Loud noises from Washington about a US pull-out from Iraq are a poor disguise for America’s determination to keep waging war. And the same sort of spin is at work here in Britain
Edward Bernays, the American nephew of Sigmund Freud, is said to have invented modern propaganda. During the First World War, he was one of a group of influential liberals who mounted a secret government campaign to persuade reluctant Americans to send an army to the bloodbath in Europe. In his book Propaganda, published in 1928, Bernays wrote that the “intelligent manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society”, and that the manipulators “constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power in our country”. Instead of propaganda, he coined the euphemism “public relations”.
The American tobacco industry hired Bernays to convince women that they should smoke in public. By associating smoking with women’s liberation, he made cigarettes “torches of freedom.” In 1954, he conjured a communist menace in Guatemala as an excuse for overthrowing the democratically elected government, whose social reforms were threatening the United Fruit Company’s monopoly of the banana trade. He called it a “liberation”.
Bernays was no rabid right-winger. He was an elitist liberal who believed that “engineering public consent” was for the greater good. This could be achieved by the creation of “false realities” which then became “news events”. Here are examples of how it is done these days.
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