Edward Bernays

Propaganda

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“Bernays’ honest and practical manual provides much insight into some of the most powerful and influential institutions of contemporary industrial state capitalist democracies.”—Noam Chomsky
“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.”—Edward Bernays, Propaganda
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.” During World War I, he was an integral part of the U.S. Committee on Public Information (CPI), a powerful propaganda apparatus that was mobilized to package, advertise and sell the war to the American people as one that would “Make the World Safe for Democracy.” The CPI would become the blueprint in which marketing strategies for future wars would be based upon.
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.
This is the first reprint of Propaganda in over 30 years and features an introduction by Mark Crispin Miller, author of The Bush Dyslexicon: Observations on a National Disorder.
This book is currently unavailable
155 printed pages
Original publication
2004
Publication year
2004
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Quotes

  • Oxana Yatsenkohas quoted4 years ago
    Prior to World War One, the word propaganda was little-used in English, except by certain social activists, and close observers of the Vatican; and, back then, propaganda tended not to be the damning term we throw around today. The word had been coined in 1622, when Pope Gregory XV, frightened by the global spread of Protestantism, urgently proposed an addition to the Roman curia. The Office for the Propagation of the Faith (Congregatio de propaganda fide) would supervise the Church’s missionary efforts in the New World and else
  • Soliloquios Literarioshas quoted4 years ago
    And yet those who do such work are also prone to lose touch with reality; for in their universe the truth is ultimately what the client wants the world to think is true. Whatever cause they serve or goods they sell, effective propagandists must believe in it—or at least momentarily believe that they believe in it. Even he or she who propagates commodities must be to some extent a true believer. “To advertise a product you must believe in it. To convince you must be convinced yourself,” observes Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet, longtime head of Publicis, the giant French ad agency.12“
  • Soliloquios Literarioshas quoted4 years ago
    This is not to fault him for relying on the doctors of his day, nor to suggest that he would have tried to underplay the risks of fatty food if he had known about them. Indeed, Bernays was, in this regard, exceptionally ethical. Once the toxic side effects of smoking had become impossible to talk away, Bernays not only gave up working for tobacco companies, but became a vocal critic of tobacco, lobbying staunchly (and unsuccessfully) to get the Public Relations Society of America to enjoin its members not to work in any way to spread the habit.14

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