Post: #1

Quote: 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 wrote his Propaganda when the word did not quite have the evil connotation that it does now. If you speak Spanish, you might know that television commercials are called "propagandas", with no more of a negative connotation than our own word "commercial" or "advertisement". The Catholic Church used to have a "Ministry of Propaganda". Propaganda is just something that is meant to convince you to think or act in a certain way. No different from commercials, no different from a government putting out "information" on a subject.

His book outlines the emerging process by which we are governed by propaganda. It is a quick read. I will leave you with its introduction:

[/quote] 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.
Our invisible governors are, in many cases, unaware of the identity of their fellow members in the inner cabinet.
They govern us by their qualities of natural leadership, their ability to supply needed ideas and by their key position in the social structure. Whatever attitude 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 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 old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world.
It is not usually realized how necessary these invisible 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 machine. But the American voters soon found that without organization and direction their individual votes, cast, perhaps, for dozens or hundreds of candidates, would produce nothing but confusion. Invisible 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 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 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. [/quote]


https://archive.org/details/Propaganda19...dL.Bernays

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0097D7...TF8&btkr=1

Post: #2

Nice selection. I have just added it to my reading list and will start on it shortly.

Post: #3

Sounds interesting, count me in.

Post: #4

I'm in. Thanks for sending the link in the October thread. Familiar with Bernays from marketing classes in college. The true father of modern marketing and public relations; the good as well as more sinister side. I believe he was Freud's nephew too.

Post: #5

So who's all reading the book? First impressions? I love what Sonsowey is doing with these threads but they aren't really gaining steam. I admit to being guilty of not finishing October, but I just got the hard copy of On Heroes in the mail the other day. To me, it's worth the couple bucks to buy used because I have difficulty finishing books on my laptop while I always have dozens of physical books sitting on my desk ready to read. If Propaganda were longer, I would probably purchase the hard copy.

Anyways, I'm about 30 pages in and its more or less what I expected so far. I have the advantage of studying marketing, public relations, and Bernays in college. It's an easy read for the time period. When reading many books from that era, I spend more time defining words I've never heard of than actually reading the book. It makes me feel stupid as hell. But then I think of everyone else in my generation and realize I'm light years ahead of them.

Post: #6

My copy arrived a few days ago, I'll read it on my next day off.

Post: #7

Here is a free pdf version - http://whale.to/b/bernays.pdf

A short description of Bernays - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays

(11-23-2015 09:46 PM)wi30 Wrote:  I'm in. Thanks for sending the link in the October thread. Familiar with Bernays from marketing classes in college. The true father of modern marketing and public relations; the good as well as more sinister side. I believe he was Freud's nephew too.

Yes he was Freud's nephew. I believe he did a lot of work to get Freud popular in the U.S. and afterward he used his relationship with Freud to market himself in the U.S.

I'm surprised Bernays isn't more well known in the manosphere and on this forum. A lot of "red pill" thinking is simply reversing the false information we have learned from society. We learned a lot of that false information because governments and corporations figured out how to manipulate us with Bernay's teachings.

If Bernays and this book interest you then also check out the free documentaries "Consumed" and "The Century of The Self".

All of this is tied to game and the modern problems in the west that are frequently discussed on this forum and RoK. I might get in trouble for saying this but I think this should be required reading for anyone writing articles on RoK or creating political threads in the Everything Else section of this forum. There is a lot of value in understanding how people are manipulated and how the world has changed since the end of the world wars when the work of men like Freud and Bernays was put to use.

Post: #8

Thanks to Birthday Cat's link, I'm in.

Post: #9

Just finished it and thought it was a good read. I liked the expanded version of the term "propaganda."

I will refer to Bernays is future discussions with people.

Post: #10

Just finished. I had a negative bias heading into the book due to watching "The Century of the Self". My opinions of Bernays have changed drastically from reading this work. Bernays' term "propaganda" is essentially what is called "marketing" today. While many of his ideas and concepts have been used for manipulation purposes, the book is honest in nature. Just like how game or money is great in the hands of an ethical man, it can also do a lot of damage in the wrong hands. Everyone uses "propaganda" today, it's called persuasion. You can't make someone believe in anything, but you can persuade them to see your point of view if they are open to it. Individuals and corporations alike do this everyday. For example, we can convince the average blue-collar democrat who is fed up with the current administration that Trump will be the best candidate for him. We can never convince some blue-haired libtard in academia the same.

Bernays also prophesied the direction of higher education. Unfortunately state universities chose to use sports as a money maker and placed it above education. He would be rolling in his grave at all the McDegrees being issued today. This is probably why we spent more time in marketing classes doing tedious PowerPoint presentations and group projects and less time gaining real knowledge of the subject by reading books such as this one.

Post: #11

Finished the book today. Interesting read. And it made me realize that Internet, the perfect free speech medium, is also the perfect tool for propaganda.