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The word ‘propaganda’ as it is used today, did not always have the primarily negative connotation that has become associated with it after World War II.  The Third Reich made extensive and effective use of this technology enabling it to generate support to prosecute wars of hatred and intolerance against people inside and outside the country.  And, if you stop to think about it for a moment, such powerful and effective societal manipulation obviously did not simply fall into the dustbin of history and cease to exist when the Third Reich fell.  Hence the need and desirability of this Primer on Propaganda.

Before WWII, the science and practice of propaganda was still a maturing and relatively untested technology.  Hitler’s Germany became its first society-wide success story, setting the stage for its planetary application which has now become so ubiquitous, so deeply and unconsciously embedded and accepted in our experience, as to be practically invisible.  Prior to the second world war, however, this emerging field was much more openly discussed and was widely heralded as having great promise to ‘educate’ and ‘inform’ the masses.

The pioneer of this new field was an Austrian-born American by the name of Edward Bernays, who is widely recognized as “the father of modern public relations.”[1] His personal background, intentions and understanding as to its need and purpose (not to mention his future employers) are generally less well known however.  In the early 1920s, Mr. Bernays published the seminal work in this new field.  The book was simply titled “Propaganda” and was used as a graduate level text.  At the time, it was presented as a necessary and benign means of ‘e

ducating’ the common man.  The issue at hand was how to generate public support for national social and political policies in the most efficient and effective manner.

Being the nephew of Sigmund Freud, Mr. Bernays was no neophyte when it came to his understanding of unconscious and subconscious human desires and motivations.  Taken as a whole, he believed these unconscious drives led to the necessity of “enlightened despotism” in order to control the otherwise dangerous “herd instincts” of society.[2] He made no effort to hide his motivations and reasons for developing technology for the expressed purpose of controlling the public mind.  In his own words:

“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?  The recent practice of propaganda has proved that it is possible…”[3]

This is the most fundamentally important aspect of modern ‘public relations’ to understand and to appreciate.  Namely that its primary purpose is, was, and always has been, to control the public mind, to generate the accepted realms of discourse, understanding and perceptions of the public at large, without their conscious knowledge or consent…for their own good.  This process is called propaganda, public relations, advertising, and more honestly, brainwashing.  Despite what more (potentially) innocent modern-day media moguls and advertising experts may believe or say, all of these practices essentially refer to the same process and objective, namely, using mass media to effect control of public beliefs, desires and actions by manipulating the subconscious.

The second primary distinguishing characteristic of conditioning/propaganda/advertising/brainwashing is that there will always be resistance to uncovering it, to becoming conscious of it and its effects.   It is always designed with built-in protective mechanisms, otherwise it would not remain as well hidden, underexposed or effective.  Therefore, anytime anyone is being pushed up against belief systems that have been impressed upon them in this way, they will feel resistance of some kind.  It will often come as an emotional response, ranging from slight discomfort and disquiet to extreme upset and anger.  It will often take the form of ridicule, derision or dismissal (think how most people react when they hear the words “conspiracy theory”).  This is the second defining characteristic of conditioning.

We’ve all seen pictures of goose-stepping soldiers.  This kind of conditioning did not stop with Hitler’s Third Reich, with Russian Communism or with China or North Korea’s statist control structures.  It did not, and is not, just happening to them.  It is happening to us, now.  The disquieting reality I have accepted about my culture, and about myself, that I am asking you to consider is that, in many ways, we are those goose-stepping soldiers; and not only are we them, but we are conditioned to resist acknowledging it.

We have all been deeply and powerfully conditioned, in ways we often don’t recognize, to see things a certain way, to believe things that suit the interests of others and not ourselves.  And at some level, we know it.  Those of us familiar with the information on this blog see it every day.  We hear it on radio and TV talk shows, in the papers and in books.  People being told, doctors, nurses, politicians, radio and TV talking heads and the man on the street parroting what they have heard, and know to be true about cholesterol, saturated fats, heart disease, and all manner of misguided understandings regarding health and wellness. We can easily see such conditioning…in others.  It’s all around us.  Many of us, probably most of us, are painfully aware of it every day.  In the public realm, on talk radio and in print media such recognition often carries large helpings of sarcasm and ‘how-can-they-be-so-hopelessly-ignorant’ rhetoric along with it.

But it seems we all think it hasn’t happened to us.  We all think that we alone (or nearly alone) have risen above and reasoned our way out of the trap of unconscious manipulation.  We all pretty much know what we believe, why we believe it, and why we’re right and everybody else has got some, or most of it wrong.

And don’t you see?  It can’t be that way.  It can’t be that we’re the only ones who’ve got the straight scoop about it all.  But most of us honestly seem to think we do.  And that’s the whole point right there.  Because even when we have recognized, dissected and marveled at specific areas where we have seen behind the curtain, we are all still swimming in a sea of manipulation and conditioning that effects our belief systems; that has informed the choices we make about our diet and our health; that has provided the ideas and understanding we have about what’s so, what’s not so, what’s possible and what’s not possible.  Most of you are well-acquainted with the misleading information and ideas promulgated about food and health that inform the majority of public opinion.  Now consider that a similar depth and degree of misinformation and manipulation adheres to the realms of energy, money, medicine, and media.  Consider that we all are conditioned in ways we are not aware, to think, to feel, to believe, and to act in accordance with some external intent and purpose.

The point here is not to become paranoid, it is to become conscious.  It’s not time to see through the looking glass anymore, it’s time to step outside the looking glass altogether and challenge, consider and reset our own belief systems and take greater responsibility for all the material we ingest and propagate, be it physical or ideological.  The best place to start is with the food we eat, the next place is the information we accept as truth.  To me it seems one of the hardest lessons, to accept that in today’s media-mediated society, there will probably always be areas where I, and others, have been misguided and misled.  A big part of how well we navigate all the changes we see coming and happening around us will be how open and willing, how supple and flexible we can learn to be with regard to much that each of us has taken as ‘truth’ to this point.  Food is an obvious example for all of us here, but be assured it is not the only example for any of us.

By David Barker
essencequest@hotmail.com

[1] The Century of the Self, 2002 BBC documentary.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/features/century_of_the_self.shtml

[2] Wikiipedia, “Edward Bernays” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays

[3] ibid