It's actually quite funny when you think about it, Edward Bernays was a master of public relations and propaganda - and yet his name is largely unknown today outside of a small group of people.
His influence, however, is felt everyday by most of us.
He was the nephew of Sigmund Freud.
Born in Vienna, Bernays was both a blood nephew and a nephew-in-law to Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, and Bernays's public relations efforts helped popularize Freud's theories in the United States. Bernays also pioneered the PR industry's use of psychology and other social sciences to design its public persuasion campaigns. "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 about it? The recent practice of propaganda has proved that it is possible, at least up to a certain point and within certain limits." (Propaganda, 2005 ed., p. 71.) He called this scientific technique of opinion-molding the "engineering of consent."
One of Bernays' favorite techniques for manipulating public opinion was the indirect use of "third party authorities" to plead for his clients' causes. "If you can influence the leaders, either with or without their conscious cooperation, you automatically influence the group which they sway," he said. In order to promote sales of bacon, for example, he conducted a survey of physicians and reported their recommendation that people eat hearty breakfasts. He sent the results of the survey to 5,000 physicians, along with publicity touting bacon and eggs as a hearty breakfast.
Bernays drew upon his uncle Freud's psychoanalytic ideas for the benefit of commerce in order to promote, by indirection, commodities as diverse as cigarettes, soap and books.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays
In Propaganda, his most important book, Bernays argued that the scientific manipulation of public opinion was necessary to overcome chaos and conflict in society:
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.
Or another quote :
"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society," Bernays argued. "Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. . . . 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."
href="http://www.prwatch.org/prwissues/1999Q2/bernays.html
Interestingly, Goebbels studied his work - and used his concepts.
In his memoirs, Bernays wrote that he was "shocked" to discover that Goebbels kept copies of Bernays' writings in his own personal library, and that his theories were therefore helping to "engineer" the rise of the Third Reich.
The propaganda campaign he created for the United Fruit Company actually helped the CIA overthrow it's government.
The term "banana republic" actually originated in reference to United Fruit's domination of corrupt governments in Guatemala and other Central American countries. The company brutally exploited virtual slave labor in order to produce cheap bananas for the lucrative U.S. market. When a mildly reformist Guatemala government attempted to reign in the company's power, Bernays whipped up media and political sentiment against it in the commie-crazed 1950s.
"Articles began appearing in the New York Times, the New York Herald Tribune, the Atlantic Monthly, Time, Newsweek, the New Leader, and other publications all discussing the growing influence of Guatemala's Communists," Tye writes. "The fact that liberal journals like the Nation were also coming around was especially satisfying to Bernays, who believed that winning the liberals over was essential. . . . At the same time, plans were under way to mail to American Legion posts and auxiliaries 300,000 copies of a brochure entitled 'Communism in Guatemala--22 Facts.'"
His efforts led directly to a brutal military coup. Tye writes that Bernays "remained a key source of information for the press, especially the liberal press, right through the takeover. In fact, as the invasion was commencing on June 18, his personal papers indicate he was giving the 'first news anyone received on the situation' to the Associate Press, United Press, the International News Service, and the New York Times, with contacts intensifying over the next several days."
The result, tragically, has meant decades of tyranny under a Guatemalan government whose brutality rivaled the Nazis as it condemned hundreds of thousands of people (mostly members of the country's impoverished Maya Indian majority) to dislocation, torture and death.
Bernays relished and apparently never regretted his work for United Fruit, for which he was reportedly paid $100,000 a year, a huge fee in the early 1950s. Tye writes that Bernays' papers "make clear how the United States viewed its Latin neighbors as ripe for economic exploitation and political manipulation--and how the propaganda war Bernays waged in Guatemala set the pattern for future U.S.-led campaigns in Cuba and, much later, Vietnam."
Bernays proved that selling ideas was no different than selling soap, and could be equally effective.
Bernays insisted that public relations is the science of creating circumstances, mounting events that are calculated to stand out as newsworthy, yet, at the same time, which do not appear to be staged. The field of public relations continues to hold to this dictum, routinely mapping out pre-arranged occurrences that are projected to look and sound like impromptu truths.
The calculated simulated of enthusiasm...is also common within contemporary culture. In a variety of configurations, the applause sign has become a social principle. Statistical poll results are continuously broadcast, emphasizing the popularity (or lack thereof) of politicians, policies, products, and of course wars. Grassroots expression is now being manufactured by firms specializing in the generation of extemporaneous public opposition or support. In the PR industry, such orchestrated grassroots mobilizations are referred to as Astro Turf Organizing.
The use of unspoken visual techniques to create a mood is pervasive in our society: dramatic backdrops, logo designs, recycled paper and "green" graphics. Implicit in all this is a public relations truism: It's not what you say, but how you say it that matters.
In a democratic society, the interests of power and the interests of the public are often at odds. The rise of public relations is testimony to the ways that institutions of vested power, over the course of the twentieth century, have been compelled to justify and package their interests in terms of the common good.
href="http://www.mala.bc.ca/~soules/media205/pr.htm
Shortly before his death, at 98, he said this :
"There is propaganda and what I call impropaganda," said the 98-year-old Bernays impishly, a few years prior to his death. Propaganda originally meant promoting any idea or item, but took on its current pejorative sense following the extensive use of sinister propaganda for malicious goals during World War I and World War II. While all persuasion uses the techniques of traditional propaganda, what Bernays called "impropaganda" is "using propaganda techniques not in accordance with good sense, good faith, or good morals" Bernays, who was called the "father of public relations," was worried about the increased use of "impropaganda" in political campaigns and has spoken out against it. "Politicians who use techniques like these lose the faith of the people," said Bernays.
The Institute for Propaganda Analysis (not related to Bernays, but rather warning against the dangers of propaganda) provided a lit of ways to determine and see the process of propaganda at work.
The Lees also discussed the Institute's symbols for the seven hallmark tricks of the manipulative propagandist:
Name Calling: hanging a bad label on an idea, symbolized by a hand turning thumbs down;
Card Stacking: selective use of facts or outright falsehoods, symbolized by an ace of spades, a card signifying treachery;
Band Wagon: a claim that everyone like us thinks this way, symbolized by a marching bandleader's hat and baton;
Testimonial: the association of a respected or hated person with an idea, symbolized by a seal and ribbon stamp of approval;
Plain Folks: a technique whereby the idea and its proponents are linked to "people just like you and me," symbolized by an old shoe;
Transfer: an assertion of a connection between something valued or hated and the idea or commodity being discussed, symbolized by a smiling Greek theater mask; and
Glittering Generality: an association of something with a "virtue word" to gain approval without examining the evidence; symbolized by a sparkling gem.
The Institute's last newsletter reflected that "in modern society an element of propaganda is present in a large portion of human affairs...people need to be able to recognize this element even when it is serving 'good' ends."
href="http://www.publiceye.org/media/logic96.html
So, the next time you reach for that soap in the supermarket...or go to vote....think about Bernays. His legacy lives on behind the scenes in both markets.
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