When Propaganda Became PR

Edward Louis Bernays James is known as “the father of public relations” and was the nephew of Sigmund Freud.

Previously, the term propaganda were in normal use without the same negative connotations that was made by German propaganda in WW1 and particular WW2, with Joseph Goebbels as head of Nazi propaganda activities aimed at particular Jews and Gypsies, Slavic peoples, and also mentally ill, disabled, homosexuals etc. which was described as “Untermensch” as opposed to “master-race” of Aryan Germans and other Germanic peoples, such as National-Romantic’s in my own native Scandinavia witch also influence the party with Nordic and Germanic myths to be made aware of as an lost, past glory and possibly a superior people if they did something like cruel old Viking customs of putting the weakly and sick babies out in the forest to die. The euthanasia that began in mental institutions used Social-Darwinian principles, which claimed that Germans became a weaker peoples when the above mentioned “Untermench” reproduced and became a part of the population, and thus justified euthanasia, which eventually evolved into the Holocaust and the death camps where only among Jews 6 million people with 1 million children among them. Goebbels said that one of Bernays earliest books “propaganda” had been a major source of inspiration to him.

Perhaps the most famous and one of the first PR campaigns, realized the tobacco industry that they could potentially double the sales of cigarettes women started smoking, which until then had been a big taboo and in the worst case could arrange to have them arrested if they smoked in public. Then in 1929 put Bernays started a campaign in conjunction with an “Easter Parade” in New York where female models participated by holding up lit Lucky Strike cigarettes in the parade, which the media afterwards was called “Torch of Freedom”, with a clear reference to the Statue of Liberty. After that smoking among women more widespread and socially respectable.

After this he convinced large-sized industrial giants that news, especially advertising, was the best way to convince the ignorant crowd. He also spent large sums to get the advice of psychoanalysts for how to influence people’s psyche and subconscious, and worked for Procter & Gamble, the American Tobacco Company, Cartier Inc., Bestfoods, CBS, United Fruit Company, General Electric, Dodge Motors, Public Health Service, Knox gelatin, and a number of other big names in the industry sector.

He looked at people as stupid, a nameless mass that could not properly decide for themselves what was best for them, and therefore should be influenced by the government, media etc. to do what was considered a healthy, productive life (obviously them knowing what those things were to be). Or “Engineering Consent”, as another term he used to describe his propaganda concepts. He felt this manipulation was necessary in society, which he regarded as irrational and dangerous as a result of the “herd instinct”.

In Propaganda (1928), Bernays argued that the manipulation of public opinion was a necessary part of democracy:

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. …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. …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…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.

Other notable concepts, where Americans have the habit of eating big breakfasts of bacon and eggs, a fundamentalist hostility to socialism and communism and supplying fluoride in public water supplies to improve the dental health of the population were results of Bernays activities. The first because Americans previously had eaten only a light breakfast, something thought to decrease work performance, something that doctors at the time agreed to (probably also the meat- and egg-industry), dentists agreed with the fluoride and the attacks on left-wing politics was something that probably all the industrialists agreed with, to decrease the influence of workers unions, banning phrases such as “Class War“or “General Strike” that could be tools to raise income to a fair level, less work hours, better work conditions, more equality etc. or demanding from the state reasonable social services, to degrees where the poorest countrymen have a roof over the head and something to eat and not being so poor as to turn to crime. The “trickle-down effect“, meaning that the rich should remain so, because it would create workplaces, (even if they really just as well may decide to not do so, but only make more money, thus creating some sort of aristocracy that rule for generations with children having nothing to do with the massive wealth they earn just for being born) and thus making others in turn more rich, but even if Americans are known as hard workers, their income haven’t improved much since the 70’s or 80’s, with high unemployment, and today a couple, both working may have problems paying their bills, in a contrast to earlier, where only the man would work and brought enough income for the whole family. Having a parent available for children. Even if the workers pay tax (most of it from the poorest and less of it to the rich), equal or worse then the rest of the industrial world – that should cover welfare – far beyond the current level, they are the only industrial nation that lack universal healthcare. Universal healthcare are frowned upon as socialism and only something that people of bad character would want, to get help for free, or “handouts”, without realizing that private healthcare might exist beside public healthcare, where those with enough money for the brightest, best paid doctors, can do so without  having to wait in turn, and still a sick old widow with cancer can feel safe to get a bed in a hospital with competent nurses and doctors, medication and not any worries about how to pay for it. So it’s the only industrial nation that lack universal healthcare. Even the politics are something held onto by the 1% of the richest, with big cooperation’s and banks (the De Facto “invisible government”), by allowing candidates basically bribes. So even if the praised free market industry have made the “too big to fall” banks, steeped in corruption, not just fall as they should, and be replaced by a better competitor, the politicians pay the banks that pay for them (owning them as their favorite puppet, and the puppet is always the one in American politics that make known his views about things like tax for the rich), even if the whole nation is against it. Thus the rich have become richer, millionaires have become billionaires, and the other poorer. Warren Buffet, one of the most wealthy person in the world said that his secretary payed  more tax , more then the double, then him.

So gradually the word “propaganda” have gone completely out of use, except to describe negative, old fashioned and obviously manipulative measures to “brainwash” people, etc. and have thus been replaced by “Public Relation” as in bad PR or good PR, but which also carries with it the same meaning as before, only in a more complex way, the one Bernays described and learned it to the best paying customers. Even to the President of the US, where he invited Hollywood celebrities to Woodrow Wilson’s oval office to try to create a better reputation – or better Public Relations.

Bernays was mentioned as one of the 100 most influential Americans in the 20th century by the Time magazine.

Adam Curtis’s award-winning 2002 documentary for BBC, “The Century of the Self”, has popularized the knowledge of Bernays, as the inventor of PR and the influence he has had on the US and the rest of the world.