Edward Bernays, Propaganda (New York, Ig Publishing, 2005), originally published 1928.
There is a certain perennial (if also perilous) appeal to the idea of studying some of the dark arts of social science, only to use them for some enlightened and beneficent purpose for which they were not intended. The image of the revolutionary egalitarian democrat by day who spends their night reading Machiavelli's The Prince is an old one. So too, if one is a communications professional of sorts in some non-profit or public-spirited enterprise, one may desire to taste of the literature on propaganda and public relations in much the same way the higher echelons of Opus Dei will permit themselves from time to time to read books that are on the banned list—"I alone can be trusted with this!"
Of the various guilty pleasures that can be indulged in this self-flattering way, few are as guilty as Edward Bernays. I don't mean this just because of the author's own biographical guilt due to his role in the U.S.-backed coup in Guatemala that has set back democracy and social justice in that country to this day (and even cleared the way for military dictatorship and mass atrocities); I mean also because his 1928 book, Propaganda, is among the more cynical and mean-spirited of the classics of the panderer's and spin-doctor's trade.
Bernays—who was Sigmund Freud's nephew, to get that inevitable biographical footnote out of the way—was also the closest thing to the inventor of corporate public relations as a field that any one individual could claim to be. And like everyone worth their salt who has promulgated a concept and made it stick for the first time, Bernays refers to the profession of "public relations counsel" as if it already existed, were already widespread, and were all the rage (one is reminded of how Marx, in the very moment of inventing communism as we now know it, managed to convince himself and his readers that its "specter" was already haunting Europe).
In the course of defining this new "public relations" field and the ideals of its ostensible representatives, Bernays beguiles us with the notion that it can be a thoroughly ethical profession that holds itself to high standards. Bernays rightly urges people working in media, communications, etc. on behalf of some client or firm never to lie, never to take on cases that one knows to be hopeless or unworthy of defense, never to use their knowledge of the dark arts of persuasion and propaganda in the service of an evil cause.
Yet the positive impression created by this sage advice is undercut in the next breath by the palpable elitism of Bernays' ethos. As he tells us time and again, he believes that public opinion does not in fact emerge from the public, even in a democracy, but is always created and propagated by an "intelligent minority" of some kind, whom he calls the true "invisible government" of a society.
Most of us with some understanding of the practice of democracy are going to find this notion both morally objectionable and an inadequate depiction of reality. In fairness to Bernays, however, he too recognizes its limits. He notes, for instance, that the "personality" of a corporate executive or a candidate for office that the P.R. professional wishes to cultivate and project onto the public must comport in some way with who that person actually is. Propaganda that is false, easily seen-through, at odds with what the public already knows, is propaganda done poorly, as Bernays tells us time and again. If a sophisticated public rejects it, then it was unworthy propaganda to begin with, in his telling.
And apart from this, there is much in Bernays' argument that now rings more true than false. His contention, however discomfiting it may be, that all causes and opinions and organizations engage in some form of propaganda in order to get their messages across, seems impossible to deny. When the author comes to a description of the mechanics of issuing press releases and organizing events, for instance, one realizes how much the advocacy and nonprofit sectors owe to the same stratagems that were originally devised by corporate P.R. professionals. Bernays harps on how the most widely divergent groups make use of the techniques of propaganda to advance their aims. In the course of his book, he draws examples from the tactics in the 1920s of both the KKK and the NAACP (and clearly, thank heavens, evinces his contempt for the former and solidarity with the latter).
And finally, his notion that many of our collective beliefs and ideals are the creation of small and interested parties—while it may not have all the inevitability and absoluteness he ascribes to it, drawing explicitly as he does on the long-since superseded works of group psychology of his day, such as those of Trotter and Le Bon—nonetheless, the basic idea is true in some instances, and under some circumstances. Bernays is frighteningly convincing when he describes how a relatively small contingent of propagandists can seize upon a single interest, a single vague sense of unease or longing for transcendence in their audience, and fill this void with a powerful '"image" that can then launch a popular movement.
Writing of the KKK, which had a disturbing resurgence in the era in which Bernays was writing, as part of a broader national xenophobic wave, he writes: "an Imperial Wizard [an example of the preposterous terminology the Klan used in defining its ranks], 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."
Bernays' account of how extremist political movements take hold, whether all will agree with it or not, rings more true to me than the over-determined narratives preferred by the intelligentsia in the wake of political crisis that portray these movements as the inevitable product of some organic economic or populist dissatisfaction. People are forever asking whence fascism, Trumpism, white nationalism, antisemitism, QAnon, Neo-Nazism, Islamist extremism, Hindutva, Buddhist nationalism in Burma, etc. come from, as if there were bound to be an economic or material basis to them all that were somehow more fundamental than the ideologies themselves. And to this I oppose Oscar Wilde's dictum—backed up by Bernays' analysis—that "life imitates art far more than art imitates life."
In other words, ideologies take root because they "dramatize" people's situation, to borrow Bernays' term. They cast the familiar reality of life in new and bolder colors of some epic and ultimate contest between forces of all-good and all-evil. They don't really need to do much more to recruit some followers to their banner than to tell those individuals that they are the protagonists in this exciting new story, and that the people they have long regarded as interlopers, as different, as other in any way, are the villains.
If these ideologies then prove extremely dangerous—and they plainly do—then the cause of defeating and debunking them will not be served by ignoring the mechanisms of propaganda or pretending they don't exist or have an effect. Whether Bernays is right that all human opinion and debate proceeds through these methods or not, he clearly has identified a real dimension of our collective psychology. For this reason, he repays re-reading, however guilty we may feel about the indulgence of doing so.
For this reason, and because it is inexpensive and well-designed, I recommend the Ig edition I have been reading. However, it was in desperate need of further proofing before it went to press. I offer my services gratis, in case there is another edition in the works:
p. 32 "Frrench" (sic)
p. 38 "find it impossible to come to a conclusion without anything" (sic, should be "about" in context)
p. 39 "brought to it[s] attention"
p. 44 "Booboise" —the reference is to Mencken's neologism, and should be spelled "Booboisie"
p. 51 "its source give[s] it authority"
p. 57 "need to make us[e] of propaganda"
p. 62 "New York[,] Chicago"
"The shoe firm was ready with the supply to meet thee [sic] demand"
p. 65 "H[e] will advise"
p. 73 "because he [has] a pleasant recollection"
p. 77 "more than [h]e wants"
p. 84 "system of production was that typical a century ago" (sic, "that was")
p. 87 "becomingly increasingly" (sic)
p. 95 "how favorabl[y] disposed"
p. 98 "to use the weapon [of] propaganda"
p. 102 "tendency has bee[n] to reduce this cost"
"by the cost [of] getting"
p. 107 "it adapted and refine[d] these crude"
p. 116 "the emotions of [the] public"
p. 129 "the leadership they have required in the actual political positions" (sic, should be "acquired" in context)
p. 131 "set up and exhibit" (sic, "an" in context)
p. 137 "it is possibly, by means" (sic, "possible")
p. 141 "education[al] endeavor"
"yet it fees [sic, "fears"] that the ancient and honorable..."
p. 148 "a southern questions" (sic)
p. 150 "the eve naturally gave" (sic, "event" in context)
"frequent bushing of teeth" (sic)
p. 151 "in man[y] cases"
p. 158 "assume ae[s]thetic leadership"
p. 162 "point of view is not largely abandoned" (sic, should be "now" in context)
p. 164 "a bank, [in] order to"
p. 167 "how breadis made" (sic)
"if they are accurate and candid, are in now way responsible" (sic, "no")
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