиках и предрассудках потенциально общественности.

Однако американские избиратели быстро пришли к выводу, что их индивидуальные голоса, отдаваемые десяткам и сотням различных кандидатов, обернутся разве что путаницей для всех, если руководство процессом не будет организовано должным образом. Почти мгновенно появились первые политические партии как видимое воплощение тайного правительства. С тех пор мы ничего не имеем против того, что поле выбора должно быть сужено до двух, максимум трех-четырех кандидатов из чисто практических соображений, для удобства и простоты. Теоретически каждый гражданин принимает собственные решения любым вопросам по и личным, и общественным. Однако на практике если бы всем людям приходилось всякий раз самостоятельно разбираться в экономических, политических и нравственных премудростях, то в результате они вряд ли пришли бы к какому-либо заключению о чем бы то ни было. Поэтому мы добровольно позволили незримому правительству отсеивать ненужную информацию и делать акцент на значимых моментах, что сузило наше поле выбора до практически приемлемых размеров.

Edward Bernays vai prefigurar, na sua pessoa individual, todo um ramo da indústria da propaganda e das relações públicas que iria lograr posicionar o capitalismo e sua produção de mercadorias na instância do desejo e das aspirações inconscientes da população, primeiro nos Estados Unidos,

With intimidating financial resources and shrewd planning, the United Fruit Company thus deployed a platoon of lobbyists and publicists at a cost of over a half million dollars a year to convince Americans that something evil was afoot in guatemala. The company worked both the left and the right of the American political leadership and won the backing of both liberals and conservatives for its policies in Guatemala. This campaign, so ably executed by Edward Bernays, Thomas Corcoran, John Clements and Spruille Braden, had a remarkable impact on the U.S. government.

The counsel on public relations, after examination of the sources of established beliefs, must either discredit the old authorities or create new authorities by making articulate a mass opinion against the old belief or in favor of the new.

When the interval between the intellectual classes and the practical classes is too great,” says the historian Buckle, “the former will possess no influence, the latter will reap no benefits.

Успех деятельности любого правительства — монархического, конституционного, демократического или коммунистического — зависит от молчаливого согласия общественного мнения; на самом деле правительство является таковым только благодаря этому согласию общественности. Промышленность, муниципальные службы, образование — практически все области, представляющие любые концепции или товары, вне зависимости от того, принадлежат эти идеи большинству или меньшинству, могут преуспеть только при наличии одобрения общественным мнением.

Какими бы способами политик ни привлекал внимание к этому вопросу, он сделает так, что общественность узнает о проблеме еще до того, как он лично обратится к ней. А потом, когда он будет выступать перед миллионами радиослушателей, ему не придется силой заталкивать аргументы в горло общественности, думающей о других вещах и раздраженной попытками привлечь ее внимание. Напротив, он будет отвечать на возникшие у людей вопросы, выражая эмоциональную потребность публики, которая к этому моменту уже попалась в ловушку интереса к предмету.

Величайшая политическая проблема современной демократии заключается в том, чтобы заставить наших лидеров руководить. Постулат «глас народа глас Божий» склонен превращать выборных представителей в бесправных слуг своих избирателей. Несомненно, отчасти B этом таится причина политической бесплодности Америки, на которую постоянно сетуют некоторые американские критики. Ни один серьезный социолог больше не верит в то, что глас народа выражает какие-то божественные, особо мудрые или возвышенные мысли. Глас народа выражает мнение людей, а это мнение создается лидерами групп, которым люди верят, и теми членами общества, которые понимают, как управлять массовым мнением.

Когда пропасть между интеллектуалами и рабочим классом слишком велика, первые не будут иметь никакого влияния, вторые ничего от этого не выиграют.

Politics was the first big business in America.

Edward Bernays demostró a finales de la década de los veinte que el consumo basado en las necesidades es mucho más limitado que el consumo basado en los deseos, y que la publicidad debe reorientar sus mensajes para dejar de hablar de las virtudes específicas de los productos y centrarse en alabar la vanidad de sus consumidores. Las necesidades son finitas y saciables, pero los deseos son infinitos e insaciables, especialmente si son deseos de narcisismo, identidad y triunfo social.

If you can influence the leaders, either with or without their conscious cooperation, you automatically influence the group which they sway.

thing may be desired not for its intrinsic worth or usefulness, but because he has unconsciously come to see in it a symbol of something else, the desire for which he is ashamed to admit to himself.

The public relations counsel is not needed to persuade people to standardize their points of view or to persist in their established beliefs. The established point of view becomes established by satisfying some real or assumed human need.

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 country." -

During this psychological transformation, the ordinary anchors of everyday life fell away for many working Americans. Family, community, tradition, and certainty were shaken apart by the economic force of the new—urban, postindustrial, and corporate—brand of capitalism. The sense of a person's self, which had previously been socially defined, moved into the interior of each individual's life and mind. Gradually, another concept of the self emerged as capitalism moved into this new stage, and sales or leisured consumption replaced the older emphasis on production and honest, hard work. This transition marked a shift toward a new type of person, one “predicated on the effectiveness of sales technique or the attractiveness of the individual salesperson. Personal magnetism replaced craftsmanship; technique replaced moral integrity.”85 The pervasive anxiety of this era led Americans to look for leadership anywhere they could find it. Three new areas promised relief. First, a new, popular psychology of personality offered to teach Americans how to transform themselves into people with “an intensely private sense of well being.” Self-pleasure and self-satisfaction now became the purpose of individual existence rather than a by-product of a well-lived life, and this ideology conveniently dovetailed with the new consumerism.86 Not surprisingly, then, a second transformative force emerged as the emerging field of advertising co-opted psychology and drafted psychologists like John B. Watson, A. A. Brill, and Sigmund Freud's brilliant nephew Edward Bernays into its well-paying service. On the advice and example of these men, copywriters began to suggest to consumers that they could transform their position in the social and business hierarchy by buying and displaying the correct products and behaviors. The new generation of ads was highly motivational.

Deep State”—the Invisible Government The terms “invisible government,” “shadow government,” and more recently “Deep State” have been used to describe the secretive, occult, and international banking and business families that control financial institutions, both political parties, and cabals within various intelligence agencies in Britain and America. Edward L. Bernays, a pioneer in the field of propaganda, spoke of the “invisible government” as the “true ruling power of our country.” He said, “We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.”40 “The political process of the United States of America [is] under attack by intelligence agencies and individuals in those agencies,” U.S. representative Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) said. “You have politicization of agencies that is resulting in leaks from anonymous, unknown people, and the intention is to take down a president. Now, this is very dangerous to America. It’s a threat to our republic; it constitutes a clear and present danger to our way of life.”41 Emotional Contagion One of the reasons why the Deep State has been able to hide in plain sight is because it controls the mainstream media in the United States. Despite the growing evidence of its existence, the media largely denies this reality. David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker, wrote an article titled, “There Is No Deep State: The Problem in Washington Is Not a Conspiracy Against the President; It’s the President Himself.” Like the “thought police” in George Orwell’s 1984—a classic book about a dystopian future where critical thought is suppressed by a totalitarian regime—the Deep State uses the media to program the population according to the dictates of Big Brother and tell people in effect that “WAR IS PEACE,” “FREEDOM IS SLAVERY,” and “IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.”42 Many of the largest social media platforms are used by the Deep State for surveillance and to influence the masses. Many people think social media is just for personal fun and networking with friends, family, and business associates. However, this innocent activity enables powerful computer networks to create detailed profiles of people’s political and moral beliefs and buying habits, as well as a deep analysis of their psychological conflicts, emotional problems, and pretty much anything Big Brother wants to know. Most people don’t understand the true extent of surveillance now occurring. For at least a decade, digital flat-screen televisions, cell phones and smartphones, laptop computers, and most devices with a camera and microphone could be used to spy on you without your knowledge. Even if the power on one of these devices was off, you could still be recorded by supercomputers collecting “mega-data” for potential use later. These technologies are also used to transform

To a large degree the press, the schools, the churches, motion pictures, advertising, the lecture platform and radio all conform to the demands of the public. But to an equally large degree the public responds to the influence of these very same mediums of communication.

Domination today is not a product of armies or navies or wealth or policies. It is a domination based on the one hand upon accomplished unity, and on the other hand upon the fact that opposition is generally characterized by a high degree of disunity.