Culture: October 2020 Archives
Edward Bernays: Prophet of "Spin" - Law & Liberty
"As Bernays saw it, a healthy democratic society requires the regulation of the beliefs of the many by the work of an unseen few. Such people understand the principles of psychology and the technology of public opinion. 'They pull the wires that control the public mind,' he wrote, and they 'harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world.' They tell us who to admire and who to despise, how our houses should be designed, what food to serve, how to dress, what sports we should play, what entertainments we should prefer, how we should talk, and even what jokes we should laugh at. Government itself depends on knowing how to get the public to acquiesce.
"Doubting that ordinary people possess the ability to think for themselves, Bernays might have relished contemporary political discourse, which often resorts to name-calling and ridicule. Forced to think for themselves, he thought, people could fall back on little more than 'cliches, pat words, and images which stand for a whole group of ideas or experiences.' The propagandist needs merely to 'tag a political candidate with the word "interests' to stampede millions of people into voting against him.' This use of labels to mold opinion has been amplified in the age of social media. Merely categorizing someone or something as communist, capitalist, woke, or systemically racist is all it takes....
"To withstand Bernays' cynical vision, democracies need fewer manipulable consumers and more citizens worthy of self-government. They must care about separating truth from falsehood, be able to recognize spin when they see it, and jealously guard their liberties and responsibilities. Among other things, the development of such citizens would require childrearing and education practices that esteem ends over means, prioritizing knowing and serving the good over merely getting what one wants. One way of fostering an appreciation for the importance of such knowledge is to introduce students to Bernays' work, inviting them to behold life in the dystopia he describes."
