Controlling the “group mind" for profit and power without them ever realizing it.
Problem> Agitation> Solution> MANIPULATION
What if you were told that many of your choices, opinions, and decisions weren’t really made by you but came from unseen agents subtly controlling your mind to further their own agendas? Sound crazy? Impossible? Even insulting?
Meet Edward Bernays
Born in 1891 in Vienna, Bernays moved to America with his family as a child. In WWI, inspired by the work of his uncle, Sigmund Freud, he generated pro-American war propaganda, which he called “psychological warfare.”
After the war, Bernays realized the same propaganda could be used to influence public opinion and sell products. But it couldn’t be called propaganda, so he set up the first ‘Public Relations’ agency in New York.
“If we understand the mechanisms and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it. In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct, or in our ethical thinking, we are dominated by a relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind.” –Edward Bernays
Bernays viewed “the masses” as irrational and subject to herd instinct. He could make them his puppets by appealing to their egos, emotions, and desires. This way, as puppeteer, he could shift public perception from the “wanting” of goods to the “needing” of goods.
It worked. Bernays orchestrated the commercialization of an entire culture and soon became known as the “father of spin.”
In the process, we came to identify ourselves as “consumers” rather than citizens. Any doubts? Just think of all our cabinets, closets, and storage areas filled with stuff we no longer use and wonder why we ever bought it in the first place.
Light Up, Ladies!
Case in point: Before the twentieth century, smoking was seen as an inappropriate habit for women. Enter Edward Bernays. In a 1929 campaign for the American Tobacco Company, he hired attractive models to march in the New York Easter Parade proudly smoking Lucky Strike cigarettes, which they called “Torches of Freedom.”
Pictures were sent around the world, followed by magazine ads characterizing women who smoke as glamorous, fashionable, and liberated. As a result, the number of women smokers soared, and so did profits.
Problem, Agitation, Solution
A key technique of Bernay's mass manipulation was creating the perception of a serious problem, agitating and amplifying it, and then offering the “solution.” For instance, in the American Tobacco campaign, women were reminded that they lacked power and equality—PROBLEM. That meant they were unable to fulfill their dreams—AGITATION. But they could become glamorous and liberated by smoking “torches of freedom”—SOLUTION.
Dictators and Despots - à la Bernays
“In the 1920s, Joseph Goebbels became an avid admirer of Bernays and his writings – despite the fact that Bernays was a Jew. When Goebbels became the minister of propaganda for the Third Reich, he sought to exploit Bernays’ ideas to the fullest extent possible. For example, he created a “Fuhrer cult” around Adolph Hitler.” - The Conversation
Hitler coupled Bernay’s techniques with “Große Lüge” - “The Big Lie” to condemn Jews, deprecate immigrants, attack the free press, dismiss intellectuals, and scorn homosexuals. They were the problem. The alleged damage they were doing to the country was the agitation. Hitler, of course, was the solution.
Banana Republics, Bernays, the CIA, and Big Business
The United Fruit Company, an American corporation founded in 1899 to grow and market bananas, controlled more than 42 percent of land in Guatemala and enjoyed tax exemptions and freedom from import duties under dictator Jorge Ubico. In 1953, democratically elected Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz began giving plantation land back to the citizens who worked it. United Fruit hired Bernays to help depose Árbenz and restore Guatemala to a “banana republic.”
Bernays fomented an anti-American demonstration in the capital and created a fake news agency in the U.S. called the Middle American Information Bureau that issued press releases saying the Soviets planned to use Guatemala to launch attacks on the U.S.
Planes flown by CIA pilots dropped bombs on Guatemala City, which Bernays portrayed as freedom-fighting efforts. On June 27, 1954, Arbenz resigned and fled the country. Bernays produced stacks of Marxist literature the public was told were found in the vacated presidential palace.
Click the video below to see how they spun it.
In America today, this same technique of problem>agitation>solution, coupled with big lies, has helped create an alternate reality, with the strings being pulled by oligarchs, Christian Nationalists, and anti-democracy ideologues.
It’s a world in which traitors are patriots, allies are enemies, heroes are villains, facts are fake news, and quack remedies are good medicine.
Only in this alt-world can public education be condemned, history erased, science and medicine rejected, and our veterans and seniors deprived of the benefits they earned.
Only in this alt-world can thousands of enraged people storm the Capitol to overthrow an election while wrapping themselves in the flag and calling themselves patriots.
Only in this alt-world can we threaten to take over friendly nations, abandon our allies in favor of dictators, and somehow believe we should replace our democracy with the fascism we vanquished in WWII.
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." ~Edmund Burke
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Resources:
The Manipulation of the American Mind: Edward Bernays and the Birth of Public Relations - The Conversation
America Wages “Shock and Awe” Against America
Elon Musk-ovites, Christo-Fascism & the Specter of End Times