Edward Bernays

EDWARD BERNAYS: Father of American Public Relations
(1891-1995)

Bernays is not as infamous as our other quotable sources, but he should be. The nephew and student of Sigmund Freud, he combined the psychoanalytical expertise of his uncle with the psychology of crowds developed by Gustave Le Bon and Wilfred Trotter. When the term propaganda fell out of favor due to Fascist and Nazi use of it during the  1920s – 1940s, he coined the far-friendlier term “Public Relations.” Of course, changing the name to shake off negative connotations is itself a technique of propaganda. Of this change, he wrote:

When I came back to the United States, I decided that if you could use propaganda for war, you could certainly use it for peace. And “propaganda” got to be a bad word because of the Germans using it, so what I did was to try and find some other words so we found the words “public relations”.

Some “innovations” credited to him:

• The Press Release
• Linking of women’s smoking to women’s suffrage
• Use of third-party authority (e.g. a doctor) for product endorsement
• Reduce approval of competitors by stimulating fear

Link to Bernays’ 1928 book, Propaganda.

Don’t miss our blog series’:
The Nine Principles of Propaganda – begins with The Big Lie
The Nine Principles of Counterpropaganda – begins with Truth
Trump – Our Psychopathic President – Introduction
And our extensive examination of 25 years of propaganda war against Hillary Clinton – Death by Propaganda

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EDWARD BERNAYS ON PROPAGANDA

If we understand the mechanisms and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it. 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.^[1]

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organised 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.^[1]

The American motion picture is the greatest unconscious carrier of propaganda in the world 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 newspaper seeks to purvey news, it seeks to purvey entertainment.^[1]

Propaganda is the executive arm of the invisible government.^[1]

In the ethical sense, propaganda bears the same relation to education as to business or politics. It may be abused. It may be used to over-advertise an institution and to create in the public mind artificial values. There can be no absolute guarantee against its misuse.^[1]

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.^[1]

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.^[1]

The minority has discovered a powerful help in influencing majorities. It has been found possible so to mold the mind of the masses that they will throw their newly gained strength in the desired direction. In the present structure of society, this practice is inevitable. Whatever of social importance is done today, whether in politics, finance, manufacture, agriculture, charity, education, or other fields, must be done with the help of propaganda. Propaganda is the executive arm of the invisible government.^[1]

When I came back to the United States, I decided that if you could use propaganda for war, you could certainly use it for peace. And “propaganda” got to be a bad word because of the Germans using it, so what I did was to try and find some other words so we found the words “public relations”.^[1]

Small groups of persons can, and do, make the rest of us think what they please about a given subject. But there are usually proponents and opponents of every propaganda, both of whom are equally eager to convince the majority.^[1]

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.^[1]

Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society.^[1]

The only difference between ‘propaganda’ and ‘education,’ really, is in the point of view. The advocacy of what we believe in is education. The advocacy of what we don’t believe in is propaganda.^[1]

A single factory, potentially capable of supplying a whole continent with its particular product, cannot afford to wait until the public asks for its product; it must maintain constant touch, through advertising and propaganda, with the vast public in order to assure itself the continuous demand which alone will make its costly plant profitable.^[1]

The best defense against propaganda: more propaganda.^[1]

I believe that competition in the future will not be only an advertising competition between individual products or between big associations, but that it will in addition be a competition of propaganda.^[1]

The three main elements of public relations are practically as old as society: informing people, persuading people, or integrating people with people. Of course, the means and methods of accomplishing these ends have changed as society has changed.^[1]

Once he could read and write he would have a mind fit to rule. So ran the democratic doctrine. 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.^[1]

OTHER BERNAYS QUOTES
It is not necessary for the politician to be the slave of the public’s group prejudices, if he can learn how to mold the mind of the voters in conformity with his own ideas of public welfare and public service. The important thing for the statesman of our age is not so much to know how to please the public, but to know how to sway the public. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.^[2]

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 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.^[2]

People want to go where they wanted to be led.^[2]

The engineering of consent is the very essence of the democratic process, the freedom to persuade and suggest.^[2]

This is an age of mass production. In the mass production of materials a broad technique has been developed and applied to their distribution. In this age, too, there must be a technique for the mass distribution of ideas.^[2]

In some departments of our daily life, in which we imagine ourselves free agents, we are ruled by dictators exercising great power.^[2]

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.^[2]

Men (people) are rarely aware of the real reasons which motivate their actions.^[2]

Any person or organization depends ultimately on public approval, and is therefore faced with the problem of engineering the public’s consent to a program or goal.^[2]

We govern what the public think about.^[2]

The great enemy of any attempt to change men’s habits is inertia. Civilization is limited by intertia.^[2]

If you can influence the leaders, either with or without their conscious cooperation, you automatically influence the group which they sway.^[2]

It is sometimes possible to change the attitudes of millions but impossible to change the attitude of one man.^[2]

The normal school should provide for the training of the educator to make him realize that his is a twofold job: education as a teacher and education as a propagandist.^[2]

We have voluntarily agreed to let an invisible government sift the data and high-spot the outstanding issues so that our field of choice shall be narrowed to practical proportions. From our leaders and the media they use to reach the public, we accept the evidence and the demarcation of issues bearing upon public questions; from some ethical teacher, be it a minister, a favorite essayist, or merely prevailing opinion, we accept a standardized code of social conduct to which we conform most of the time.^[2]

Our invisible governors are, in many cases, unaware of the identity of their fellow members in the inner cabinet.^[2]

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.^[2]

Just as women supplement men in private life, so they will supplement men in public life by concentrating their organized efforts on those objects which men are likely to ignore. There is a tremendous field for women as active protagonists of new ideas and new methods of political and social housekeeping. When organized and conscious of their power to influence their surroundings, women can use their newly acquired freedom in a great many ways to mold the world into a better place to live in.^[2]

If you can influence the leaders, either with or without their conscious cooperation, you automatically influence the group which they sway. But men do not need to be actually gathered together in a public meeting or in a street riot, to be subject to the influences of mass psychology. Because man is by nature gregarious he feels himself to be member of a herd, even when he is alone in his room with the curtains drawn.^[2]