Propaganda
Edward Bernays, 1928
You choose a suit, a car or a candidate, and it seems like your own decision. Edward Bernays, one of the founders of the public relations profession, openly described in 1928 how a small number of people shapes the tastes and opinions of millions, and called this a necessary part of democracy. You will see his methods from the inside and learn to notice when they are applied to you.
Who it is for
For people who want to understand where their own desires and opinions come from, to notice staged news and recommendations, and to tell honest persuasion from quiet steering.
We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, and our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.
The Suit Chosen in London
Picture a man choosing a suit. He studies the cloth, the buttons and the width of the sleeve for a long time, and he is sure he decides by himself, by his own taste. Edward Bernays explains how such a choice really works. He called his profession public relations counsel.
In London there is a tailor almost nobody has heard of. He offers his distinguished clients blue cloth instead of grey and two buttons instead of three. Under contract, an American factory immediately receives his descriptions of the new cuts and buys cloth worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Within a season the new cut is worn by the fashionable people of New York and Chicago, and right behind them by an ordinary buyer from the town of Topeka.
Bernays's book came out in 1928 and opens with an admission that sounds almost defiant. The conscious management of the habits and opinions of the masses, he writes, is an important part of a democratic society. Those who do it form an invisible government, the real ruling power of the country. Its main tool is propaganda, in Bernays's sense of the word.
The most unexpected thing here is the judgment. Bernays does not expose this government, he defends it. If everyone studied all the political questions for himself and checked every bar of soap and every loaf of bread, life would come to a standstill. So society, in his view, agrees to let someone narrow its choices. This is his position, not an established truth, and you can argue with it.
We will read this book from the other side of the counter. You will see the methods Bernays described as ordinary work: the voice of authority, an event staged for the news, a word in place of an argument, and a desire that feels like your own. Once you know how the mechanism works, it is easier to notice. Let's start with the bacon.
The Doctor Who Recommends Bacon
Suppose a meat company needs to sell more bacon. The old advertising, Bernays writes, would do it head on. It would print, again and again across a full page: eat more bacon, it is cheap, tasty and gives you energy. It believed that repetition alone creates conviction.
The new approach starts with a different question: who influences what people eat? The answer is obvious: doctors. So the company should get doctors to say publicly that bacon is good for you. Bernays is sure that many people will follow the advice of their own doctor, because people are used to depending on him. The buyer no longer needs to be convinced of anything. The person he already trusts will say it all.
This is the central idea of the book. For Bernays, society is not a crowd of separate individuals but a network of groups woven into one another. His imaginary John Jones belongs to a Rotary Club, a church congregation, a party, a professional association and a golf club. An opinion he hears in one group, he will carry into the others. Influence the leaders, and the group will follow them, and the leader may not even know that he is working for someone.
Bernays does not hide where this method came from. During the First World War the American government not only addressed every citizen but also enlisted the key people in each group, those whose word carries weight with hundreds of thousands of followers. After the war, he writes, clever people began to wonder whether the same technique could be used in peacetime. Why a group follows its leader so readily, Bernays does not explain again: he refers to Trotter and other researchers of group psychology. What interests him is something else: how to use this.
For the reader, a simple question follows. When a respected person suddenly recommends a particular product, habit or point of view, ask: did he arrive at this himself, or did someone first arrive at him? The advice may be honest and useful. But its path to you may have begun nowhere near the doctor's office.
About the author
Edward Bernays (1891-1995), an American public relations specialist and nephew of Sigmund Freud. He is considered one of the founders of this profession.
All books by this author: Edward Bernays
Terms from the book
- Freud
- Morgan
- Jones
- Procter & Gamble
- public relations counsel: Bernays's name for his profession: a person who explains the affairs of a company, a politician or an organization to the public, and explains to his client what the public wants. In effect, an early public relations specialist.
- Topeka: A city in the American state of Kansas, and its capital. For Bernays it stands for an ordinary provincial town, far from the centers of fashion.
- invisible government: Bernays's image, not a scientific term: the few people who, while remaining unknown to the public, shape its opinions, tastes and habits.
- propaganda: In Bernays's understanding, a consistent, long-term effort that creates or shapes events to influence public attitudes toward a cause, idea or group. He himself considered the word neutral, although even in his time it sounded ominous.
- Rotary Club: A club of the international Rotary organization, which brings together businesspeople and professionals for public and charitable work. Founded in Chicago in 1905.
- Trotter: Wilfred Trotter (1872-1939), an English surgeon and author of a book on the herd instinct in humans. Bernays cites him as a researcher of group psychology.
- Masaryk: Tomáš Masaryk (1850-1937), a Czech philosopher and politician, the first president of Czechoslovakia.
- Beech-Nut: An American food company from the town of Canajoharie in New York State. Bernays cites its story as an example of refuting a rumor with deeds, not words.
- clichés: A ready-made expression or image that replaces a whole set of thoughts and feelings. Bernays believed that a group left without a leader thinks in clichés.
- Bolshevik: A member of the radical wing of Russian social democrats, which came to power in 1917. In America of the 1920s the word became a scarecrow, used to frighten people away from any uncomfortable idea.
- Ivory: The brand of white soap made by Procter & Gamble, known since the nineteenth century.
- enlightened self-interest: Bernays's term: the pursuit of your own gain through the gain of other people.
- Blair: Emily Newell Blair (1877-1951), an American writer and political activist, one of the leaders of the Democratic Party in the 1920s.
- NAACP: The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, an American organization founded in 1909 to fight for the civil rights of Black Americans.
- lynching: Mob violence, killing without a trial. In the United States of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Black Americans were most often the victims of lynchings.
- Ku Klux Klan: An American racist organization that promoted white supremacy. In the 1920s millions of people were members.
All terms
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