In
today’s episode of COVID fakery on rye and hold the apocalypse, we begin with a
bevy of quotes from Edward Bernays (1891-1995), the acknowledged father of
modern public relations, aka propaganda. I include his statements as a warm-up
backgrounder—
“This
is an age of mass production. In the mass production of materials a broad
technique has been developed and applied to their distribution. In this age,
too, there must be a technique for the mass distribution of ideas.” (1928)
“The
engineering of consent is the very essence of the democratic process, the
freedom to persuade and suggest.” (1947)
“It is sometimes possible to
change the attitudes of millions but impossible to change the attitude of one
man.” (date unknown)
“When
I came back to the United States, I decided that if you could use propaganda
for war, you could certainly use it for peace. And ‘propaganda’ got to be a bad
word because of the Germans using it, so what I did was to try and find some
other words. So we found the words ‘counsel on public relations’.” (date
unknown)
“When
Napoleon said, ‘Circumstance? I make circumstance‚’ he expressed very nearly
the spirit of the public relations counsel’s work.” (1923)
“Domination
to-day is not a product of armies or navies or wealth or policies. It is a
domination based on the one hand upon accomplished unity, and on the other hand
upon the fact that opposition is generally characterized by a high degree of
disunity.” (1923)
“The
public relations counsel, therefore, is a creator of news for whatever medium
he chooses to transmit ideas. It is his duty to create news no matter what the
medium which broadcasts this news.” (1923)
“The only difference between ‘propaganda’
and ‘education,’ really, is in the point of view. The advocacy of what we
believe in is education. The advocacy of what we don’t believe in is
propaganda.” (1923)
“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. This is a logical
result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of
human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a
smoothly functioning society.” (1928)
“Propaganda
is the executive arm of the invisible government.” (1928)
“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.” (1928)
The
news heads and the talk show heads and the sports heads and the advertisers and
bureaucrats and politicians and public health flacks and celebrities are
assuring television viewers, with no shame: We’re all in this together. Over
and over. Night and day. On every channel.
This
was the strategy during older wars. No time for disagreement or dissent; there
must be a unified response and effort; otherwise, we could lose.
We’re all in this together
means: fall in line.
If
that’s share and care and love, it’s robot love.
Advertisers,
despite their studies and their sophistication and their wall-to-wall profiling
of consumers, still believe in the first principle of propaganda: repetition.
Get
the name of your product and company out there and don’t stop. Do it a thousand
times, a million times. As long as you have money to pay for ads, do it.
Look
at the insurance company commercials. Progressive, State Farm, Liberty, Geico.
The little vignettes they lay on are really the occasion for pasting their
company name on the screen. Make these 30-second stories friendly and funny and
crazy, but the money shot is the company name.
Pandemic
ads and messages follow the same rule. In this case, it’s TOGETHERNESS. UNITY.
Pounded on and on.
Why?
If cooperation and love and togetherness are basic human impulses, why do people
need to be reminded of that 24 hours a day, on television?
Does a husband who loves his
wife need to see his face and his wife’s face on a screen, on every channel,
without let-up, along with a message urging him to adore her?
On
the other hand, a person who’s been thrown out of a job, who can’t find work,
who sees his government checks fading down to zero…he needs pacification.
That’s a tough sell. That sell-job requires a whole lot of repetition…
…In
order to produce SHAME in him, if he feels cheated and exiled and screwed. The
repetition of togetherness and fake love informs him that the collective
citizenry isn’t on his side. It tells him his righteous anger has no place in
the relentlessly upbeat messaging of “unity.” It keeps him feeling isolated.
Now
we’re getting down to it. Don’t let the people who are economically devastated
believe they can find each other. Shut them out. Pump them full of television
public service ads that paint an “uplifting” picture from which they’re
excluded.
They
may be devastated, but television tells them they aren’t on the team if they
give their own concerns first priority. If they do, they’re non-persons.
After
all, when they sit at home watching TV, do they see a cropped video of another
unemployed worker sitting in a dark room saying, “THIS IS CRAZY. I WANT TO
WORK. I NEED FOOD. MY BOSS CLOSED HIS COMPANY. HE’S BANKRUPT. WHAT THE HELL IS
GOING ON?”
Are
they offered that kind of unity? Togetherness?
“Hi.
I’m an NFL cornerback. I’ve made thirty million during my career. Here I am at
home with my kids. We’re playing games on the floor. I’m enjoying my family.
We’ll get through this. All of us. Stay safe. Use the time to bring your family
closer together.”
Major
news outlets are under strict orders to keep “disturbing human interest
stories” off the front page and away from their broadcasts. This is also part
and parcel of the wartime effort.
It
would have to be, since economic devastation is what this fake pandemic is
actually all about. No one in the mainstream will let that cat out of the bag.
It would be more than a mistake. It would be a confession. It would be suicide.
How
about these headlines? VACCINE KINGS WANT TO SOFTEN UP POPULATIONS FOR A NEEDLE
IN THE ARM. A RUINED POPULACE IS READY TO BE LED INTO A NEW WORLD ORDER.
Propagandists
know that a one-two punch of fear and then assurance works. Scare them with the
virus, comfort them with togetherness.
But
still, it’s a tough sell. It has legs for a while, but then the natives become
restless, especially in the hinterlands. People who aren’t jammed together in
big cities, who live in open spaces, tend to develop immunity to lies. Coiffed
press hookers on television dispensing so-called news carry less punch. Farmers
know if they can’t plant their crops on time, with workers side by side,
they’ll go broke.
Generally
speaking, people who don’t see other people who are sick, and don’t hear
ambulance sirens, start wondering what’s happening.
Protests
begin. Protests expand.
The
fake night of obedience turns into the real day of rebellion.
It
turns out that a story about an invisible virus isn’t quite the same as a line
of enemy tanks approaching. All promoted wars are not equal.
Fauci
knows this. Birx knows this. Bill Gates knows this. Mayors and governors know
this. The CDC and WHO know this. They don’t really care whether you survive,
but they know you care. So, for them, it’s a race against time. How long can
they keep the lid on? How long can their preposterous messaging work?
Stage
magic is an odd game. The performer has to run his tricks quickly, so people
don’t have the luxury of sitting back and thinking about how he is fooling
them. However, the public health magicians and the politician magicians and the
news magicians are hemmed in—they’re basically one-trick ponies. Virus, virus,
virus=together, together, together.
It
looks good, but it wears out.
It’s
wearing out now.
I’ll
close this piece with a few more gems from Edward Bernays—to urge you to keep
your eye on the ball. The real ball.
“If we understand the mechanism and
motives of the group mind, is it now possible to control and regiment the
masses according to our will without their knowing it?” (1928)
“A single factory, potentially capable
of supplying a whole continent with its particular product, cannot afford to
wait until the public asks for its product; it must maintain constant touch,
through advertising and propaganda, with the vast public in order to assure
itself the continuous demand which alone will make its costly plant profitable.
This entails a vastly more complex system of distribution than formerly.”
(1928)
“No serious sociologist any longer
believes that the voice of the people expresses any divine or specially wise
and lofty idea. The voice of the people expresses the mind of the people, and
that mind is made up for it by the group leaders in whom it believes and by
those persons who understand the manipulation of public opinion. It is composed
of inherited prejudices and symbols and clichés and verbal formulas supplied to
them by the leaders.” (1928)
“Propaganda is of no use to the
politician unless he has something to say which the public, consciously or
unconsciously, wants to hear.” (1928)
Reprinted with permission
from Jon
Rappoport’s blog.
Jon
Rappoport runs No More Fake News. The author of an explosive
collection, The Matrix Revealed, Jon was a candidate for a
US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. Nominated for a
Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years,
writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA
Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and
Europe.
Copyright © Jon Rappoport
