Home · Book Reports · 2015 · Propaganda

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These days, lots of people say they are impervious to advertising. Good luck with that… After over 100 years of the Princeton Radio Project, to the Stanford prison experiment, to cybernetics and the internet, to meta-data and social media, the propagandists are more effective than ever before at controlling their audience.

Propaganda is much more than getting a population to react to ideas like going to war or buying more consumer goods. With a long-term approach and the cooperation of key influential individuals within any number of community types, a dedicated propagandist can effectively mold the minds of entire nations. Influential positions could be editors, pastors, etc. These trusted figures will spread an unquestioned message to their audiences. This kind of influence seems to be modeled using network or graph theory.

How much are you influenced by the media you consume and how much do you consume as a percentage of your day/week/life?

Wake up to the alarm in a suggestive state. Listen to radio all day. Talk to people that listen to same stuff all day. Social media makes it worse. Designed to filter content you don’t like. “Negative” thoughts not entertained in favor of small talk. A brave new world indeed.

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.

• 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 ma- chine. 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. In- visible 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.

• there are MANY “clubs”, churches, newspapers, etc. people of common opinion that are not geographically close can be targeted, whereas before you had geo limits on communication between communities. Mass media allows the demographics to emerge

• a person in society is member of many smaller groups what they learn in one they can introduce/support in another

• Emil Ludwig represents Napoleon as “ever on the watch for indications of public opinion; always listening to the voice of the people, a voice which defies calculation. ‘Do you know,’ he said in those days, ‘what amazes me more than all else? The impotence of force to organize anything.’”

CHAPTER II - THE NEW PROPAGANDA:

• “L’Etat c’est moi.” Louis XIV

• The steam engine, the multiple press, and the public school, that trio of the industrial revolution, have taken the power away from kings and given it to the people. The people actually gained power which the king lost For economic power tends to draw after it political power; and the history of the industrial revolution shows how that power passed from the king and the aristocracy to the bourgeoisie. Universal suffrage and universal schooling reinforced this tendency, and at last even the bourgeoisie stood in fear of the common people. For the masses promised to become king.

• To-day, however, a reaction has set in. The minority has discovered a powerful help in influencing majorities. It has been found possible so to mold the mind of the masses that they will throw their newly gained strength in the desired direction.

• Whatever of social importance is done to-day, whether in politics, finance, manufacture, agriculture, charity, education, or other fields, must be done with the help of propaganda. Propaganda is the executive arm of the invisible government

• literacy was supposed to liberate common man, instead he has rubber stamp ideas, common to all advertising slogans, published scientific data, trivialities, history, etc… all devoid of original thought

• “There is no word in the English language,” it says, “whose meaning has been so sadly distorted as the word ‘propaganda.’” The change took place mainly during the late war (WW1? I assume)

• “If you turn to the Standard Dictionary, you will find that the word was applied to a congregation or society of cardinals for the care and oversight of foreign missions which was instituted at Rome in the year 1627. It was applied also to the College of the Propaganda at Rome that was founded by Pope Urban VIII, for the education of the missionary priests. Hence, in later years the word came to be applied to any institution or scheme for propagating a doctrine or system. “Judged by this definition, we can see that in its true sense propaganda is a perfectly legitimate form of human activity.

• “Truth is mighty and must prevail, and if any body of men believe that they have discovered a valuable truth, it is not merely their privilege but their duty to disseminate that truth. If they realize, as they quickly must, that this spreading of the truth can be done upon a large scale and effectively only by organized effort, they will make use of the press and the platform as the best means to give it wide circulation.

• 3 things can not remain long hidden…

• “‘Propaganda’ in its proper meaning is a perfectly wholesome word, of honest parentage, and with an honorable history. The fact that it should to-day be carrying a sinister meaning merely shows how much of the child remains in the average adult.

• “‘What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander,’ says a wise old proverb. Let us make haste to put this fine old word back where it belongs, and restore its dignified significance for the use of our children and our children’s children.”

• 4 of 8 NTY articles are propaganda, b/c not what they say, but where they come from. The state Dept and The Carnegie Foundation Projecting the opinions of these as authoritative

• illustrate how conscious direction is given to events, and how the men behind these events influence public opinion.

• 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 that enterprise be building a cathedral, endowing a university, marketing a moving picture, floating a large bond issue, or electing a president.

• 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.

• 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.

• Propaganda does exist on all sides of us, and it does change our mental pictures of the world.

• This then, evidently indicates the fact that any one with sufficient influence can lead sections of the public at least for a time and for a given purpose.

• they find in propaganda a tool which is increasingly powerful in gaining that approval. Therefore, propaganda is here to stay.

• during WW1 America targeted individuals through mass media, appealing directly to them. They brought this message back to their communities, where some were leaders… instant authority

• the manipulators of patriotic opinion made use of the mental clichés and the emotional habits of the public to produce mass reactions against the alleged atrocities, the terror and the tyranny of the enemy.

• velvet market needs revived in USA. Go to Paris, get fashion on board, sponsored openly by velvet industry push your story, get famous people seen in velvet eventually “real” media picks up on your created velvet hotness and reports, velvet sales skyrocket store all start advertising velvet

• The created circumstances had their effect. “Fickle fashion has veered to velvet,” was one newspaper comment. And the industry in the United States again kept thousands busy.

• clearly it is the intelligent minorities which need to make use of propaganda continuously and systematically.

• In the active proselytizing minorities in whom selfish interests and public interests coincide lie the progress and development of America. Only through the active energy of the intelligent few can the public at large become aware of and act upon new ideas.

CHAPTER III - THE NEW PROPAGANDISTS:

• who’s who list of thousands of leaders… often unknowingly led

• The power of the invisible cabinet which deliberated at the poker table in a certain little green house in Washington has become a national legend.

• who is mark hanna?

• Paris fashion leaders set the mode of the short skirt, for wearing which, twenty years ago, any woman would simply have been arrested and thrown into jail by the New York police, and the entire women’s clothing industry, capitalized at hundreds of millions of dollars, must be reorganized to conform to their dictum.

• The idea of invisible government is relative. There may be a handful of men who control the educational methods of the great majority of our schools. Yet from another standpoint, every parent is a group leader with authority over his or her children.

• New activities call for new nomenclature

• birth of public relations council

• government is only government by virtue of public acquiescence.

• PR gained traction in the muckraking insurance finance scandals

• The profession of public relations counsel is developing for itself an ethical code which compares favorably with that governing the legal and medical professions. In part, this code is forced upon the public relations counsel by the very conditions of his work. While recognizing, just as the lawyer does, that every one has the right to present his case in its best light, he nevertheless refuses a client whom he believes to be dishonest, a product which he believes to be fraudulent, or a cause which he believes to be antisocial.

• He should be candid in his dealings. It must be repeated that his business is not to fool or hoodwink the public. If he were to get such a reputation, his usefulness in his profession would be at an end.

CHAPTER IV - THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PUBLIC RELATIONS:

• the group has mental characteristics distinct from those of the individual, and is motivated by impulses and emotions which cannot be explained on the basis of what we know of individual psychology. So the question naturally arose: If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it?

• The recent practice of propaganda has proved that it is possible, at least up to a certain point and within certain limits.

• It is now scientific in the sense that it seeks to base its operations upon definite knowledge drawn from direct observation of the group mind, and upon the application of principles which have been demonstrated to be consistent

• Propaganda, like economics and sociology, can never be an exact science for the reason that its subject-matter, like theirs, deals with human beings.

• If you can influence the leaders, either with or without their conscious cooperation, you automatically influence the group which they sway. But men do not need to be actually gathered together in a public meeting or in a street riot, to be subject to the influences of mass psychology. Because man is by nature gregarious he feels himself to be member of a herd, even when he is alone in his room with the curtains drawn. His mind retains the patterns which have been stamped on it by the group influences.

• A man sits in his office deciding what stocks to buy. He imagines, no doubt, that he is planning his purchases according to his own judgment. In actual fact his judgment is a melange of impressions stamped on his mind by outside influences which unconsciously control his thought. He buys a certain railroad stock because it was in the headlines yesterday and hence is the one which comes most prominently to his mind; because he has a pleasant recollection of a good dinner on one of its fast trains; because it has a liberal labor policy, a reputation for honesty; because he has been told that J. P. Morgan owns some of its shares.

• the group mind first follows a trusted leader next if it must make up its own mind, it refers to clichés

• Not many years ago, it was only necessary to tag a political candidate with the word interests to stampede millions of people into voting against him, because anything associated with “the interests” seemed necessarily corrupt. Recently the word Bolshevik has performed a similar service for persons who wished to frighten the public away from a line of action.

• In Great Britain, during the war, the evacuation hospitals came in for a considerable amount of criticism because of the summary way in which they handled their wounded. It was assumed by the public that a hospital gives prolonged and conscientious attention to its patients. When the name was changed to evacuation posts the critical reaction vanished. No one expected more than an adequate emergency treatment from an institution so named. The cliché hospital was indelibly associated in the public mind with a certain picture. To persuade the public to discriminate between one type of hospital and another, to dissociate the cliché from the picture it evoked, would have been an impossible task. Instead, a new cliché automatically conditioned the public emotion toward these hospitals.

• Men are rarely aware of the real reasons which motivate their actions. A man may believe that he buys a motor car because, after careful study of the technical features of all makes on the market, he has concluded that this is the best. He is almost certainly fooling himself. He bought it, perhaps, because a friend whose financial acumen he respects bought one last week; or because his neighbors believed he was not able to afford a car of that class; or because its colors are those of his college fraternity.

• modern is that a thing

• The music room will be accepted because it has been made the thing.

• A benefit performance of the Jitney Players was staged for the benefit of earthquake victims of Japan, under the auspices of Mrs. Astor and others

• ivory soap sculptures

CHAPTER V - BUSINESS AND THE PUBLIC:

• to-day supply must actively seek to create its corresponding demand

• An oil corporation which truly understands its many-sided relation to the public, will offer that public not only good oil but a sound labor policy. A bank will seek to show not only that its management is sound and conservative, but also that its officers are honorable both in their public and in their private life.

• the public should appreciate the great economic benefits which business offers, thanks to mass production and scientific marketing, business should also appreciate that the public is becoming increasingly discriminative in its standards

• Continuous interpretation is achieved by trying to control every approach to the public mind in such a manner that the public receives the desired impression, often without being conscious of it. High-spotting, on the other hand, vividly seizes the attention of the public and fixes it upon some detail or aspect which is typical of the entire enterprise.

• The tendency of big business is to get bigger. Through mergers and monopolies it is constantly increasing the number of persons with whom it is in direct contact.

• If he is a leader in his industry, the public may demand that he be a leader in his community.

• knowledge of the public mind and of the ways in which it will react to an appeal, is a specialized function which must be undertaken by the professional expert.

• it is my conviction that as big business becomes bigger the need for expert manipulation of its innumerable contacts with the public will become greater.

• One reason why the public relations of a business are frequently placed in the hands of an outside expert, instead of being confided to an officer of the company, is the fact that the correct approach to a problem may be indirect. For example, when the luggage industry attempted to solve some of its problems by a public relations policy, it was realized that the attitude of railroads, of steamship companies, and of foreign government-owned railroads was an important factor in the handling of luggage. If a railroad and a baggage man, for their own interest, can be educated to handle baggage with more facility and promptness, with less damage to the baggage, and less inconvenience to the passenger; if the steamship company lets down, in its own interests, its restrictions on luggage; if the foreign government eases up on its baggage costs and transportation in order to further tourist travel; then the luggage manufacturers will profit. The problem then, to increase the sale of their luggage, was to have these and other forces come over to their point of view. Hence the public relations campaign was directed not to the public, who were the ultimate consumers, but to these other elements.

• The development of public opinion for a cause or line of socially constructive action may very often be the result of a desire on the part of the propagandist to meet successfully his own problem which the socially constructive cause would further. And by doing so he is actually fulfilling a social purpose in the broadest sense.

• Public opinion is no longer inclined to be unfavorable to the large business merger. It resents the censorship of business by the Federal Trade Com- mission. It has broken down the anti-trust laws where it thinks they hinder economic development. It backs great trusts and mergers which it excoriated a decade ago. The government now permits large aggregations of producing and distributing units, as evidenced by mergers among railroads and other public utilities, because representative government reflects public opinion. Public opinion itself fosters the growth of mammoth industrial enterprises. In the opinion of millions of small investors, mergers and trusts are friendly giants and not ogres, because of the economies, mainly due to quantity production, which they have effected, and can pass on to the consumer.

• It was obtained not only by modifying the opinion of the public, as the governments modified and marshaled the opinion of their publics during the war

• Only recently, Prof. W. Z. Ripley of Harvard University, one of the foremost national authorities on business organization and practice, exposed certain aspects of big business which tended to undermine public confidence in large corporations. He pointed out that the stockholders’ supposed voting power is often illusory; that annual financial statements are sometimes so brief and summary that to the man in the street they are downright misleading; that the extension of the system of non-voting shares often places the effective control of corporations and their finances in the hands of a small clique of stockholders; and that some corporations refuse to give out sufficient information to permit the public to know the true condition of the concern.

• A merger may bring into existence huge new resources, and these resources, perhaps amounting to millions of dollars in a single operation, can often fairly be said to have been created by the expert manipulation of public opinion.

• An attempted issue by an east European country is now faring badly largely because of unfavorable public reaction to the behavior of members of its ruling family. But other countries have no difficulty in placing any issue because the public is already convinced of the prosperity of these nations and the stability of their governments.

• The new technique of public relations counsel is serving a very useful purpose in business by acting as a complement to legitimate advertisers and advertising in helping to break down unfair competitive exaggerated and over-emphatic advertising by reaching the public with the truth through other channels than advertising.

• The only way to combat such unethical methods, is for ethical members of the industry to use the weapon of propaganda in order to bring out the basic truths of the situation.

• The business man and advertising man is realizing that he must not discard entirely the methods of Barnum in reaching the public.

• Amusement, too, is a business—one of the largest in America. It was the amusement business-first the circus and the medicine show, then the theater- which taught the rudiments of advertising to industry and commerce.

CHAPTER VI - PROPAGANDA AND POLITICAL LEADERSHIP:

• Fortunately, the sincere and gifted politician is able, by the instrument of propaganda, to mold and form the will of the people.

• 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.

• 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.

• He has adopted the glitter and the ballyhoo of the campaign. He has set up all the side shows. 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 re- public of classic times rewarded its worthy citizens.

• Political campaigns to-day are all side shows, all honors, all bombast, glitter, and speeches.

• Emily Newell Blair has recounted in the Independent a typical instance of the waste of effort and money in a political campaign, a week’s speaking tour in which she herself took part. She estimates that on a five-day trip covering nearly a thousand miles she and the United States Senator with whom she was making political speeches addressed no more than 1,105 persons whose votes might conceivably have been changed as a result of their efforts. The cost of this appeal to these voters she estimates (calculating the value of the time spent on a very moderate basis) as $15.27 for each vote which might have been changed as a result of the campaign. This, she says, was a “drive for votes, just as an Ivory Soap advertising campaign is a drive for sales.” But, she asks, “what would a company executive say to a sales manager who sent a high-priced speaker to describe his product to less than 1,200 people at a cost of $15.27 for each possible buyer?” She finds it “amazing that the very men who make their millions out of cleverly devised drives for soap and bonds and cars will turn around and give large contributions to be expended for vote-getting in an utterly inefficient and antiquated fashion.”

• But the politician is not necessarily a general sales manager, a public relations counsel, or a man who knows how to secure mass distribution of ideas.

• It is obvious that politics would gain much in prestige if the money-raising campaign were conducted candidly and publicly, like the campaigns for the war funds. Charity drives might be made excellent models for political funds drives. The elimination of the little black bag element in politics would raise the entire prestige of politics in America,

• Big business has realized that it must use as many of the basic emotions as possible.

• emotional content must— (a) coincide in every way with the broad basic plans of the campaign and all its minor details; (b) be adapted to the many groups of the public at which it is to be aimed; and (c) conform to the media of the distribution of ideas.

• Kissing babies, if it is worth anything, must be used as a symbol for a baby policy and it must be synchronized with a plank in the platform. But the haphazard staging of emotional events without regard to their value as part of the whole campaign, is a waste of effort,

• People to-day are largely uninterested in politics and their interest in the issues of the campaign must be secured by coordinating it with their personal interests.

• Every object which presents pictures or words that the public can see, everything that presents intelligible sounds, can be utilized in one way or another.

• A political practice which has its roots in the tendency of the popular leader to follow oftener than he leads is the technique of the trial balloon which he uses in order to maintain, as he believes, his contact with the public. The politician, of course, has his ear to the ground. It might be called the clinical ear. It touches the ground and hears the disturbances of the political universe. But he often does not know what the disturbances mean, whether they are superficial, or fundamental. So he sends up his balloon. He may send out an anonymous interview through the press. He then waits for reverberations to come from the public—a public which expresses itself in mass meetings, or resolutions, or telegrams, or even such obvious manifestations as editorials in the partisan or nonpartisan press. On the basis of these repercussions he then publicly adopts his original tentative policy, or rejects it, or modifies it to conform to the sum of public opinion which has reached him.

• The propagandist’s approach is the exact opposite of that of the politician just described. The whole basis of successful propaganda is to have an objective and then to endeavor to arrive at it through an exact knowledge of the public and modifying circumstances to manipulate and sway that public.

CHAPTER VII - WOMEN’S ACTIVITIES AND PROPAGANDA:

• If the suffrage campaign did nothing more, it showed the possibilities of propaganda to achieve certain ends. This propaganda to-day is being utilized by women to achieve their programs in Washington and in the states.

• If I have seemed to concentrate on the accomplishments of women in politics, it is because they afford a particularly striking example of intelligent use of the new propaganda to secure attention and acceptance of minority ideas.

CHAPTER VIII - PROPAGANDA FOR EDUCATION:

• using propaganda to promote the schools, general public education

• The normal school should provide for the training of the educator to make him realize that his is a twofold job: education as a teacher and education as a propagandist.

• The public is not cognizant of the real value of education, and does not realize that education as a social force is not receiving the kind of attention it has the right to expect in a democracy.

• The public cannot understand unless the teacher understands the relation- ship between the general public and the academic idea.

• there may be awakened in the minds of men of affairs, as a class, social consciousness which will produce more minds of the type of Julius Rosenwald, V. Everitt Macy, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., the late Willard Straight.

• In the ethical sense, propaganda bears the same relation to education as to business or politics. It may be abused. It may be used to overadvertise an institution and to create in the public mind artificial values. There can be no absolute guarantee against its misuse.

CHAPTER IX - PROPAGANDA IN SOCIAL SERVICE:

• The great enemy of any attempt to change men’s habits is inertia.

• tradition strengthens over time

• Public opinion was made or changed formerly by tribal chiefs, by kings, by religious leaders. To-day the privilege of attempting to sway public opinion is every one’s.

• The third step was to surround the conference with people who were stereotypes for ideas that carried weight all over the country. The support of leaders of diversified groups was sought. Telegrams and letters were dispatched to leaders of religious, political, social and educational groups, asking for their point of view on the purpose of the conference.

• Social progress is simply the progressive education and enlightenment of the public mind in regard to its immediate and distant social problems.

CHAPTER X - ART AND SCIENCE:

• In art as in politics the minority rules, but it can rule only by going out to meet the public on its own ground, by understanding the anatomy of public opinion and utilizing it.

• Propaganda can play a part in pointing out what is and what is not beautiful, and business can definitely help in this way to raise the level of American culture. In this process propaganda will naturally make use of the authority of group leaders whose taste and opinion are recognized.

• The public must be interested by means of associational values and dramatic incidents.

CHAPTER XI - THE MECHANICS OF PROPAGANDA:

• There is no means of human communication which may not also be a means of deliberate propaganda, because propaganda is simply the establishing of reciprocal understanding between an individual and a group.

• The newspaper, of course, remains always a primary medium for the transmission of opinions and ideas—in other words, for propaganda.

• It was not many years ago that newspaper editors resented what they called “the use of the news columns for propaganda purposes.” Some editors would even kill a good story if they imagined its publication might benefit any one. This point of view is now largely abandoned.

• The newspaper cannot assume, nor is it its function to assume, the responsibility of guaranteeing that what it publishes will not work out to somebody’s interest.

• In the New York Times—to take an outstanding example—news is printed because of its news value and for no other reason. The Times editors determine with complete independence what is and what is not news. They brook no censorship. They are not influenced by any external pressure nor swayed by any values of expediency or opportunism. The conscientious editor on every newspaper realizes that his obligation to the public is news. The fact of its accomplishment makes it news.

• If the public relations counsel can breathe the breath of life into an idea and make it take its place among other ideas and events, it will receive the public attention it merits. There can be no question of his “contaminating news at its source.” He creates some of the day’s events, which must compete in the editorial office with other events. Often the events which he creates may be specially acceptable to a newspaper’s public and he may create them with that public in mind.

• The average magazine assumes no obligation, as the newspaper does, to reflect the current news. It selects its material deliberately, in accordance with a continuous policy. It is not, like the newspaper, an organ of public opinion, but tends rather to become a propagandist organ, propagandizing for a particular idea…

• The lecture, once a powerful means of influencing public opinion, has changed its value. The lecture itself may be only a symbol, a ceremony;

• Professor So-and-So, expounding an epoch-making invention, may speak to five hundred persons, or only fifty. His lecture, if it is important, will be broadcast;

• who decides what is important? this reboardcasting is the propagandists tool (make 1 lecture, reuse it)

• certain newspapers have bought radio stations and linked them up with their news and entertainment distribution facilities,

• Large groups, political, racial, sectarian, economic or professional, are tending to control stations to propagandize their points of view.

• …whether the message will reach the public in the form of straight entertainment and news, or as special programs for particular groups,

• The American motion picture is the greatest unconscious carrier of propaganda in the world to-day. It is a great distributor for ideas and opinions. The motion picture can standardize the ideas and habits of a nation.

• the vivid dramatization of personality will always remain one of the functions of the public relations counsel.

• The man who would most effectively transmit his message to the public must be alert to make use of all the means of propaganda.

• Propaganda will never die out. Intelligent men must realize that propaganda is the modern instrument by which they can fight for productive ends and help to bring order out of chaos.