Eugenics Education Chapter 3: Edward Bernays and Propaganda
Videos are numbered and cited at the end of article to minimize conflicts with Steemit interface.
Note: I am not a psychologist. Hopefully, we might have a student of psychology in the group who may add credence to the terms and theories presented. It’s amazing how much more information is now available since I first conducted my research about 5-6 years ago. Once again I cannot possibly cover all the details and angles. The reader will have to do their own exploration and cross referencing of information and individuals.
Since I introduced Edward Bernays to the discussion in Chapter 2, I will now dedicate this chapter to his field of study. We have all come to understand propaganda to be a bad word. It brings back memories of the cold war and WWII. However its not quite that simple. Before we can dive into this topic we need to properly identify it. Ralph D. Casey, Professor, School of Journalism, University of Minnesota had to write a book describing the subject as he felt current definitions were inadequate as no one definition can encompass all the characteristics of what propaganda is. https://www.historians.org/about-aha-and-membership/aha-history-and-archives/gi-roundtable-series/pamphlets/what-is-propaganda . The article presented is at least 12 articles in its entirety, so I do not intend to recite it for you, I merely wanted to address the opening where he discusses the difficulty of defining what propaganda is.
On Vocabulary.com Propaganda is defined as - information that is spread for the purpose of promoting some cause https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/propaganda . The site also provides additional reading in to Agitprop (agitation propaganda) which is defined as - political propaganda (especially communist propaganda) communicated via art and literature and cinema https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/agitprop . However, these basic definitions are entirely inadequate and require study to get a full understanding of propaganda.
I would like to take a moment to expand the definition. Included in the propaganda definition should be: when related to social issues it’s normally called propaganda, but when related to business it’s called marketing and advertising (Video 1). Furthermore, we need to include that Propaganda is a one sided conversation that the receiver has no ability to rebut. The receiver did not permit the conversation, but is forced to receive the message. Without the conscious ability to rebut the message it instead gets internalized on a subconscious level. In a sense propaganda is in effect, psychological warfare as I will prove later in this article and the only way to escape it in 2017 is to go to sleep (Video 2). We see this everyday on TV and in public, but we rarely ever consider that corporate logos are also a form of propaganda. Since images speak a thousand words a corporate logo is a symbol that speaks to us as well, but we may not understand the language. A very interesting video from Michael Tsarion on “The subversive use of sacred symbolism in the media.” (Video 3)
Let’s move onward with understanding propaganda. Since we now realize advertising and propaganda are one in the same, one directed at products or services and one is directed at social agendas, we can then examine advertising to get a foundation of the tools of propaganda. I will try to cover many of the tools in brief, but there are many more to be found. The principles of effective propaganda can be found in Aristotle’s Rhetorical Triangle based on his three appeals: Rational Appeal, Emotional Appeal, and Ethical Appeal. http://www.public.asu.edu/~jvanasu/rhet-triangle.htm . Rational Appeal consists of concepts such a facts, case studies, statistics etc, Emotional Appeal – love, belief, pity, and lower emotions like greed, lust, etc. This is the foundation for the art of persuasion which vocabulary.com defines as “the act of persuading (or attempting to persuade); communication intended to induce belief or action”. https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/persuasion . The purpose of analyzing these devises employed in propaganda is to educate the reader of how to identify which technique is being employed to persuade.
Technique 1: Logical Appeals
Tool 1: Bandwagon Appeal – “everyone is in favor of it”, “join the crowd”, “everyone is doing it”
Tool 2: Card Stacking – Distorting or omitting facts or telling half-truths to sell a product or idea.
Technique 2: Emotional Appeals
Tool 1: Plain Folks – Using simple, down-to-earth people like you and me
Tool 2: Name calling – stereotyping the competition/ opposing idea with a bad label
Tool 3: Demonizing – Portraying the competition or enemy as purely evil, menacing, and aggressive. (Usually accredited to propaganda as it deals with ideas)
Tool 4: Patriotic Appeal – Appealing to the idea of patriotism or a “love of country” to sell a product or an idea. (Usually accredited to propaganda as it deals with ideas)
Tools 5: Glittering Generalities – Using “good labels”, such as democratic, patriotic, amazing, beautiful, and exciting, that are unsupported by facts to sell the product or idea.
Tool 6: Catchy Slogan – Use of memorable phrases to foster support for the product or idea.
Tool 7: Snob Appeal - Only the riches, most important, or most disconcerting people identify with product or idea
Tool 8: Humor – Using humor to associate good feelings with product. This is subconscious imprinting.
Technique 3: Ethical Appeals
Tool 1: Testimonials – Use of endorsement by famous people to sell idea or product. A movie stars worth is based on how much they can sell a product or idea. This is only one of the fundamental reasons for the advent/existence of a movie “star”.
Tool 2: Transfer – Use of the association of a respected person or idea. Similar to testimonial without the explicit statement of endorsement. Actor may or may not actually use product.
It is important to watch some videos as a visual relationship to these concepts are vital. The information provided was sourced from (Advertising and Propaganda Techniques Video 4)
Edward Louis James Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud, born November 22, 1891 – March 9, 1995 was a pioneer in the field of public relations and propaganda, referred to in his obituary as “the father of public relations”, He would also gain the title of “Father of Consumerism”(but that’s another topic for another day as it goes into the industrial age, Abraham Brill, mass production, productivity, planned obsolescence, artificial scarcity, the invention of the celebrity and movie stars, and consumerism Video 7). Recognized in Life Magazine, and numerous documentaries such as “The Father of Spin” and “The Century of Self”. His best known campaigns include a 1929 effort to promote smoking amongst women, by attaching cigarettes to the women’s liberation movement labeling them as “Torches of Freedom” and his work for the United Fruit Company connected to the overthrow of the Guatemalan government in 1954. He applied his work to dozens government, corporate, political and nonprofit organizations. His principles outlined that “the masses are irrational and subject to herd instinct—and outlined how skilled practitioners could use crowd psychology and psychoanalysis to control them in desirable ways” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays, (Video 8).
Bernays is by far the most influential person of the 20th century that no one knows about and he is also my favorite supervillain of all history real or fictitious. Bernays would be the first to advance his uncles work by incorporating psychology and social sciences to the field of Public Relations manipulating group think, mob mentality, public opinion and propaganda. He would coin the phrase “Engineering Consent” ,aka opinion making, in a 1942 essay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Engineering_of_Consent and words like “semantic tyranny”. Where Freud sought to uncover motivations Bernays sought to mask them. (Edward Bernays 1: Torches of Freedom Video 9 ) Bernays would tap into this subtle influence that people are subject to in order to sell products such as hair nets, cigarettes, bacon and more. In fact, Bernays is solely responsible for women smoking cigarettes (doubling the tobacco company’s clientele) as a choice of free liberated women and the reason we all eat eggs and bacon in the morning with breakfast. He would also apply his work for influencing the public opinion to war and other social matters.
In 1917 Woodrow Wilson formed the Committee on Public Information to gain public support for WWI. Bernays worked for the organization headed by George Creel as an advisor to Wilson. This organization lead to the “four minute men” who were hired to speak about the war in 4 minutes. They believed the average attention span of the individual was four minutes and they would use this timeframe to get their message out at town meetings, events or anywhere they can get the message out to the public. Bernays consulted with other presidents such as Eisenhower, Hoover and more. With regard to Guatemala an example used in the documentaries provided, Allen Dulles, Head of the CIA, was a stake holder in the United Fruit Company, who was receiving backlash in the 1950’s from the newly democratic government of Guatemala, because the company controlled the countries rail road and postal service, had a large degree of autonomy and tax exemptions. Dulles’ brother John Dulles was Secretary of State. The democratic government of Guatemala allowed the communist party to operate in the open in their country and Bernays would convince the Administration and American people that attacks on the validity of United Fruit was communist subversion and the president of Guatemala was a communist himself. Bernays would send reporters from Time, Newsweek, New York times and Chicago tribune to report on communist activity in Guatemala. As the coup d'etat took place in Guatemala for the interests of the United Fruit Company, the narrative at home would be spun that the CIA backed military movement was actually that of freedom fighters liberating the country from communism triggering a civil war that would last for decades killing hundreds of thousands in Guatemala. (Edward Bernays 2: Selling War Video 10 ) Bernays success would influence the likes of Nazi propaganda minister Paul Goebbels who was reported to keep Bernays’ book Propaganda by his night stand. “Bernays himself wrote in his 1965 autobiography that Goebbels read and used his books https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays .
Bernays’ legacy continues today in the form of Public Relations which is used by companies and governments worldwide to manipulate and sway public opinion for products and ideas. In the early 90s the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein would take center stage for a PR firm called Hill and Knowlton who would expand on Bernays’ techniques. They would be used to gain support for American intervention in the invasion, because most Americans didn’t even know where the country was located on a map and were emotionally disconnected from the incident. On October 10th 1990 a young woman going by the name nurse Nayirah would testify before congress Human Rights Caucus stating that “Iraqi soldiers were ripping premature babies from their incubators leaving them to die on the cold floor”. The story would have an impact on the legislators and greatly affect public opinion of the invasion in the US. Bush senior would repeat this story as new rumors would emerge and the public opinion would shift in favor of intervention. The United Nations issued a public forum to follow-up on the news out of Kuwait resulting with a UN vote approving force to be used against Iraq. The young woman named nurse Nayirah was actually Nayirah Al-Sabah, the daughter of Kuwait’s Ambassador to the United States, Sheikh Said Nasir Al-Sabah, and she was coached by Hill and Knowlton. As the facts emerged Amnesty International recanted their original support of the claims. According to Middle East Watch, within two weeks of the liberation the stories of the incubators were discovered to be false. Hill and Knowlton was paid 10 million dollars, by Citizens for a Free Kuwait composed of private citizens and government officials from Kuwait. “Public Relations are a key component of any operation in this day of instant communications and rightly inquisitive citizens” – Alvin Adams. (Edward Bernays 3: The Legacy Video 11)
“the 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.”
“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. From our leaders and the media they use to reach the public, we accept the evidence and the demarcation of issues bearing upon public questions; from some ethical teacher, be it a minister, a favorite essayist, or merely prevailing opinion, we accept a standardized code of social conduct to which we conform most of the time.”
- Edward Bernays – Propaganda 1928 PDF https://www.pdf-archive.com/2017/01/17/edward-bernays-propaganda-1928/
This final segment will discuss laws. It was recognized that the effects of propaganda was psychological warfare and so profoundly detrimental and dangerous that laws were required. The U.S. Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948, aka Smith-Mundt Act, aka anti-propaganda law, was established to restrict the use of propaganda by the US Government against is citizens. In 1987 the Foreign Relations Authorization act was enacted to permit the use of Government propaganda on foreign countries only. However in 2012, the Obama administration would enact the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012, which would subvert the act allowing the use of Government propaganda against its citizens.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith%E2%80%93Mundt_Act
Additional information:
Some music Stephen Marley (Im almost positive this was Damion not Stephen) - Mind Control
Neuro Linguistic Programming Demonstration
What is the Hegelian Dialectic?
Tavistock Institute of Human Relations
Ivy Lee apparently was framed as being an advisor to Hitler had his career destroyed and later in life acquitted. Worth looking into.
http://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/lee-ivy-ledbetter
How to Control What People Do | Propaganda - EDWARD BERNAYS | speaks to Authority
“In the 20th century the advent of mass communications technology made big business have to contend with public opinion, but the technology also made the manipulation of that opinion possible. Men begin to master the art of the “pseudo-event”, one that doesn’t just happen but is contrived; contrived news created for a purpose. The news conference, the press release, the staged event all became part of a constant drama of persuasion. Offstage; the public relations expert writing the script and directing the actors.”
“To busy citizens caught in this century’s thicket of unreality the challenge is vigilance”
– Bill Moyer
The Invention of Public Relations by Bill Moyer – A VERY important amazing video for understanding Public Relations including the use of the television and radio and ideas as weapons. Speech by Bernays at Public Relations Society of America.
Edward Bernays called it PROPAGANDA some quotes by Alex Jones and Allan Watts who we will discuss later. Discusses sports, tribal mentality, culture industry, Tv “programming”, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Gerald Celente and bunch of stuff. Very good excerpt.
Video List:
1: 7 Propaganda Techniques Used on You Every Day
2: Dr Twitchell, Sell & Spin A History of Advertising - 2:30
3: “The subversive use of sacred symbolism in the media.”
4: Advertising and Propaganda Techniques Video
5: Propaganda and Manipulation: How mass media engineers and distorts our perceptions by Prof. Kroth
6: Sell & Spin A History of Advertising
7: Segment from History of CONSUMERISM & PUBLIC RELATIONS
8: Edward Bernays 1: Torches of Freedom
9: Same as video 8
10: Edward Bernays 2: Selling War
11: Edward Bernays 3: The Legacy