http://smellslikehumanspirit.com/edwa... Edward Bernays' 'Propaganda' Deconstructed - The following is a 10 hour audio series that I recorded between April 2013 and February 2014, all about the 'Father of PR', Edward Bernays. This series is probably the project that I'm most proud of since I began podcasting. In fact, on a near daily basis, I still receive e-mails about it!
Over the course of 10 hours (!), I take you through Bernays' magnum opus, 'Propaganda', written in 1928. I take a critical look at just how influential his ideas were, and detail the resulting impact in relation to public relations, advertising, celebrity culture, and democracy itself. Along the way, you will hear from various guest speakers as well, including Edward Bernays' own daughter, Anne Bernays.
If you would like even more information on Edward Bernays and 'Propaganda', you can head over to http://smellslikehumanspirit.com/edwa... to access further resources, read the book transcript, and even download this series in an 13-part episode format.
With that all being said, I encourage you to listen, like, share and subscribe! I appreciate your support, so enjoy, and peace :)
- Guy Evans
Who is Edward Bernays?
Edward Bernays, born in Vienna in 1891 and famously the nephew of Sigmund Freud, was perhaps the pioneer in the field of Public Relations, and highly influential in providing the framework for modern advertising. His work aimed to convince people to want things that they didn’t need, and in the process, link their unconscious desires to the consumption of mass produced goods. This in turn, it was theorized, could be used to control the masses, as by keeping them distracted on frivolous happenings and relatively unimportant wants, they wouldn’t interfere with the activities of what he called ‘the important few’.
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CONTENTS I. Organizing Chaos 9 II. The New Propaganda 19 III. The New Propagandists .... 32 IV. The Psychology of Public Relations 47 V. Business and the Public .... 62 VI. Propaganda and Political Leadership 92 VII. Women's Activities and Propaganda 115 VIII. Propaganda for Education . . 121 IX. Propaganda in Social Service . . 135 X. Art and Science 141 XI. The Mechanics of Propaganda . . 150Excerpt:
CHAPTER I ORGANIZING CHAOS 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 consti- tute 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 smooth- ly functioning society. Our invisible governors are, in many cases, un- aware of the identity of their fellow members in the inner cabinet. They govern us by their qualities of natural leader- ship, their ability to supply needed ideas and by their key position in the social structure. Whatever atti- tude one chooses to take 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 9 Propaganda dominated by the relatively small number of per- sons — 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 old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world. It is not usually realized how necessary these in- visible governors are to the orderly functioning of our group life. In theory, every citizen may vote for whom he pleases. Our Constitution does not envisage political parties as part of the mechanism of government, and its framers seem not to have pictured to themselves the existence in our national politics of anything like the modern political ma- chine. But the American voters soon found that without organization and direction their individual votes, cast, perhaps, for dozens or hundreds of can- didates, would produce nothing but confusion. In- visible government, in the shape of rudimentary political parties, arose almost overnight. Ever since then we have agreed, for the sake of simplicity and practicality, that party machines should narrow down the field of choice to two candidates, or at most three or four. In theory, every citizen makes up his mind on public questions and matters of private conduct. In practice, if all men had to study for themselves the abstruse economic, political, and ethical data involved 10 Organizing Chaos in every question, they would find it impossible to come to a conclusion about anything. 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 ques- tions; 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. In theory, everybody buys the best and cheapest commodities offered him on the market. In practice, if every one went around pricing, and chemically testing before purchasing, the dozens of soaps or fabrics or brands of bread which are for sale, eco- nomic life would become hopelessly jammed. To avoid such confusion, society consents to have its choice narrowed to ideas and objects brought to its attention through propaganda of all kinds. There is consequently a vast and continuous effort going on to capture our minds in the interest of some policy or commodity or idea.
Read the rest @ https://archive.org/details/Propaganda1928ByEdwardL.Bernays
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