Propaganda

2,487 Words

Propaganda is a 1928 tract written by Jewish marketing strategist (and Sigmund Freud nephew) Edward Bernays. It’s brief, but it could have been a lot briefer. Basically, Bernays has four main ideas about his eponymous subject matter, which he applies and reapplies over and over. It quickly gets tedious, but don’t let the tedium fool you. Propaganda is an extremely valuable work—especially for what white advocates are trying to accomplish today. And this is because those four ideas are brilliant. In this review, I intend not so much to evaluate Propaganda but give a brief history of the subject as presented by Bernays, summarize his main ideas, and suggest a way in which white advocates can use these ideas to further their cause.

The word “propaganda” first appeared in English in 1622, when Pope Gregory XV added a new function to the Holy See called The Office for the Propagation of the Faith (Congregatio de propaganda fide). The Pope wished to counter the spread of Protestantism by propagating the good word of the Catholic Church across the globe. In the eyes of the faithful, propaganda started out as a way to combat lies with Truth. And this more or less positive (or, at worst, neutral) connotation remained in place until World War I.

In the words of Mark Crispin Miller, who wrote the Introduction to the 2005 edition of Propaganda:

[I]t was not until 1915 that governments first systematically deployed the entire range of modern media to rouse their populations to fanatical assent. Here was an extraordinary state accomplishment: mass enthusiasm at the prospect of a global brawl that otherwise would mystify those very masses, and that shattered most of those who actually took part in it.

So it makes sense that by 1928, the public perception of propaganda had significantly dimmed, considering that the practice had helped to get millions killed for no discernible reason. War is a racket, after all. Yet practice makes perfect, and the men who learned how to propagandize “fanatical assent” during the war figured out how to apply their skills on behalf of companies such as General Motors, General Electric, and Procter & Gamble after the war concluded. Edward Bernays was one of these men, and ended up being the best, largely due to a solid understanding of mass psychology and mass media and how to creatively interleave the two.

Miller relates how, in the early 1950s, Bernays propagandized the idea that Guatemala was on the brink of communist revolution. This led to a CIA overthrow of Guatemala and the installation of a “quasi-fascist” US puppet regime, which greatly simplified matters for Bernays’ employer, the United Fruit Company. Miller tells us that Bernays actually believed his own propaganda and was quick to disassociate himself from his messaging if he ever found it to be untruthful or fraudulent. For example, Bernays had been a major asset for tobacco companies until he learned of the health hazards associated with smoking.

IDEA #1: An “invisible government” uses propaganda

Bernays repeatedly tells us that through propaganda, a small number of unseen and unknown men manipulate the habits and opinions of millions. These are the true rulers of our society. “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,” he writes.

This invisible government controls not only the kind of soap we buy and breakfast cereal we eat, but also the men who are (or could never be) elected to public office. The irony of propaganda is that it requires a free society in which to thrive, but ultimately makes society less free despite all appearances.

A presidential candidate may be “drafted” in response to “overwhelming popular demand,” but it is well known that his name may be decided upon by half a dozen men sitting around a table in a hotel room.

This insight turned out to be quite prescient according to historian Harry Elmer Barnes. In his essay “Was Roosevelt Pushed into War by Popular Demand?” (published in the great revisionist work Barnes Against the Blackout by the Institute for Historical Review), the presidential nomination of Republican Wendell Wilkie in 1940 seemed as if it sprang from grass roots enthusiasm, but was in fact manufactured by men behind the scenes such as Ogden Reid, publisher of the New York Herald-Tribune, and Thomas Lamont, chairman of the board of JP Morgan and Company. These men desired America’s entry into the war in Europe, and selected Wilkie since his platform was hardly different than that of the fervently interventionist President Roosevelt.

And they made it seem otherwise through propaganda.

IDEA #2: Propaganda must court or mold public opinion

If this invisible government is the surgeon, and propaganda the tools at his disposal, the public—or, really, public opinion—is the patient. Sometimes propaganda will analyze and capitalize on existing public opinion. Other times it will massage the public mind until it creates the opinion it is seeking. In the first case, the surgeon will find something amiss under the skin and then fix it by selling whatever product, service, or notion he wishes to sell. In the second, he will graft something new onto the patient in order for the patient to then desire whatever product, service, or notion he wishes to sell. In either case, the patient is a passive actor and completely unaware of what is being done to him.

Industries, public utilities, educational movements, indeed all groups representing any concept or product, whether they are majority or minority ideas, succeed only because of approving public opinion. Public opinion is the unacknowledged partner in all broad efforts.

To take the surgeon analogy even further, applying propaganda that runs afoul of public opinion would be about as disastrous as the patient waking up during an operation. Many a product has failed because its propagandist misread the mind of the public.

Bernays offers an interesting case study of a piano manufacturer that wishes to sell more pianos. Instead of producing advertisements touting the benefits of a particular brand of piano, the clever propagandist would try “lifting the idea of the music room to a place in the public consciousness which it did not have before.” This he may do, for example, by

1. “Organizing an exhibition of period music rooms designed by well-known decorators who themselves exert an influence on the buying groups.”
2. “Putting in [these rooms] rare and valuable tapestries.”
3. Inviting “persons known to influence the buying habits of the public, such as a famous violinist, a popular artist, and a society leader” to this exhibition.
4. Persuading prominent architects to “to make the music room an integral architectural part of their plans with perhaps a specially charming niche in one corner for the piano.”

Bernays sums it up beautifully:

Under the old salesmanship the manufacturer said to the prospective purchaser, “Please buy a piano.” The new salesmanship has reversed the process and caused the prospective purchaser to say to the manufacturer, “Please sell me a piano.”

IDEA #3: Propaganda competes with other propaganda

Miller refers to Bernays as a “propagandist for propaganda.” According to Miller, Bernays felt that the negative connotations of the term were unfair. If a propaganda campaign has untoward effects, it’s not because propaganda is inherently evil but because there was a failure of competing propaganda campaigns to predict or uncover these effects. According to this logic, anything bad occurring because of propaganda comes from not having enough propaganda. Indeed, in Bernays’ mind (as it was in Pope Gregory’s), propaganda is a tool to shed light upon darkness and “bring order out of chaos.”

You can buy Jason Kessler’s book Charlottesville & the Death of Free Speech here.

Objectively, this idea is highly dubious. Firstly, governments or oligarchs can stifle counter-propaganda. During World War I, a person caught distributing or engaging in anti-war propaganda would be imprisoned. Today, a person engaging in Dissident Right propaganda will be canceled one way or another. How can propaganda compete under such circumstances?  Secondly, there are the moral quandaries associated with propaganda as mind control, which Bernays, to his discredit, rather blithely dismisses. And finally, it is possible that general understanding has not yet reached the point where counter-propaganda becomes necessary, thereby allowing bad propaganda to flourish in the meantime. Bernays’ experience propagandizing tobacco products is a case in point. Before the famous surgeon general’s warning in 1964, how many deaths did Bernays contribute to by finding ingenious ways for cigarette companies to sell their products? And does it really make a difference if he knew about the ill-effects of smoking while doing so? You could ask the same question about his role in selling the abattoir that was World War I.

One technique often employed by competitive propaganda is the panel of experts. Bernays used this trick to convince millions of Americans that a hearty breakfast of bacon and eggs is just what a person needs to begin his day. After all, 9 out of 10 doctors agree! But what about all the fat associated with bacon and eggs? Isn’t that bad for you? Well, according to countless competing propaganda campaigns, 9 out of 10 doctors agree on that too. This is why you should buy low-calorie foods containing the wondrous fat replacer olestra!

According to Mark Schatzker in his book The End of Craving:

Discovered in 1968 by scientists researching baby food, this miracle substance looked, smelled, tasted, and even cooked like fat. Incredibly, it contained zero calories. It did everything fat did but with no funny aftertaste, no bitterness—nothing. Olestra was so superbly fatlike that you could fry potato chips in it, which is what Frito-Lay did, marketing low-calorie versions of Doritos, Ruffles, and Lay’s under the WOW moniker. In the end, though, olestra’s camouflage was its undoing. Enzymes in the gut that bond with fat molecules didn’t react with olestra and let it sail by, and it arrived at the end of its digestive journey as pristine as at the beginning, causing a constellation of unpleasant symptoms, the most famous being “anal leakage.”

Schatzker goes on to document how fat-free and sugar-free additives in food often trick the brain into thinking the body is receiving fat and sugar, and then triggers unexpected and often negative side effects as a result. In a sense The End of Craving can be considered counter-propaganda to the anti-fat, anti-sugar propaganda most Americans grew up with.

But if competition doesn’t necessarily redeem propaganda, then what use is idea #3? It’s useful because it teaches us that propaganda is everywhere. And if you find negative or otherwise fraudulent propaganda, it must be countered with more propaganda. Ignoring it is never enough.

IDEA #4: Propaganda takes advantage of mass psychology

Midway through Propaganda Bernays relates an interesting anecdote about World War I. In Great Britain there had been a public outcry against the abrupt way soldiers were being treated in so-called “evacuation hospitals.” These were similar to MASH units near the front line, and so abrupt treatment was about as good as could be expected given the circumstances. But because the British populace had associated the term “hospital” with extensive, rehabilitative care, they were outraged. That is, until a propaganda-wise person in the British government changed the name to “evacuation posts.” After that, the outcry ceased.

According to Bernays’ study of psychology:

[t]he 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?

According to Bernays, when using propaganda to sway the masses one way or another, it is best to appeal to emotions and impulses, rather than thought and reason. Without leadership, the masses will naturally resort to “clichés, pat words or images” to direct their attention. The British public relied upon its clichéd understanding of hospitals while venting its outrage. Once leadership stepped in with propaganda, the affair concluded.

***

Of course, I recommend Propaganda to anyone interested in the topic. It’s a classic, and there is much that is brilliant in it. But there is also quite a bit of repetition, as well as a few less-than-useful passages which haven’t aged well, for example Bernays’ treatment of the radio as the premier tool of propaganda. His chapter on “women’s activities” is best skipped given all that has happened to the fairer sex since 1928. Also, Bernays was directing his pro-propaganda propaganda towards a more monoracial and less anti-white society than what we have today. The propaganda he describes is much less vicious than what we find every day on the internet. Still, the fundamentals of Edward Bernays’ ideas ring true after nearly a century, and I have summarized them to make them as useful as possible.

One way in which white advocates can apply Bernaysian propaganda to further their cause would be to infiltrate Protestant churches in a particular area the same way that the above piano propagandist infiltrated the world of event organizers, decorators, and architects. All they would need is four or five young and aspiring religious leaders who are committed to white well-being. During services, they can stress the morality and common sense behind white ethnocentrism, and thereby instill the need for benign white tribalism among their parishioners. And when blowback occurs, they can protect and defend each other, thereby giving the impression of mass interest in white ethnocentrism.

Instead of saying “Please sell me a piano,” such people may ultimately go to Greg Johnson and say, “Please sell me White Nationalism.” Regardless of the propaganda put in use, however, it has to be a deliberate and well-thought-out plan on the part of an “invisible government” of influential and resourceful whites who wish to make public opinion more amenable to their ideas. It that way, we would all be Bernaysians.

I will leave you with a passage from Propaganda in which Bernays does treat the racial aspect of his subject matter with a surprising amount of restraint and—dare I say it?—respect. I’ll let you be the judge.

When an Imperial Wizard, sensing what is perhaps hunger for an ideal, offers a picture of a nation all Nordic and nationalistic, the common man of the older American stock, feeling himself elbowed out of his rightful position and prosperity by the newer immigrant stocks, grasps the picture which fits in so neatly with his prejudices, and makes it his own. He buys the sheet and pillowcase costume, and bands with his fellows by the thousand into a huge group powerful enough to swing state elections and to throw a ponderous monkey wrench into a national convention.