Whenever I talk to people about the nefarious nature of commercials, TV programming and - ultimately - mind control I am amazed how few have heard the name Bernays. And if they have, I find it curious that many people DO have an instant association to that special kind of French food sauce.
But no, I am not talking about Béarnaise here but rather: "The father of Public Relations" as Edward Bernays is often referred to.
And while I certainly don't approve of the mainstream media's alleged job in educating the public in an evidence-based manner, there are certainly some exceptions that can be dug up in the archives of large media corporations such as the BBC that have made their way onto youtube and that I can't recommend highly enough.
One of these gems of relevant history for the era we currently find ourselves in is the story of Public Relations. How an idea and an experiment to shape public opinion ultimately turned into one of the most successful weapons of mass distraction, into a template for the planned inception of artificial wants and needs into the mind of the population at large and ultimately became the template for the most radical shift in the world's populations values - probably since the release of the printing press.
Sound a little too bold to be true? After hearing the story of Edward Bernais and how he literally transformed the entire advertising industry I would vow to say you will no longer disagree.
How it all began
Granted, despite the clearly laid-out timeline in the documentary below there are probably a gazillion factors missing. Important and left-out factors surrounding the story of Sigmund Freud, the war at large and other details that might give an entirely different picture of actual history.
That said, I have rarely seen an "official" documentary that so diligently points out how the theories and ideas of Freud have impacted his nephew Edward Bernays, and how the latter ultimately incepted the first experiments in mass mind control using the media of the day - newspapers and the television.
It's almost a shame to spoiler the story, so I want to give you a chance to dive in with the documentary.
Don't be shocked at the length, the link includes the full series in one video, part 1 ends after about an hour. I used this link because it has the highest quality of all the uploads I found.
Century of the self is a series the BBC has created more than a decade ago but even merely watching the first part of the series gives the viewer a really good idea how the use of propaganda slogans linked to an unfulfilled desire of the population can turn into a self-propelling avalanche of social change, directed by those who originally set up all the prerequisites for that wave of change to unfold.
The specific example given in the documentary revolves around the "problem" of the tobacco industry back in the 1920's that "merely" half the population were potential smokers - men. Smoking was a purely male thing and the industry wanted to find ways to open up the other half of the population as a potential market for their product.
And so, in a directed effort with an anonymous hint for the press about a "liberation march" about to take place, the hiring of a few women publicly lighting cigarettes and the pre-planned and prepared slogan for the media that those marching women would light their "torches of freedom" as a symbol for their rebellion against the patriarchy, the recipe was complete for the trigger event that made huge headlines with a minimum of actual costs and efforts involved. And ultimately opened up Pandora's box of mass-mind control.
As the story goes, this event became somewhat of a template for how PR operates in all facets of society today, how easy it is to steer entire populations into a direction they falsely believe is of their own choosing and - ultimately - to further and further cement artificial narratives in the minds of the people without them ever realizing it.
Anyone who still believes in the mainstream media's alleged mission of "educating the public" ought to be aware of this publicity stunt, of the Bernays story and of the ever-changing culture landscape radicalization still propelled by these same forces of PR and propaganda.
The mechanisms have largely stayed the same, only the methods have gotten increasingly sinister and even more clandestine. Which is precisely why this documentary can serve people so well in understanding and seeing through the whole mechanism of propaganda in less than an hour, citing historical examples most people have never heard of.
If you know someone who trusts the mainstream media, this documentary is probably one of the best to rattle their worldview without needing to start a fight about "conspiracies" with them - it really doesn't get any more official than the BBC.
Our modern lives have been drowned in noise. Think of the humble beginnings of public relations and the desire-manufacturing advertisement industry and see how far down that artificial cliff we have already fallen...
unsplash.com
unsplash.com