“Propaganda will never die out. Intelligent men must realize that propaganda is the modern instrument by which they can fight for productive ends and help to bring order out of chaos.” – Edward L. Bernays

Guy Evans wraps up his series deconstructing the book ‘Propaganda’ authored by the ‘Father of Public Relations’ Edward Bernays. In the dramatic, perhaps prescient final paragraphs of the text, Bernays remained staunch in his belief that propaganda is necessary to quell the unconscious desires of the uninformed masses. In that sense, he echoed the sentiments of his famous uncle, Sigmund Freud, who suggested that human beings are in perpetual conflict due to the hidden inner forces that govern them.

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The media by which special pleaders transmit their messages to the public through propaganda include all the means by which people to-day transmit their ideas to one another. There is no means of human communication which may not also be a means of deliberate propaganda, because propaganda is simply the establishing of reciprocal understanding between an individual and a group.

The important point to the propagandist is that the relative value of the various instruments of propaganda, and their relation to the masses, are constantly changing. If he is to get full reach for his message he must take advantage of these shifts of value the instant they occur. Fifty years ago, the public meeting was a propaganda instrument par excellence. To-day it is difficult to get more than a handful of people to attend a public meeting unless extraordinary attractions are part of the program. The automobile takes them away from home, the radio keeps them in the home, the successive daily editions of the newspaper bring information to them in office or subway, and also they are sick of the ballyhoo of the rally.

Instead there are numerous other media of communication, some new, others old but so transformed that they have become virtually new. The newspaper, of course, remains always a primary medium for the transmission of opinions and ideas—in other words, for propaganda. Continue reading →