Propaganda: Mind Manipulation and Manufacturing Consent

“The engineering of consent is the very essence of the democratic process, the freedom to persuade and suggest. In practice, the freedoms of speech, press, petition and assembly — freedoms that make engineering consent possible — have tacitly expanded our Bill of Rights to include the right of persuasion.” ~ Edward Bernays, the “father of propaganda”.

Propaganda, known today euphemistically as ‘public relations’, is the manufacturing of consent. Propaganda is the act of deliberately spreading false or deceptive information, ideas, rumors, doctrines or principles propagated by an organization or movement to help or harm a target person, group of people, movement, institution, nation, etc. It’s the distortion of information to suit a particular agenda. Along with its ‘proper’ use comes the ability to control the masses and mold the collective mind.

Propaganda is so pervasive in our culture, we have trouble discerning what information is real and what is not. It’s become increasingly difficult to tell the truth from the lies, even with the power of the internet. Time has given these mind manipulators lots of practice to hone their skills. It’s important to realize the magnitude of manipulation that is being perpetrated against mankind.

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Things are not what they seem.

The facts have been twisted and used against us and for private interests. What we think we collectively know is engineered by these shadow figures, this invisible government that hovers over us, controlling our every seemingly independent decision.

A man named Edward Bernays was one of the most prominent mind manipulators. Considered the “Father of Propaganda” he was hired by corporations and governments to use our human emotions against us, often for nefarious purposes that serve the elite and compromised the integrity of the common folk. He is the reason we put so much attachment on materialistic things. We don’t want a new car, we need that new car! His uncle just so happened to be the famous psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, so he used his uncle’s psychological know-how to penetrate the collective mind, shaping public opinion to suit the interests of whomever had the most money and power at the time.

“The conscious intelligent manipulation of the organized opinions and habits of the masses is an important element in a 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 molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested largely by men we have never heard of. In almost every act of our 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 who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind.” ~ Edward Bernays

We can thank this guy for the public’s acquiescence to war, water fluoridation, bacon for breakfast, and the reason women started smoking in the 1920’s. He was hired by governments and corporations to sway public opinion on the side of investors. This alludes to an inherent problem in our society: the system in place today that passes for capitalism and democracy always puts monetary incentives above the interests of the common man and health of planet Earth.

“Torches of Freedom” was a phrase used to encourage women’s smoking by exploiting women’s aspirations for a better life during the women’s liberation movement in the United States. Cigarettes were described as symbols of emancipation and equality with men. The term was first used by psychoanalyst A.A. Brill when describing the natural desire for women to smoke, and was used by Edward Bernays to encourage women to smoke in public despite social taboos. Bernays hired women to march while smoking their “torches of freedom” in the Easter Sunday Parade of 1929 which was a significant moment for fighting social barriers for women smokers.

One of the best forms of propaganda, if not the best, is the motion picture. Hollywood, movies, and cinema are powerful opinion shapers that prey on the subconscious mind.

“The American motion picture is the greatest unconscious carrier of propaganda in the world today. It is a great distributor for ideas and opinions. The motion picture can standardize the ideas and habits of a nation. Because pictures are made to meet market demands, they reflect, emphasize and even exaggerate broad popular tendencies, rather than stimulate new ideas and opinions. The motion picture avails itself only of ideas and facts which are in vogue. As the newspaper seeks to purvey news, it seeks to purvey entertainment.” ~ Edward Bernays

(For more information, please see the article: Hollywood and The CIA: A Dark Marriage Revealed.)

Consent is manufactured, and whether we acknowledge it or not, our choices are made for us. Misinformation and disinformation are tools used by the orchestrators of mind manipulation. When oppressive action is desired, acquiescence is created. It’s a lot like September 11th; For these dark forces seek to gobble up the freedom of mankind, an event must transpire to allow the citizens to beg for war and their liberties taken away. A problem was staged to generate a public reaction that would consent to a predetermined “solution” — war and tighter legal control. The Hegelian Dialectic: Problem-Reaction-Solution.

The first step (thesis) is to create a problem. The second step (antithesis) is to generate opposition to the problem (fear, panic and hysteria). The third step (synthesis) is to offer the solution to the problem created by step one: a change which would have been impossible to impose upon the people without the proper psychological conditioning (ie. the problem and reaction) achieved in stages one and two.

One of Bernays’ favorite techniques for garnering public opinion was appealing to the authority figure. If you can influence the leaders, either with or without their conscious cooperation, you automatically influence the group which they sway. In order to promote sales of bacon, for example, he conducted a survey of physicians and reported their recommendation that people eat heavy breakfasts. He sent the results of the survey to 5,000 physicians, along with publicity touting bacon and eggs as a heavy breakfast. Sales went through the roof. To Bernays it didn’t matter what was right, what mattered was the price of the job and the satisfaction of being able to brainwash the masses. He describes this ability in his book Propaganda written in 1928.

“If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without them knowing it.” ~ Edward Bernays (Propaganda 1928, p.71)

Walter Lippmann, another purveyor of propaganda, stated in his book “Public Opinion“:

“The manufacture of consent is not a new art. It is a very old one which was supposed to have died out with the appearance of democracy. But it has not died out. It has, in fact, improved enormously in technique… Under the impact of propaganda, it is no longer possible … to believe in the original dogma of democracy… Great men, even during their lifetime, are usually known to the public only through a fictitious personality.”

Ivy Lee was another prominent mind manipulator, who in 1914 was retained by John D. Rockefeller Jr to represent his family and the Standard Oil corporation — “to burnish the family image” — following the coal mining rebellion in Colorado known as the “Ludlow Massacre.” Upton Sinclair dubbed Lee “Poison Ivy” after he sent out public bulletins stating that those who died in the massacre were victims of an overturned stove, when in fact they were shot dead by the Colorado National Guard.

Propaganda of World War

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. ~ Carl Sagan

In 1917, at a time where the president was elected under the slogan “He Kept Us Out of War”, President Woodrow Wilson came out with what they called “Four Minute Men”. These were short films presented during the four minutes between reels changing in movie theaters across the United States. These 4 minute presentations influenced the masses into thinking we should go to war with Germany. There were a large number of German Americans living in the States at the time so support for war with Germany was difficult to garner. However George Creel, another influential propagandist who worked with Edward Bernays, devised these short wartime propaganda stunts to garner support for the war, and it worked like a charm.

Propaganda - Mind Manipulation and Manufacturing Consent - Propaganda of World War

Click image to enlarge.

We all know plenty about the atrocities committed by the “bad guys” in WWII (well after 1917 I might add). What we aren’t told however, is the horrible torture and deaths of millions of innocent German civilians at the hands of the US alliance. After WWII, when the “Axis of Evil” was defeated, President Eisenhower decided to deliberately starve over a million German men, women and children held in POW camps, puttimg them in a field without shelter, food or water and leaving them to die. That is the cheapest and least humane way to execute a mass killing, and that is exactly what he did. Of course we could never learn about this in our history books since the U.S. were portrayed as the “good guys”.

Sometimes it isn’t even the information that we’re told that sways our epistemological worldview, it is the information that’s suppressed and kept hidden deep beneath the collective consciousness. It is disturbing how much is left out of the history books. The saying “The victors write the history books” has never rung so true. (For further evidence of this fact, please see the recent article: Celebrating Genocide – Christopher Columbus’ Invasion of America.)

Other Losses is a 1989 book by Canadian writer James Bacque, which provides masses of evidence that U.S. General Dwight Eisenhower intentionally caused the deaths by starvation or exposure of around a million German prisoners of war held in Western internment camps briefly after the Second World War. Through this evidence, Bacque charges that hundreds of thousands of German civilians that had fled the Eastern front were designated as “Disarmed Enemy Forces” in order to avoid recognition under the third Geneva Convention, for the purpose of carrying out their deaths through disease or slow starvation. Other Losses cites documents found in the U.S. National Archives and interviews with people who witnessed the events.

War is profitable, very profitable. The evil forces that pull the wires of our society, this ‘shadow government’ as Bernays put it, controls every facet of our lives — but only if we let them. If we educate ourselves of the inner workings of our society and, as C.G. Jung put it, “make the darkness conscious”, we can rise above the restraints of misinformation and disinformation, lies, deceit, and propaganda.

Cannabis Propaganda

Nowhere is there more propaganda than around the subject of cannabis. Pejoratively known as ‘marijuana’, this innocent “drug” has never directly claimed a single life due to its use. Aspirin and Ibuprofen claim thousands of lives annually and you can get these at any convenience store. Cannabis is a schedule 1 drug meaning it isn’t supposed to have any medicinal benefits.

Meanwhile half of the states in the US have passed medical allowances for this altruistic herb, while over 100 scientific studies agree that cannabis cures cancer.

(You can learn about the many health benefits of cannabis here or check out this comprehensive list of studies into its various medicinal applications.)

A massive propaganda campaign against hemp and cannabis began in the 1930’s with films like “Reefer Madness”. Why? Cannabis was a commercial threat to many industries, due to the medicinal value of cannabis and hemp’s ability to be made into just about anything. In his book “The Emperor Wears No Clothes”, Jack Herer covers at length the history and vast uses of cannabis and hemp.

In Conclusion

Propaganda is everywhere and it’s filled with logical fallacies which run amuck in our society. These flaws in reasoning go unnoticed and sway the public’s opinion. The Trivium is an excellent technique to sift through the BS, and form a solid understanding of what is true and what is not.

It’s vital that we learn these methods of manipulation that are being used against us. When highly manipulated and biased information passes as sacrosanct fact, all kinds of nefarious agendas can be carried out. Money talks, and often in a way where it’s trying to get you to do something your don’t want to do. Humans are just that, human. We are mortal. We make mistakes. But it’s important to recognize these mistakes as to not repeat them. Otherwise we remain cogs in the machine; victims to the mind molders, and contributors of our own demise.

Propaganda - Mind Manipulation and Manufacturing Consent - Logical Fallacies

Logical fallacies (click image to enlarge).

Recommended Viewing

The Century Of The Self (Documentary): This documentary describes the impact of Sigmund Freud’s theories on the perception of the human mind, and the ways public relations agencies and politicians have used this during the last 100 years for their engineering of consent. Among the main characters are Freud himself and his nephew Edward Bernays, who was the first to use psychological techniques in advertising and propaganda.
Propaganda, Social Engineering and the Manufacturing of Human Thought (Documentary): Propaganda is the act of deliberately spreading false or deceptive information, ideas, rumors, doctrines or principals propagated by an organization or movement to help or harm a target person, group of people, movement, institution, nation, etc.
Psywar (Documentary): This film explores the evolution of propaganda and public relations in the United States, with an emphasis on the “elitist theory of democracy” and the relationship between war, propaganda and class.
Propaganda (Documentary): Originating from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, this film looks at the varied uses of propaganda, from creating ideas and illusions to re-writing history, from terrorism to censorship, and international diplomacy to the culture of celebrity.
Edward Bernays’ Propaganda Deconstructed (Documentary Series): This audio series examines in detail the ‘Father of PR’, Edward Bernays, just how influential his ideas were, and the resulting impact in relation to public relations, advertising, celebrity culture, and democracy itself. Along the way, you will hear from various guest speakers as well, including Edward Bernays’ daughter, Anne Bernays.
Eisenhower’s Death Camps (The Truth About WW2): A series for students who want to learn the real history of WW2, and not the fake “history” constructed by the victors of war.
Cannabis, Government and Hypocrisy: Cannabis, better known pejoratively as marijuana, is a schedule 1 drug meaning it has no medical use according to the U.S. Government. This is of course a lie; Our government even has a patent on it as a neuroprotectant and antioxidant, despite the fact that the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) falsely classifies cannabis as a schedule 1 drug, claiming it has no medicinal value.
Reefer Madness: the original reefer madness propaganda film, dating back to the 1930s, which popularized the fallacy (among others) that cannabis use causes “incurable insanity”.

About the author:

Hi, I’m Joe Dubs. I’m originally from Philadelphia and now reside in beautiful Boulder, Colorado. ‘Cosmic Creations of Coalescent Consciousness’ are my sacred geometric flash cards for understanding the universe. InfoHoloGraphics. A method of organizing my thoughts for all to see and explore as we traverse the geometric universe. A left and right-brain consolidation of esoteric geometry, number, philosophy, science, and art. Using the Trivium we dissect the Quadrivium and comprehend esoteric Pythagoreanism.