I've always wanted to read Bernays. I first heard of him on WBAI 99.5FM, a public radio station in New York City and under Pacifica, during their fundraiser, where they would play a documentary about the mass manipulation of populations, and offer to give it to you for free if you donated some money to the station. At that time, Bernays sounded like the most diabolical person ever. Today, we're in an age of digital mass manipulation, with non-human algorithms and predatory platforms, and so I thought maybe it's time I read the Bernays, from the source, and so I did.
Now I realize that he was not a diabolical mastermind who manipulated every person on the planet for greed and power. He was trying to help the people talk to their government and to their corporate overlords. Granted, he did work for entities like Phillip Morris, and granted, audacious plots like the Carbon Footprint propagandized by British Petroleum were crafted in his spirit. And then there's the quote from the back of the book jacket of his second book Propaganda (copied below), which is nothing short of the most ominous and conspiratorial provocation ever. But in his own books, he's saying he does all this because he wants to see people understand each other. He doesn't only want the business he works for to make more money, he wants the customers they serve to be more satisfied at the same time. He doesn't just want a government to come up with some new laws, he wants those laws to actually be just what the people need, no more and no less. "The goal of all public relations is good will" (Public Relations, Bernays, 1952, p5).
Maybe there's another piece to all this, some criticism written 20 years after he dies, that shows how I was so easily misled, and how he was in fact the sinister mental criminal the WBAI documentary presented him as. Maybe; but I'm not there yet. So for now, here it is.
Crystallizing Public Opinion
Edward Bernays, 1923
This is his first book.
Something about "the danger of interference by the public in the conduct of the industry"; but his tone overall is one of cooperation, consideration, conscientiousness, etc., and for the public good just as much as the interests of industry, government, etc. p21
On Paul Revere vs Longfellow, and Perception vs Reality - based on a story in a "New York newspaper", about public relations (which was a new concept at the time by the way). Two other people rode with Paul Revere that night. "There were three waiting to see the signal hung in the tower of the Old North Church. Everyone of them mounted and spurred just as Mr. Longfellow described Paul Revere. They all got the signal. They all rode and waked the farmers, spreading the warning. Afterward, one of them was an officer in Washington's army, another became governor of one of the States. Not one in twenty thousand Americans ever heard the names of the other two, and there is hardly a person in America who does not know all about Revere. Did Revere make history or did Longfellow?" p22-23
On Influencing Public Opinion - or even on correcting misinformation, as the advice sounds very familiar. "It is seldom effective to call names or to attempt to discredit the beliefs themselves. The council on public relations, after examination of the sources of established beliefs, must either discredit the old authorities or create new authorities by making articulate a mass opinion against the old belief or in favor of a new one." And because he says the beliefs of individuals come from authorities, like the President of the United States, the president of the local school board, or the director of a finance committee; authorities are where the belief comes from, and people have allegiance to them; the allegiance is to other people, not to ideas or beliefs, but it appears as allegiance to belief. And therefore, you can't discredit the belief but the authority where it comes from. p30
In a chapter titled "The Interaction of Public Opinion with the Forces That Help Make It", he talks about the back-and-forth of the public opinion and public will on other systems, which then influence them back, etc., and he says, "Give the people what they want" is only half sound. What they want and what they get are fused by some mysterious alchemy. The press, the lecturer, the screen and the public lead and are led by each other." p38
He mentions often "the crowd" and "crowd-mind" and Everett Dean Martin's the Behavior of Crowds.
He refers to Instincts of Herd by Trotter to explain the behaviors of the group vs the individual.
On Dull News Days - he is referencing an article by the editors of the New York Tribune, April 19, 1922, "What Else Happened That Day", which is about the news on the day Austria declared war on Serbia, and which started World War One. First Bernays says when there is no big news, real editing is needed to select the real news from the semi-news. Then he says, "What you read on dull news days is what fixes your opinion of your country and of your compatriots. It is from the non-sensational news that you see the world and assess, rightly or wrongly, the true value of persons and events." And so Bernays is saying it is in this way, small yet unending, that our ideas are shaped. Not the big, single incidents; the ones you notice. It's the million little things, and so small you don't notice. Little by little you build your ideas, your beliefs. p51
Here citing Lippmann's "Public Opinion", there are 3 ways to "obtain cohesive force" of the public:
1. Patronage and Pork - a member of one community will promise reciprocal support to the member from another community
2. Government by Terror and Obedience - [no explanation is given]
3. Governments based on such highly developed systems of information, analysis and self-consciousness that the 'knowledge of national circumstances and reasons of state' is evident to all men. ... [T]he degree to which the material for a common consciousness exists determines how far cooperation will depend upon force, or upon the milder alternative to force, which is patronage and privilege. p56-57
On the Interlapping Group Formations in Society - let us examine for a moment the personnel of the Horseshoe at the Metropolitan Opera House. It is comprised of people who are rich, but this economic classification is only one, for the men and women who assemble there are presumably music lovers. But also ... art lovers ... sportsmen ... merchants and bankers ... philosophers ... motorists and amateur farmers. p63
And a silk firm trying to reach the public, targets women, propagandizing silk as fashion, as art, as the natural history of the silk worm ... p64
Citing Martin's "The Behavior of Crowds", "a debate will draw a larger crowd than a lecture." p68
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| The first picture I wanted to use seemed very obviously artificially generated, so I chose this one instead. I didn't look at the words printed at the bottom, until I did, and then I decided to just leave it for everyone to see. This is how hard it's become to find an actual original photo from that day. |
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| This seems a bit more authentic? |
Propaganda
Edward Bernays, 1928
This is his second book.
On the back jacket, "Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country." This sounds so ominous and conspiratorial, but not how he seemed to portray it? And so I might have to argue that even Bernays himself is saying that true power is part of the iterative creative force of a population acting on its governing bodies which then act back on the population which then act in response back on the governing bodies, ad infinitum; and so nobody rules anything, nobody ultimate controls anything.
His first book seems to be making the case for a public opinion expert, or public relations expert. Here, he's making the case for propaganda, which is the instrument of the public relations expert.
The New Propagandists, a list: The President of the United States and the members of his Cabinet; the Senators and Representatives in Congress; the Governors of our forty-eight states; the presidents of the chambers of commerce in our hundred largest cities, the chairmen of the boards of directors of our hundred or more largest industrial corporations, the presidents of many of the labor unions affiliated in the American Federation of Labor, the national president of each of the national professional and fraternal organizations, the president of each of the racial or language societies in the country, the hundred leading newspaper and magazine editors, the fifty most popular authors, the presidents of the fifty leading charitable organizations, the twenty leading theatrical or cinema producers, the hundred recognized leaders of fashion, the most popular and influential clergymen in the hundred leadings cities, the presidents of our colleges and universities and the foremost members of their faculties, the most powerful financiers in Wall Street, the most noted amateurs of sport, and so on. p12
"Invisible government" and "mass psychology" - these are some mid-20th c. and early 21st c. buzzwords; were they buzzwords in 1920 when he wrote this?
He talks about the new industrial economy and says the new business is not to make more stuff, because we got that with the industrial revolution, "To make customers is the new problem" and his greater context here is inter-industry and inter-commodity competition. p30
Ultimately he seems to see it as a cooperation, and a "bringing order from chaos"
He also says beliefs you agree with are education, and beliefs you disagree with are propaganda, but that propaganda is its own thing, and a good propagandist can use it to influence public opinion to the benefit of both.
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| AI Art - Mind Control - via stablediffusion |
Public Relations
Edward Bernays, 1952
This is his last book. Much of it is taken from previously published material, either his own earlier books, or news, journals, etc., articles written by him and others. I get somewhat of a feeling that he's being defensive of propaganda; this is written in 1952, where the whole world knows what it means, and what it can do. At his first book, circa 1920, the world, and the concept of 'propaganda' were both much different.
"The goal of all public relations is good will" p5
On Publicity vs Public Relations - "Publicity is a one-way street; public relations, a two-way street. The modern public relations man owes his being to the destruction of the laissez-faire in the early twentieth century; he owes it to the muckrakers of the period, the Square Deal, the New Freedom, and the New Deal." p5
Propaganda - "The term 'propaganda' was introduced when Pope Gregory XIII established a Committee for the Propagation of the Faith to found seminars and print catechisms and other religious works in foreign countries. Subsequently, Pope Urban VIII (1623-1644) founded the College of Propaganda to educate priests. In 1650 Pope Clement VII instituted the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith to spread Catholicism the world over." p20
Public Opinion - the phrase is first used in the Enlightenment, which is after revolutions gave rights to public speech, freedom of presses, etc., and all as a result of literacy in the population. ... Rousseau's term volonte generale, or the "general will", and the German Volksgeist, or "spirit of the people", and Jeremy Bentham's "tribunal of public opinion" p22
"What is truly vicious is not propaganda but a monopoly of it." p24
PT Barnum would write letters to the editor of a newspaper, under pseudonyms, and both for and against PT Barnum. (This sounds like the Black Lives Matter movement circa 2018, and follows Bernays earlier advice that 'a debate is better than a lecture'; recall there were protests on both sides of the issue held at the same place and same time and started by the same organization but masquerading as two opposing organizations.) p38
During the period 1800-1865, slavery was the primary topic; he lists all the ways literature, magazines, etc. influenced public opinion, and that is where we see the first real reference to 'public relations', used by a rector in New York City, 1842 p46
Publicity vs Public Relations - it was called publicity, but in 1908, AT&T head used the word in the heading of the annual report. p70
Freud was the uncle of Bernays.
The Committee on Public Information of WWI (imagine that)
"The first use of "public relations counsel" was at the time of the Bernays wedding, "when the groom described himself by that phrase." Eric Goldman, Two-Way Street p91
"...separate proper from impropaganda" -Herbert Bayard Swope, executive manager of the New York World, 1922
[Relevant in Post-COVID 2025] Following the Great Depression, "Corporations and leaders had lost prestige simultaneously. From a market standpoint, the public was keenly sensitive, because of its feeling of insecurity, to everything about a corporation that it did not understand. ... sales of products fell off for the most improbably and unlikely reasons: false rumors, ... No possible subject that could be a matter of disagreement between groups of the public was too trivial to cause a wave of public disapproval or a falling off in buying. p92
The Institute for Propaganda Analysis, started by the Boston merchant Edward A. Filene, 1937, and published Propaganda Analysis, a monthly newsletter "to help intelligent citizens detect and analyze propaganda"
Classifications:
- the name-calling device
- glittering generalities
- transfer in terms of approved symbols and sanctions
- testimonial
- plain folks' device
- card-stacking
- bandwagon
A major distinction he makes is the one-way vs two-way streets; the one-way approach to public relations is what most people call sales. p122
The genius of radon watches - they were indispensable to soldiers on the front lines because they couldn't use lights to see their watches, so the radon watch was put on soldiers, and the soldiers were sold to the people, at a time when watches were still considered feminine. p129-130
"Engineering of Consent" is a chapter title, and pretty ominous sounding if you ask me.
He recommends all Public Relations Councils have a library of people and organizations, like the directory of newspapers, or the Congressional Directory...p162
He lists some of his processes
- Research - survey people, write them letters
- Appeal to Desire - aka "psychological raw materials", self preservation, ambition, pride, hunger, love of family and children, patriotism, imitativeness, the desire to be a leader, love of play
- Symbols - Horses are the symbol for both Marlboro and Budweiser (jesus yes they are)
- Do not think of tactics in segmented approaches; the problem is not to get articles into a newspaper or radio time or arrange for a motion-picture newsreel; it is rather to set in motion a broad activity, the success of which depends on interlocking all phases and elements of the proposed strategy, implemented by tactics that are tuned to the moment of maximum effectiveness
- "He must prepare copy written in simple language and sixteen-word sentences" p167
He recommends each business make notes on all things public about the business, government legislation, even newspaper clippings to see how they are viewed by the public
"House Organs" - in-house company magazines ... don't mention strikes or labor issues in general, despite being of utmost interest to the readership (employees) p210
[But this is my opinion, it just occurs immediately when reading this] A business producing a "house organ" that continually educates its employees on its business, its economics, its hiring practices, seems it would have no choice over time but to accumulate bias, until it's no longer trusted, and thus can no longer serve its purpose of educating employees (because they don't trust it to read it). A separate entity would have to publish it, yet paid for by the company, and no company would do that on its own, at least not without being required by law?
"The hidden market in the human personality" p216 (this is where his legacy begins, because psychology was new at the time)
"Advertising is re-education" p249
"People must want cleanliness before they want soap." p328
