Propaganda

Information warfare is all based on seizing the mind of the enemy. If you can convince your opponent that resistance is futile, or even simply that your way is the only one, you have him beaten fully and completely. An even better way of doing this is by eliminating what would have become the nucleus of a truly new paradigm.

 

 

Mind control is as ancient as human civilization. Fundamentally, it does not require fancy gizmos or even chemical compounds; what it does require is an intuitive understanding of the human psyche and how to manipulate it in such a fashion so that your target acts as you want him to. Needless to say, the very best manipulations occur without the target realizing that he is suffering from it in the first place.

This treatise is begun by the author stating:

 

“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 molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is the 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.”

 

It would be an understatement to say that the implications of this are staggering, for it suggests that (at least) most of our own thoughts are not ours to begin with. What is also unnerving is the notion that this is the normal byproduct of democracy. The author further elucidates:

 

“Whatever attitude one chooses 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 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 the old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world.”

 

In many ways, it is hard to believe that Bernays is describing here in any serious way, yet he is all the same. An additional implication of all this is that any form of democracy is really a type of disguised oligarchy.

Bernays goes onto to describe more about this kind of shadow government:

 

“This invisible, intertwining structure of groupings and associations is the mechanism by which democracy has organized its group mind and simplified its mass thinking. To deplore the existence of such a mechanism is to ask for a society such as never was and never will be. To admit that it exists, but expect that it shall not be used, is unreasonable.”

 

I think this demonstrates that he does not think that individuals can actually express their own preferences. He is literally claiming that human beings do not truly possess any sort of individual autonomy or even free will, but are subject to the artificial desires implanted into them by those who actually run the country. In other words, Bernays is saying that any form of civilization must be artificially constructed right from the beginning, otherwise it simply would not work. He also asserts his reasons for writing such a revealing book:

 

“It is the purpose of this book to explain the structure of the mechanism which controls the public mind, and to tell how it is manipulated by the special [leaders] who seeks to create public acceptance for a particular idea or commodity. It will attempt at the same time to find the due place in the modern democratic scheme for this new propaganda and to suggest its gradually evolving code of ethics and practice.”

 

Does it not seem as if he is attempting to sell the reader on the notion that it is good for mass propaganda to be used against a domestic population?

With regards to popular literacy, Bernays reveals how even the supposedly “educated” intelligensia are easily manipulated:

 

“But instead of a mind, universal literacy has given him rubber stamps, rubber stamps inked with advertising slogans, with editorials, with published scientific data, with the trivialities of the tabloids and the platitudes of history, but quite innocent of original thought. Each man’s rubber stamps are the duplicates of millions of others, so that when those millions are exposed to the same stimuli, all received identical imprints. It may seem an exaggeration to say that the American public gets most of its ideas in this wholesale fashion.”

 

In other words, he is saying that even a lot of the raw data that people come across (and I would add, even those within the alternative media) is just plain bunk through no fault of their own, except in their promotion of it. Obviously, this would necessitate separating the wheat from the chaff, which is easier said than done.

But why is there a shadow government of sorts in the first place? Bernays claims this is because:

 

“The invisible government tends to be concentrated in the hands of the few because of the expense of manipulating the social machinery which controls the opinions and habits of the masses. To advertise on a scale which will reach fifty million persons is expensive. To reach and persuade the group leaders who dictate the public’s thoughts and actions is likewise expensive.”

 

So, the barrier to entry in wielding mass mind control is limited to capital investment. Doesn’t that sound jolly? Not only does that sound bad enough, but Bernays also provides the scientific capabilities that compliment this kind of vulture “capitalism:”

 

“The systematic study of mass psychology revealed to students the potentialities of invisible government of society by manipulation of the motives which actuate man in the group. Trotter and Le Bon, who approached the subject in a scientific manner, and Graham Wallas, Walter Lippmann, and others who continued with searching studies of the group mind, established that the group has mental characteristics distinct from those of the individual, and is motivated by impulses and emotions which cannot be explained on the basis of what we know of individual psychology. So the question naturally arose: 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?”

 

Isn’t that just dandy? According to Bernays, groups of whatever kind are not just some abstract, mental construct that is used for linguistic ease and efficiency, but really some kind of entity that walks around and does shit. Last time I checked, forests was just an collective aggregation of trees, not the tangible trees themselves (there is no collective “forest root system” or otherwise any sort of “forest branches”). Just leave it up to Bernays and his many public relations gurus to goad you into believing that the sky is green because they figured out a new way to trick you into thinking that it must be, somehow.

Bernays’ remarks regarding the power of cinema is quite enlightening:

 

“The American motion picture is the greatest unconscious carrier of propaganda in the world of today. It is a great distributor for ideas and opinions.

“The motion picture can standardize the ideas and habits of a nation. Because pictures are made to meet market demands, they reflect, emphasize and even exaggerate broad popular tendencies, rather than stimulate new ideas and opinions. The motion picture avails itself only of ideas and facts which are in vogue. As the newspapers seeks to purvey news, it seeks to purvey entertainment.”

 

He seems to think that all films and television shows do is simply reinforce whatever the current mythos happens to be, instead of also conveying values and inculcating worldviews into the minds of the audience. Since the suspension of disbelief is present whenever someone is experiencing a hypothetical scenario (that is, fiction), a person’s natural guard is down and ready to uncritically receive both the implied and explicit messages that such media has to offer. Either Bernays knew about the predictive programming elements in advertisements, or he trying to manipulatively downplay the actual effectiveness of this particular mind control technique. The book ends with this statement:

 

“Propaganda will never die out. Intelligent men must realize that propaganda is the modern instrument by which they can fight for productive ends and help to bring order out of chaos.”

 

I should note here that ordo ab chao is the Freemasonic 33^rd degrees’ motto for bringing “order out of chaos.”

Edward Bernays’s Propaganda is a totally creepy look at just how devious the entire public relations industry truly is at their core. With this kind of unlimited soft power, you can make entire populations believe anything you want them to; dissidents of all kinds are either ridiculed or even ostracized from what the brainwashed seething biomass deem to be acceptable, or even “normal.” This is a must read for all political dissidents, for it reveals one of the key pillars of power behind the throne of government.