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Eddie Bernays messes with your mind
8:07 am on May 6th, 2008 by Dave SegalBob Whitcomb drops Ed Bernays’s name in his column today. Which has inspired me to post this:
It’s from an Adam Curtis film called The Century of the Self, all available online. Bernays basically invented the public relations industry, using the ideas of his uncle, Sigmund Freud. Among other things, he’s largely responsible for: it becoming cool for women to smoke cigarettes, our overthrow of the democratically-elected Arbenz government in Guatemala, and Freud’s existence as a pop-culture phenom.
He, and other dignified men of his day, thought active manipulation of the unconsciousnesses of the masses was somehow integral to democracy — and good for making a buck to boot. The concept of the “engineering of consent” — coined by New Republic founder Walter Lippmann — was once more widely used by elites, who thought it had positive connotations (and affirmed their standing in society).
Much of Chomsky’s popular work has entailed putting them in their place. You can check out the CBC film Manufacturing Consent over here.
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May 7th, 2008 at 10:03 am
yeah Adam Curtis! plus everyone should watch his more recently-released documentary series “The Trap: What Happened to Our Dreams of Freedom”, which also deals with people who wish to mess with our minds; Curtis traces popular definitions of freedom through the 20th century, mixing in pop psychology and debunking recent excesses in free-market economics along the way. watch it!! (it’s probably on google video.)