Bernays notes:
Modern propaganda is a consistent, enduring effort to create
or shape events to influence the relations of the public to an enterprise, idea
or group. This practice of creating circumstances and of creating pictures in
the minds of millions of persons is very common.
Virtually no important undertaking is now carried on
without it, whether the enterprise be building a cathedral, endowing a
university, marketing a moving picture, floating a large bond issue, or
electing a president. Sometimes the effect on the public is created by a
professional propagandist, sometimes by an amateur deputed for the job.
The important thing is that it is universal and continuous;
and in its sum total it is regimenting the public mind every bit as much as an
army regiments the bodies of its soldiers. So vast are the numbers of minds
which can be regimented, and so tenacious are they when regimented, that a
group at times offers an irresistible pressure before which legislators,
editors, and teachers are helpless.
The group will cling to its stereotypes, as Walter
Lippmann calls it, making of those supposedly powerful beings, the leaders of
public opinion, mere bits of driftwood in the surf. When an Imperial Wizard,
sensing what is perhaps hunger for an ideal, offers a picture of a nation all
Nordic and nationalistic, the common man of the older American stock, feeling
himself elbowed out of his rightful position and prosperity by the newer
immigrant stocks, grasps the picture which fits in so neatly with his
prejudices, and makes it his own.
He buys the sheet and pillowcase costume, and bands with
his fellows by the thousand into a huge group powerful enough to swing state
elections and to throw a ponderous monkey wrench into a national convention. In
our present social organization approval of the public is essential to any
large undertaking. Hence a laudable movement may be lost unless it impresses
itself on the public mind. Charity, as well as business, and politics and literature,
for that matter, have had to adopt propaganda, for the public must be
regimented into giving money just as it must be regimented into tuberculosis
prophylaxis.
The Near East Relief, the Association for the Improvement
of the Condition of the Poor of New York, and all the rest, have to work on
public opinion just as though they had tubes of toothpaste to sell. We are
proud of our diminishing infant death rate—and that too is the work of
propaganda. Propaganda does exist on all sides of us, and it does change our
mental pictures of the world. Even if this be unduly pessimistic—and that
remains to be proved—the opinion reflects a tendency that is undoubtedly real. …
Bernays then continues to note Propaganda more closely in
Politics. He states:
The great political problem in our modern democracy is
how to induce our leaders to lead. The dogma that the voice of the people is
the voice of God tends to make elected persons the will-less servants of their
constituents. This is undoubtedly part cause of the political sterility of
which certain American critics constantly complain.
No serious sociologist any longer believes that the voice
of the people expresses any divine or specially wise and lofty idea. The voice
of the people expresses the mind of the people, and that mind is made up for it
by the group leaders in whom it believes and by those persons who understand
the manipulation of public opinion. It is composed of inherited prejudices and
symbols and cliches and verbal formulas supplied to them by the leaders.
Fortunately, the sincere and gifted politician is able,
by the instrument of propaganda, to mold and form the will of the people. Disraeli
cynically expressed the dilemma, when he said: “I must follow the people. Am I
not their leader?” He might have added: “I must lead the people. Am I not their
servant?” Unfortunately, the methods of our contemporary politicians, in
dealing with the public, are as archaic and ineffective as the advertising
methods of business in 1900 would be today. While politics was the first important
department of American life to use propaganda on a large scale, it has been the
slowest in modifying its propaganda methods to meet the changed conditions of
the public mind. American business first learned from politics the methods of
appealing to the broad public.
But it continually improved those methods in the course
of its competitive struggle, while politics clung to the old formulas. The
political apathy of the average voter, of which we hear so much, is undoubtedly
due to the fact that the politician does not know how to meet the conditions of
the public mind. He cannot dramatize himself and his platform in terms which
have real meaning to the public. Acting on the fallacy that the leader must
slavishly follow, he deprives his campaign of all dramatic interest. An
automaton cannot arouse the public interest. A leader, a fighter, a dictator,
can. But, given our present political conditions under which every office
seeker must cater to the vote of the masses, the only means by which the born
leader can lead is the expert use of propaganda. Whether in the problem of
getting elected to office or in the problem of interpreting and popularizing
new issues, or in the problem of making the day-to-day administration of public
affairs a vital part of the community life, the use of propaganda, carefully
adjusted to the mentality of the masses, is an essential adjunct of political
life. The successful businessman today apes the politician. He has adopted the
glitter and the ballyhoo of the campaign. He has set up all the sideshows.
He has annual dinners that are a compendium of speeches,
flags, bombast, stateliness, pseudo-democracy slightly tinged with paternalism.
On occasion he doles out honors to employees, much as the republic of classic
times rewarded its worthy citizens. But these are merely the sideshows, the
drums, of big business, by which it builds up an image of public service, and
of honorary service.
This is but one of the methods by which business
stimulates loyal enthusiasms on the part of directors, the workers, the
stockholders and the consumer public. It is one of the methods by which big
business performs its function of making and selling products to the public.
The real work and campaign of business consists of intensive study of the
public, the manufacture of products based on this study, and exhaustive use of
every means of reaching the public. Political campaigns today are all
sideshows, all honors, all bombast, glitter, and speeches. These are for the
most part unrelated to the main business of studying the public scientifically,
of supplying the public with party, candidate, platform, and performance, and
selling the public these ideas and products. Politics was the first big
business in America. Therefore there is a good deal of irony in the fact that
business has learned everything that politics has to teach, but that politics
has failed to learn very much from business methods of mass distribution of
ideas and products.
Now we can examine how this is being tried in New Jersey. The
Hill notes[1]:
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) is approving a bill that
dedicates $5 million to strengthen local media outlets in the state. The state
legislature passed the "Civic Info Bill" late last month, …. The bill
created the Civic Information Consortium — a unique nonprofit developed with
five universities — to promote the spread of news and information throughout
the state. The bill was conceived by the Free Press Action Fund, an advocacy
group on media issues.
The effort is led by The College of New Jersey, Montclair
State University, the New Jersey Institute of Technology, Rowan University and
Rutgers University. The consortium will share the $5 million with local news organizations,
emphasizing "underserved communities, low-income communities and
communities of color," the Free Press Action Fund said. The money was
included in the fiscal 2019 budget, which Murphy signed into law on Sunday. He
is expected to formally sign the legislation creating the consortium soon.
One must ask:
1. Given the exploding tax burden on New Jersey residents,
why this now?
2. As with any Government program it is a camel's nose in
the tent. It is $5 million now and $500 million soon!
3. Having Universities "control" the money means
that in New Jersey, politically hand picked "academic" often with allegiance
to the powers that be get to create and support Propaganda! Remember Bernays.
4. The idea was conceived it is stated by what in my opinion,
based on my experience, is a far left wing organization in DC. Why did they do
this and for whose benefit.
Frankly in my opinion this makes the Wilson era CPI look
like a kindergarten exercise.
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