“Who are the men who without our realizing it, give us our ideas, tell us whom to admire and whom to despise, what to believe about the ownership of public utilities, about the tariff, about the price of rubber, about the Dawes Plan, about immigration; who tell us how our houses should be designed, what furniture we should put in them, what menus we should serve on our table, what kind of shirts we must wear, what sports we should indulge in, what plays we should see, what charities we should support, what pictures we should admire, what slang we should affect, what jokes we should laugh at?” ~ Edward Bernays, Propaganda
Authored by Edward Bernays and published in 1928, the book Propaganda still holds its position as the gold standard for influencing and manipulating public behavior. Drawing on his expertise in psychology while using the language of manipulation, Bernays pioneered social engineering via mass media, and his work lives on in the distorted, statist, consumer world we have today.
But who are the ones behind the curtain telling us what to think by directing our attention onto the things which serve interests?
Interestingly, chapter III of Propaganda is titled, “The New Propagandists,” and is devoted to explaining why the controls for mass manipulation are so closely guarded by a relatively tiny elite who sit in the shadows, out of the public eye, choosing what we are to see and to think, even controlling the politicians we elect to represent us.
If we set out to make a list of the men and women who, because of their position in public life, might fairly be called the molders of public opinion we could quickly arrive at an extended list of persons mentioned in “Who’s Who…”
Such a list would comprise several thousand persons. But it is well known that many of these leaders are themselves led, sometimes by persons whose names are known to few.
Such persons typify in the public mind the type of ruler associated with the phrase invisible government.
An invisible government of corporate titans and behind the scenes influencers whose mark on culture cannot be understated today. Bernays continues:
The invisible government tends to be concentrated in the hands of the few because of the expense of manipulating the social machinery which controls the opinions and habits of the masses.
The public relations counsel, then, is the agent who, working with modern media communication and the group formation of society, brings an idea to the consciousness of the public. But he is a great deal more than that. He is concerned with courses of action, doctrines, systems and opinions, and the securing of public support for them.
Ultimately, the goal of this type of mass-produced, pop-culture propaganda is to weaken the individual’s ability to think critically, thereby creating an environment where many people look to one another for approval, always second-guessing their own faculties. When this happens, the strength of the collective group begins to take form and multiply, and ideas can be implanted into the popular culture, taking root in the form of widespread conformist behavior.
Thinking critically means making reasoned judgments that are logical and well thought out. It is a way of thinking in which one doesn’t simply accept all arguments and conclusions to which one is exposed without questioning the arguments and conclusions. It requires curiosity, skepticism and humility. People who use critical thinking are the ones who say things such as, “How do you know that?” “Is this conclusion based on evidence or gut feelings?” and “Are there alternative possibilities when given new pieces of information?” [Source]
Final Thoughts
The takeaway here is that not much has changed in 100 years of corporate/statist American culture, other than the technical capacity to scale this ever upward. Our lives are still heavily influenced by the likes of the described by Bernays. There is one advantage we do have now, however, as technology has given us greater access to the truth and we are now free to split from the matrix psychologically by understanding what it is and how it influences our lives. If we choose to do so, that is, if we choose to take the red pill.
In order to understand your life and your mission here on earth in the short time you have, it is imperative to learn to see the thought prison that has been built around you, and to actively circumnavigate it. Free-thinking is being stamped out by the propagandists, but our human tendency is to crave freedom, and with the aid of truth, we are more powerful than the control matrix and the invisible government.
Read more articles by Sigmund Fraud.
Sigmund Fraud is a survivor of modern psychiatry and a dedicated mental activist. He is a staff writer for WakingTimes.com where he indulges in the possibility of a massive shift towards a more psychologically aware future for humankind.
This article (According to the Father of Propaganda an Invisible Government Controls Our Minds with a Thought Prison) was originally created and published by Waking Times and is published here under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Sigmund Fraud and WakingTimes.com. It may be re-posted freely with proper attribution, author bio, and this copyright statement.
It appears that the folks who think for themselves know why they think about something, they have reasons of how they came to that conclusion.If you ask some people why they think as they do they look dumfounded they don’t know.
I like thinking of the firefighting triangle a lot. The rationale I have for it is in having learned it and seeing it applicable in a lot of various other forms, for other uses. That coupled the Latin expression Igne Natura Renovatur Integra which means roughly; “By fire nature is restored in purity, or pure matter is restored by spirit”. Fires burn away the old and dead wood forest so the new seedlings may grow and rise from its ashes. This is also germane and applicable coping with propaganda.
Propaganda provides fuel to think. Thinking provides the heat and ignition. This is fed further then by sharing thoughts to get air. There you’ve an example. 😉 🙂 Similar example by extension often lets me navigate the Hegelian dialectic to see the thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, or as others are fond of phrasing it, problem, reaction, prefabricated solution. In its own way the Hegelian dialectic is a fire triangle as well.
Further, I think in such a manner to help myself attain and retain a sense of balance in life. This bit of logical structure in thought process provides me with a lever & fulcrum. Nothing becomes too “heavy” then for keeping thought moving upward and ever forward.
Fire is also a key symbol of fascism: The Nazis had torchlight parades, they burned books (to purify the culture), they burned down the Reichtag, etc. The KKK burned crosses, and most recently, the neo-Nazis carried torches in Charlottesville.
The Nazi flag was on a field of red, representing both blood and fire.
I do not see propaganda as fuel to think but a form of hypnotism which shortcircuits the thinking brain and lights the emotions. For me personally, it is pollution which I feel compelled to either avoid or purify but not with fire but rather by exposing its roots in deception and lies, using the shovel of critical thinking.
High school level dross you should be ashamed
The thought prison whose confines lead to death. Ever think why every show, every movie, every story, is a continued appeal to the idea that all you have is death.
The holy grail, the fountain of youth, the Christ, etc.. All stories of some mysterious object, or person, or diety; comprised in ways that conceal both their truth, and their location.
Even with much study of any religion or government legislation, truth only starts to seep into a mind, who doesn’t actively admire it.
The natural world has its purpose, and man’s purpose rests inside of the natural world. Yet the world as it has been built by man, is the destruction of man. Because the ideal world for powerful men, in their minds, is one where everyone they perceive as being less than, are to be trapped on the 3rd dimensional plane that is earth.
The hidden hand is a claw, the claw is wielded by the angelic fire elementals (alien reptoid star culture) from the Sirius System; they are partially responsible to the developments that are taking place on this planet of sorrow. We are trapped by their mind control and some US are in the process of removing the karmic enslavement to which we have become bound. The alien/military/industrial/complex is alive and well in your neighborhood.
https://www.earthfiles.com/news.php?ID=2588&category=Science
My comment has just been time censored – Psychic Warrior
“Fight the future” – X-Files
Is the new X-files on TV yet? If so, where? You have my sympathies on the censoring of your comment.
The treasonous Woodrow Wilson gave up the keys to the unholy goat worshipers on 12/21/1913 and they have brought only misery to the masses in the form of:
Vaccines that kill the auto immune system, leaving the host susceptible to disease from cancer to neurological.These are weapons of mass destruction.
Expensive synthetic drugs that attack organs.
GMO that causes cancer and other exotic diseases.
Chemtrails full of nano man made dust, to Haarp to Cern to droughts to himacanes (hurricanes) to earthquakes.
False flags and hoaxes, from 911 to Sandy Hook.
Drones that kill innocence folks, so long as their chicken shit asses are never in harms way.
They own most everything and produce the propaganda that the masses swallow from the boob tube to ‘news’ papers.
Learn to discern.
Sacrifice the goats and their will be a thousand years of peace and prosperity.
Silver stakes required.
Good article. The more people know about this subject, the better. Once they realize their thoughts are not their own, they can begin to question programmed-in attitudes and climb out of the mind-control matrix.
War is Peace and so on.
It’s helpful to ask, “What if the opposite were true?”
A good example is, “What if the planet is cooling?”. Hint: It is.
“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.” (theconversation.com)
So Hitler, who also praised and studied Bernays, was also bedtime reading for Donald Trump, according to his ex-wife. Trump, in a 1999 interview said that he was given Mein Kampf: “A Jew gave it to me.” In fact, a friend (who is not Jewish) reports he gave his friend a collection of HItler’s propaganda speeches (New Order). After admitting “a Jew” gave him the Hitler book, Trump said laer in the interview: “I did not have the book………………and if I did, I didn’t read it.”
Anyone who observed how he used Nazi-scale big lies about Mexicans and refugees during the campaign understands that just as Hitler learned from Bernays, Trump learned from Hitler.
C. Wright Mills suggested people often operate from a “false consciousness”, “What people are interested in is not always what is to their interest; the troubles they are aware of are not always the ones that beset them…It is not only that (people) can be unconscious of their situations; they are often falsely conscious of them.” (Mills, 2002 p.xix).
Author and historian Michael Parenti suggests false consciousness, in part created by societal power structures through withholding and manipulating knowledge and information, leads people to take actions often not truly serving their personal interests.
Parenti says,
“To deny the possibility of false consciousness is to assume there has been no indoctrination, no socialization to conservative values, no control of information and commentary, no limitation of the topics to be considered in the national debate, no predetermination of issue agendas, and that a whole array of powers have not helped prestructure how we see and define our own interests and options.” (p.210).
Parenti’s definition of false consciousness goes like this:
“People accept the status quo out of lack of awareness that viable alternative exist and out of ignorance as to how their rulers are violating their professed interests or out of ignorance of how they themselves are being harmed by what they think are their interests.” (p.210-211).
William Paley founded CBS the same year Bernays published “Propaganda”, and he hired Bernays as his assistant. Paley was a member of the Rockefeller CFR, along with Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, and Dan Rather. Dozens of other network execs and talking heads are also CFR members, see lists in the CFR annual report.
“And that’s the way it is… Good night and good luck…”
William Paley founded CBS the same year Bernays published “Propaganda”, and he hired Bernays as his assistant. Paley was a member of the Rockefeller CFR, along with Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, and Dan Rather. Dozens of other network execs and talking heads are also CFR members, see lists in the CFR annual report.
“And that’s the way it is… Good night and good luck…”
Beautiful, short and very well said. The question I have is how deep does the matrix really go? You pull back one curtain only to find another When we discover a ‘truth’ has it been allowed to be discovered to hide a much larger truth? How many of these ‘truths’ discovered are meant to lead its discoverers done the garden path? One example might be the ‘Majick’ documents to do with ‘disclosure’. Are they real or are they a plant. As ‘Quantum of Conscience’ Matt observes, the runners of the matrix will give you “one dollar truths” all day every day” but you’ll never get to see the “ten thousand” dollar truths unless you are a proven and then carefully selected to do so.
There is one truth I do know and that is at some point the people will have to go to war with the bankers or cease to be human.
Apparently I was too far outside the lines. Since AP censored my last post.