Propaganda

 

My motivation in reading this book was that I am interested in social memory and how perceived meanings/propaganda can influence people to make changes to deeply entrenched beliefs. I have noticed in the last two years how public opinion can quickly change over a very short period of time, particularly when people's fears are exploited, sometimes with disastrous consequences. Take for example, the recent shootings in America. If the perpetrator of a mass shooting is black, Hispanic or Arab the mainstream media tends to ignore it, but if the perpetrator is white the popular media will exploit and dramatise the event. As the Western Civilisation mythos is under attack and history is being rewritten one can assume that there is some political advantage in fanning the flames of racial hatred and fear through the channels of popular MSM. 

Another example of public opinion manipulation is the recent shooting of a teenage boy at night in an alley. MSM made a point in showing the youth with raised hands in a gesture of surrender before he was fatally shot by a white officer. What they did not show was the broader context in which the incident took place. The footage from the police body cam showed the police chasing the youth down a dark alley way, the young fugitive stopped with his body side on and shielding  the gun from the view of the camera. As the boy turned he dropped his gun on the ground out of view of the camera lens. As he raised his hand it was not clear whether or not he was going to shoot. The officer who allegedly shot him would have had to make a split second decision to pull the trigger in self defence. Only a thorough investigation will reveal the truth. What is apparent is that the media selected an edited (purposely?) still from the footage to support their view of the story. Remember the George Floyd incident that set the world on fire in 2020? A brief video clip was sent across the internet - no context - and delivered the needed content to activate BLM marches and worldwide protests and the call to Defund the Police. Eventually the whole video revealed a very different story to the one MSM pushed. But few people would even be aware of it as it does not suit the contrived political narrative.

And again the shooting of Ashli Babbitt on 6th January at the so called siege of the Capitol in Washington DC. Ashli was an ex-military intelligence officer who was unarmed at the time of the shooting. She was supposedly a conservative Trump supporter and was allegedly shot in the neck at a very close range by one of the guards in the capitol building. The whole scene was recorded by John Sullivan, a far left activist who was accompanied by a CNN reporter. Even though it was recorded on camera the incident has not been investigated (as yet), the name of the guard has not been released and the media has shown no interest in this case. Why? Especially in light of the fact that so much has been made of this incident and it appears that she is actually the only person who was killed in the action.

These above mentioned cases may or may not be referred to as examples of deliberate propaganda. However, the word 'propaganda' has not always been used as a pejorative. Certainly at the time of Edward Bernays' (the author) writing in 1928 propaganda was a neutral term that referred to pubic persuasion, for good or for ill. According to Mark Crispin Miller, the writer of the introduction to this edition, it was first coined in 1622, when Pope Gregory XV, used the term to emphasise the Catholic efforts to spread the Gospel in response to the spread of Protestant missionary efforts throughout the world. It wasn't until the First World War that it was used in a derogatory term. It is well known what the German propaganda machine was capable of but Allied propaganda also used it to demonise the 'Hun'.

Bernays adds, "Modern propaganda is a consistent, enduring effort to create or shape events to influence the relations of the public to an enterprise, idea or group. This practice of creating circumstances and of creating pictures in the minds of millions of persons is very common. ... It was not many years ago that newspaper editors resented what they called 'the use of the news columns for propaganda purposes'. Some editors would even kill a good story if they imagined its publication might benefit anyone."

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Advertisers have used Bernays' ideas to convince people that they should buy their products. For example, the tobacco industry have spent a fortune on advertising (see the poster on the left) even though it was obvious that the product was causing cancer. This poster shows a cowboy lighting up a cigarette in an effort to show that smoking is essentially a masculine thing. Even though the tobacco industry had used Bernays' ideas he was exceptionally ethical and so the toxic side effects of smoking became impossible for him to tolerate. Bernays eventually gave up working for tobacco companies and lobbied staunchly (but unsuccessfully) to get the Public Relations Society of America to work against the spread of the habit.

On 15th April 2021, James O'Keefe released a secretly taped conversation with a technical director from CNN in which he admitted that their news items were deliberately biased towards Black Lives Matter. Project Veritas had also previously released 2 other segments of the undercover conversation with Charles Chester where he admitted that CNN had played up Covid death statistics and promoted anti-Trump propaganda. To make matters worse James O'Keefe announced on 14th that he intended to sue CNN for defamation for accusing him of using disinformation (propaganda).

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Bernays finishes with the following statement, "Propaganda will never die out. Intelligent men must realise that propaganda is the modern instrument by which they can fight for productive ends and help to bring order out of chaos." Something to think about!

The Book: Bernays, E. (1928). Propaganda. N.Y.: Ig Publishing.