← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · RowdyRoddyPiper
Thread ID: 18198 | Posts: 2 | Started: 2005-05-11
2005-05-11 13:02 | User Profile
[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays[/url]
Nephew size=-1[/size] of Sigmund Freud. Originator of the phrase "the Engineering of Consent". Clients included President Calvin Coolidge, Procter & Gamble, CBS, the American Tobacco Company, and General Electric. Chief advisor to William Paley, who started CBS in 1928. Author of "Propaganda", a textbook on the manipulation of mass opinion, published in 1928.
Quotes: [QUOTE]If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it[/QUOTE] [QUOTE]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.[/QUOTE] [QUOTE]Those who manipulate the organized habits and opinions of the masses constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of the country....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 dominated by the relatively small number of persons....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....As civilization has become more complex, and as the need for invisible government has been increasingly demonstrated, the technical means have been invented and developed by which opinion may be regimented.[/QUOTE] [QUOTE]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 3 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 clichés and verbal formulas supplied to them by the leaders. Fortunately, the sincere and gifted politician is able, by the instrument of propaganda, to mold and form the will of the people.[/QUOTE] [URL=http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Propaganda/Propaganda_Bernays.html]More...[/URL]
2005-05-11 16:21 | User Profile
Used to run into old Bernays in Harvard Square bookshops--an amazing guy.
Joe Goebbels swore by EB's insights and owned his complete works. The Engineering of Consent is an even better volume than Propaganda...