Tags: Who
pulls the wires; Edward Bernays quote; Propaganda (1928);
public relations
What was true in 1928 must
still be so today
That for most of my life I did not know about the name of
Edward L. Bernays (Sigmund Freud’s nephew) is to me undeniable proof that
the hidden forces which he alludes to in the opening of his book Propaganda are still at work
today. When 6 years ago I came across a reference to the claim that
Bernays was the father of public relations, I strangely did not even think
of looking up the title of his most famous work (Propaganda, published in 1928) on the Internet to find out whether I
would be able to retrieve an electronic copy of this book. After having
encountered his most famous quote (reproduced in full below) earlier this
week, I decided to try my luck on the Internet
Archive.
I quickly found a fifth printing from the Digital Library
of India and I was able to locate the famous quote in a matter of seconds.
However, I must say that I was not able to go beyond the top of the third
page, so evil did I find, in my heart and soul, these first few paragraphs
to be–and also because I knew that Edward Bernays was the man who had been
hired to sell smoking to women (i.e. make it fashionable with the other
half of the American population, thereby reducing their life expectancy
too) and that he had contrived a propaganda campaign for an American
company, the United Fruit Company, that ‘led
directly to the CIA’s overthrow of the elected government of Guatemala’*.
For my part, given that I have often looked at how
specific news headlines are presented by different new organisations
across 2 to 4 countries (yes, the Internet is a great tool for undertaking
such cross-country comparisons), I harbour no doubt as to the possibility
that there is still a small group of men (with maybe the occasional woman)
‘who pull the wires which
control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new
ways to bind and guide the world’. As
to the most recent example for this, I shall let you guess which it is –
one clue: it has been going on since at leas the 11th March 2020, when a
Geneva-based institution declared it a pandemic.
CHAPTER I
ORGANIZING CHAOS
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.
Our
invisible governors
are, in many cases, unaware of the identity of their fellow members
in the inner cabinet.
They
govern
us by their qualities of natural leadership, their ability to
supply needed ideas and by their key position in the social
structure. Whatever attitude one chooses to take toward this
condition, it remains a
fact that 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 [end
of
page nine]
dominated by the relatively small number of persons
— a trifling fraction of our hundred and twenty million — who
understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. 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.
[...]
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.275553/page/n9/mode/2up?q=the+wires
*‘The
Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays & The Birth of PR by Larry Tye’, a
book review by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, PR Watch, Volume
6, No. 2, Second Quarter 1999,
https://web.archive.org/web/20010210212815/http://prwatch.org/prwissues/1999Q2/bernays.html.
Lausanne, 6th February 2021
