1.27.2014

Propaganda & Public Relations

Public-Relations

“By the skillful and sustained use of propaganda, one can make a people see even heaven as hell or an extremely wretched life as paradise.”  Adolf Hitler

We are surrounded by propaganda. I’ll go even further and say that this society is AWASH in propaganda. People think that they know what propaganda is but if you asked them, the answer they would give you wouldn’t be close. Here’s the best definition I’ve been able to find:
  1. Information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political, business or group cause or point of view.
  2. The dissemination of such information as a strategy to change public opinions, attitudes or actions to the desired result.
I know that you’re asking yourself, “Mitch what do you mean by ‘society is AWASH in propaganda? Well, if you know what to look for, it doesn’t take very long to notice that every TV show, news broadcast, every billboard on the road, every radio station, music, movies, academic papers, large swaths of the internet, government proclamations, news conferences, political speeches; pretty much everything that you are exposed to in your daily life has a propaganda element in it. Why is so much effort expended in the dissemination of propaganda?

The average person is extremely susceptible to having his thoughts, opinions, attitudes and actions influenced by propaganda.  

“And it was under Wilson that the first great propaganda slogan was coined and emblazoned everywhere, to make Americans start thinking favorably of democracies and forget that we had a republic.”  Robert Welch

The first great propaganda push came during World War 1 during the administration of Woodrow Wilson. The American people weren’t real excited about intervening in a war between European powers. So, they had to be convinced. Enter Edward Bernays.

From Wikipedia:

“Bernays, working for the administration of Woodrow Wilson during World War I with the Committee on Public Information, was influential in promoting the idea that America’s war efforts were primarily aimed at “bringing democracy to all of Europe”. Stunned by the degree to which the democracy slogan had swayed the public both at home and abroad, he wondered whether this propaganda model could be employed during peace time. Due to negative implications surrounding the word propaganda because of its use by the Germans in World War I, he promoted the term “Public Relations”

He changed the name to public relations because of the stigma of the word propaganda but don’t be mistaken, it’s just a different name for the same animal. And ever since he created the industry, it’s been unleashed on the public on an increasing basis to the point where it has permeated nearly every facet of American life. Think about it for a minute and tell me if you can identify any component of daily life that isn’t touched by PR. Off the top of my head, I can’t.

“All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.” Noam Chomsky

Look around you. How many people do you know who are in charge of their life? And how many people do you know who have a perpetual look of resignation on their faces? I’d guess the latter group outnumbers the former by a wide margin. This is purposeful and public relations has a large role to play in their condition. Public relations is the dirty little secret in the background, it’s the mechanism that the elites use to influence people what to eat, what to wear, what group they should hate today, what group they should identify with, how they justify war, what car they should drive, even how they should act. I think people in the back of their minds know just a little that something’s not right, but hey, I just got a new gadget-whatever so life’s good. It’s the unfortunates like you guys and myself who’ve woken up and what we see isn’t pretty.

“It is the emergence of mass media which makes possible the use of propaganda techniques on a societal scale.”  Jacques Ellul

Back when propaganda and later public relations were first used, the wielders of the techniques were limited by the media of the day. Newspapers and radio were the mediums of choice by necessity. Now, we’re bombarded by media. I dare say that with the advents of wireless and smartphones, not very many people are insulated from media for very long during their day. This is an optimum time for PR firms, and their growth has been exponential. Hell, every large company, interest group, unions, and any politician worth his salt employs a PR firm. Even Barack Obama. It’s all part of doing business in this modern world, and the people of this country suffer because of it.

“Terrorism is in good part an effective government propaganda; it serves to deflect attention from governmental abuse toward a mostly imagined, highly dangerous outside enemy.”  Mark Poster

The following partial list says it all about the “war on terror” and the effects it’s had on this country. NSA mass surveillance, NDAA, TSA, Patriot Act, indefinite detention, fusion centers, CISPA (which is not going away), the wars all over the Middle East, the so-called protests like what is happening in Ukraine and myriads of other agencies and policies made in the name of the war on terror and any other enemy you might be able to name. Think about this for a little bit though. Say you were one of the elites and one of your goals was everything on that list. The destruction of the twin towers on 9/11 2001 no matter how it happened would have been a PR masterstroke that set up everything that we see today as regards to the increasingly authoritarian trends that are playing themselves out. I think that’s a very distinct possibility but whoever thought it up is a particularly despicable type of monster.

We always ask ourselves “How the hell did all this get this way?” Propaganda and PR had a very large hand in what is one of the main reasons the American people let the elites get this far in their machinations. And that is also what they have done to education in America; the elites have indoctrinated our children to believe what they see on their screens.

Fortunately for the time being the internet is still free to a point. We can still write about what we wish but have no illusions, everything that we write about here is being catalogued and stored for future use against us if the situation gets out of hand like I foresee it’s going to. Personally, I don’t care, I’m of the age where I’ve done pretty much everything I wanted to in this life but this.

So I’m going to continue. Nobody has anything to lose anymore. If you think you do, you are deluded more than you know.