pales
David Brock best described it in his book "The Right Wing Noise Machine"
I agree that the dems are pathetic in their lack of understanding/employment of basic PR techniques, pioneered by the likes of Edward Bernays almost a hundred years ago, and honed to an adamantine edge by his acolytes, including monsters like Deaver, Nofziger, Rove, Luntz, Gingrich, Tim Phillips....the list goes on and on
dems don't get the idea that propaganda, as described by Bernays, can actually be used for 'good'.....it's a value neutral term, actually. too bad that it almost never works out to the benefit of the many
here's what I'm talking about, put in a much more coherent fashion:
Karl Rove & the Spectre of Freud’s Nephew
by Stephen Bender
"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 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… "
So opens Propaganda (1928), one of several strikingly frank analyses of western social psychology written by Edward Bernays. This nephew of Sigmund Freud founded the public relations industry in the United States.
Mr. Bernays lived a fascinating life. He first got involved in high stakes politics when he "warmed up" the dour Calvin Coolidge by arranging the first presidential celebrity photo op in 1928. For the private sector, Bernays engineered a most notorious publicity stunt for the American Tobacco Company, by single-handedly neutralizing the taboo against women smoking in public. He organized a "Torches of Freedom" march down Broadway by ten smoking debutantes during the 1929 Easter Parade. With the help of feminists – some of whom understood the "right to smoke" as libratory – Bernays expertly publicized this spectacle, thus setting in motion the expected stir on op-ed pages across the land.
For Bernays, truth in public affairs did not exist per se. Rather, truth was the product of the "public relations counsel" forging prevailing "public opinion." It should be said that he readily recognized the ethical implications of his work, as witnessed in his later anti-smoking advocacy, after the dangers of cigarettes became known in the late-1950s. He could also be, in his own curious way, a humanitarian – as reflected in his work promoting the NAACP and anti-syphilis public education.
For Bernays, however, the necessity of controlling the public mind was a crucially important matter confronting the better element, a group in which he clearly included himself. In his first work, the hugely influential Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923), Bernays noted that the establishment of public education and the gradual extension of the right to vote caused consternation among western elites. The use of public relations techniques, then, was a way for the minority to "so mold the mind of the masses that they will throw their newly gained strength in the desired direction."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/bender2.htmlmore at link
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