PROPAGANDA

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In some departments of our daily life, in which we imagine ourselves free agents, we are ruled by dictators exercising great power. [2]

Couldn't be more appropriate as a description of the notorious Fake News dumped on the public each day to manipulate the blue agenda.A seminal and controversial figure in the history of political thought and public relations, Edward Bernays (1891–1995), pioneered the scientific technique of shaping and manipulating public opinion, which he famously dubbed “engineering of consent.” To stand out from competitors. If businesses compete to have the lowest price, there is eventually no more profit margin. Public relations allows them to instead compete based on values. Let me put this in a more simple way… The famous professor Noam Chomsky wrote more about the kind of propaganda we usually think of—media campaigns that are manipulative, false, and destructive. He greatly popularized the idea that media can help “manufacture consent” through presenting a distorted picture of events. A number of familiar psychological motives were set in motion in the carrying out of this campaign. The esthetic, the competitive, the gregarious (much of the sculpturing was done in school groups), the snobbish (the impulse to follow the example of a recognized leader), the exhibitionist, and—last but by no means least—the maternal.

To sell his public relations services. He was a successful business consultant and explains many of his effective publicity techniques in this book. 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. [1] All these motives and group habits were put in concerted motion by the simple machinery of group leadership and authority. As if actuated by the pressure of a button, people began working for the client for the sake of the gratification obtained in the sculpture work itself. It is not sufficient to understand only the mechanical structure of society, the groupings and cleavages and loyalties. An engineer may know all about the cylinders and pistons of a locomotive, but unless he knows how steam behaves under pressure he cannot make his engine run. Human desires are the steam which makes the social machine work. Only by understanding them can the propagandist control that vast, loose-jointed mechanism which is modern society.

To reach new customers. In the 1920’s, the economy was shifting to mass production, which provides a benefit of lower priced goods, but a problem that factories need to maintain a steady production. People want to buy from companies that share their values. By selling what you stand for, you give people a powerful reason to buy from you, and it costs you almost nothing. Bernays worked with Procter & Gamble for Ivory-brand bar soap. The campaign successfully convinced people that Ivory soap was medically superior to other soaps. He also promoted soap through sculpting contests and floating contests because the soap floated better than its competitors'. The Procter and Gamble Company offered a series of prizes for the best sculpture in white soap. The contest was held under the auspices of the Art Center in New York City, an organization of high standing in the art world.

Bernays believed that people were not individual critical thinkers, but that they were “rubber stamped” with certain ideas by their leaders. We are stamped with “mental clichés”—which are like oversimplified stereotypes about the world and unconscious emotional habits.Bernays is not as infamous as our other quotable sources, but he should be. The nephew and student of Sigmund Freud, he combined the psychoanalytical expertise of his uncle with the psychology of crowds developed by Gustave Le Bon and Wilfred Trotter. When the term propaganda fell out of favor due to Fascist and Nazi use of it during the 1920s – 1940s, he coined the far-friendlier term “Public Relations.” Of course, changing the name to shake off negative connotations is itself a technique of propaganda. Of this change, he wrote: Bernays applied the techniques he had learned in the CPI and, incorporating some of the ideas of Walter Lipmann, became an outspoken proponent of propaganda as a tool for democratic and corporate manipulation of the population. His 1928 bombshell Propaganda lays out his eerily prescient vision for using propaganda to regiment the collective mind in a variety of areas, including government, politics, art, science and education. To read this book today is to frightfully comprehend what our contemporary institutions of government and business have become in regards to organized manipulation of the masses. And our extensive examination of 25 years of propaganda war against Hillary Clinton – Death by Propaganda