Propaganda harms brain cells worse than beer!

[Norm X]

Propaganda harms brain cells worse than beer!

PROPAGANDA
By
EDWARD L. BERNAYS
1928

CONTENTS

I. ORGANIZING CHAOS .................................................. 9
II. THE NEW PROPAGANDA............................................ 19
III. THE NEW PROPAGANDISTS .... 32
IV. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PUBLIC RELATIONS 47
V. BUSINESS AND THE PUBLIC .... 62
VI. PROPAGANDA AND POLITICAL LEADERSHIP 92
VII. WOMEN'S ACTIVITIES AND PROPAGANDA 115
VIII. PROPAGANDA FOR EDUCATION . . 121
IX. PROPAGANDA IN SOCIAL SERVICE . . 135
X. ART AND SCIENCE..................................................... 141
XI. THE MECHANICS OF PROPAGANDA . . 150

CHAPTER I

ORGANIZING CHAOS

THE conscious and intelligent manipulation of the
organized habits and opinions of the masses is an
important element in democratic society. Those who
manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute
an invisible government which is the true ruling
power of our country.

We are governed, our minds are molded, our
tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men
we have never heard of. This is a logical result of
the way in which our democratic society is organized.
Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in
this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly
functioning society.

Our invisible governors are, in many cases, unaware
of the identity of their fellow members in the
inner cabinet.

They govern us by their qualities of natural leadership,
their ability to supply needed ideas and by their
key position in the social structure. Whatever attitude
one chooses to take toward this condition, it
remains a fact that in almost every act of our daily
lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business,
in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are
dominated by the relatively small number of persons-
a trifling fraction of our hundred and twenty
million-who understand the mental processes and
social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the
wires which control the public mind, who harness old
social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide
the world.

It is not usually realized how necessary these invisible
governors are to the orderly functioning of
our group life. In theory, every citizen may vote
for whom he pleases. Our Constitution does not
envisage political parties as part of the mechanism
of government, and its framers seem not to have
pictured to themselves the existence in our national
politics of anything like the modern political machine.

But the American voters soon found that
without organization and direction their individual
votes, cast, perhaps, for dozens or hundreds of candidates,
would produce nothing but confusion. Invisible
government, in the shape of rudimentary
political parties, arose almost overnight. Ever since
then we have agreed, for the sake of simplicity and
practicality, that party machines should narrow down
the field of choice to two candidates, or at most three
or four.

In theory, every citizen makes up his mind on
public questions and matters of private conduct. In
practice, if all men had to study for themselves the
abstruse economic, political, and ethical