Edward Bernays, Chiquita Bananas & The CIA's Destruction Of Guatamala

Note the appearance of Howard Hunt of the CIA who also had a hand in the assassination of JFK under orders from George Bush. This clip is from the excellent Century of the Self by Adam Curtis of the BBC.

The nephew of Sigmund Freud, Edward Bernays started his business life as a publicist. While still in his twenties, he was part of the propaganda effort that drove the United States into in World War I (WW I.)

He personally advised several US presidents starting with Woodrow Wilson and counseled numerous corporations and business associations. Hitler's propaganda chief and Nazi henchman Joseph Goebbels was a reader and fan of Bernay's writing in particular Bernay's book "Crystalizing Public Opinion."

In this short excerpt from Curtis's film we see one example of Bernays at work.

Bernays was one of the engineers of the Cold War. He perfected the technique of manufacturing a distant but ever-threatening enemy and then creating a constant state of fear by generating false news reports that endlessly re-stated and exagerated the threat.

The stated purpose of Bernay's methods was to give those in power greater control over what he called "the mass mind." It worked well in the 1950s and sadly, it appears to be working quite well today... but maybe not forever.

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BBC's Adam Curtis - Century Of The Self

This is about how those in power have used Freud’s theories to try and control the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy. Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, changed the perception of the human mind and its workings profoundly.

His influence on the 20th century is widely regarded as massive. The documentary describes the impact of 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. He is often seen as the father of the public relations industry.

Freud’s daughter Anna Freud, a pioneer of child psychology, is mentioned in the second part, as well as Wilhelm Reich, one of the main opponents of Freud’s theories. Along these general themes, The Century of the Self asks deeper questions about the roots and methods of modern consumerism, representative democracy and its implications. It also questions the modern way we see ourselves, the attitude to fashion and superficiality.

Happiness Machines. Part one documents the story of the relationship between Sigmund Freud and his American nephew, Edward Bernays who invented Public Relations in the 1920s, being the first person to take Freud’s ideas to manipulate the masses.

The Engineering of Consent. Part two explores how those in power in post-war America used Freud’s ideas about the unconscious mind to try and control the masses. Politicians and planners came to believe Freud’s underlying premise that deep within all human beings were dangerous and irrational desires.

There is a Policeman Inside All of Our Heads, He Must Be Destroyed. In the 1960s, a radical group of psychotherapists challenged the influence of Freudian ideas, which lead to the creation of a new political movement that sought to create new people, free of the psychological conformity that had been implanted in people’s minds by business and politics.

Eight People Sipping Wine In Kettering. This episode explains how politicians turned to the same techniques used by business in order to read and manipulate the inner desires of the masses. Both New Labor with Tony Blair and the Democrats led by Bill Clinton, used the focus group which had been invented by psychoanalysts in order to regain power.

Army Brat

I'm grateful I've always had a sense of history. Growing up British with a father in the Army, I was often surrounded not only by WWII veterans but also WWI vets. Germans and British depending on the country we were stationed in. 

Near one of my father's homes in Netley Abbey is a park where the largest building in the world once was. A hospital from the Crimean war where Florence Nightingale toiled and where later on American Jeeps drove down the central hall it was so long and wide. We'd head down to a pier (pictured under) now no longer, where injured soldiers arrived in all the major wars, and where I learned to do my first somersaults into the gravelly and pebbled beach below. Where the now absent struts had once supported the dying and the wounded as they were fetched into the Royal Victoria Hospital. 

My best friend and I would sneak out late at night to visit the prettiest but darkest of cemeteries with multinational graves of Canadians, Germans, Australians and more. Regiments with names like The Black Watch that I yearned to know the history of before the internet and smartphones. Names from far flung places of empires that no longer exist.

Later on as an adult I worked with the US military in Giessen just after the first Gulf War where i was selected in part because of resiliant psychographic profiling though they never knew that I merely used my wits and gave the answers I felt they needed (I later graphed the real answers and there were similarities of wave from but often with symmetries from the ones they wanted). I watched and observed the American Military machine from up close.

And so all my life I've been blessed with an unusual sense of luck at getting bogged down in a war no more bloody than the Cold War, and that even more so I'd skipped the horrific brutality of The Great War. Trench warfare in WWI was a first taste of mechanized killing through propaganda and manipulation by the string pullers. The second World War an extension of the first. And if the current slew of string pullers could have their way they'd pitch us against each other in an over populated planet's heartbeat. Of this I've no doubt. 

But maybe we're finally catching on. Realising it takes a higher type of consciousness to solve the problems that created it in the first place. Who knows.

What I do know is my idea of hell is trench warfare at the Sommes. Of being ordered to "go over" and slug it out in the poison gas and stench of rotting bodies, the cries and the senseless slaughter. I thank my lucky stardust I didn't have to see it, or if I did, I don't remember it. That so many unwittingly sacrificed all they had, stirred on by new found forms of mass media manipulation that subsequently went on to become the marketing industry through the efforts of Edward Bernays in New York, a nephew of Sigmund Freud exploiting the new found thinking in psychology and mass manipulation.

I'm blessed to have lived through the most extraordinary century ever and in terms of unwitting awareness of how it all was held together but now I know the Kali Yuga and whatever the new point of change will be, I welcome it irrespective of what my own fate is. It's nothing compared to the lives of millions sacrificed in the age of Iron and bullets.

This piece is in memory of Frank Buckles, WWI's last veteran who passed away after an extraordinary stretch of time spanning two centuries of the bloodiest years I've had the good luck ever to have missed.

Kanye West

Kanye name dropping Edward Bernays and a lot lot more.

Probably the most important artist since Ian Curtis IMO at this point in time.

I can't believe I typed that but inspiration, is seldom the real thing.

I listened for about the 4th time during the night and wondered if I'd find the talk about Jesus a bit uphill, but in fact, it's a very relaxing interview and many of the comments echo that.

Kanye, has the best laugh I've heard in ages. I didn't know the old Kanye, but I like the new one.

Bread & Circuses - Celebrities & Population Management

Edward Bernays taught us that celebrity endorsement is the most credible and effective way to manipulate entire populations through mass media. Talent isn't even necessary. Via the wonderful Deus Ex Machina on Tumblr. Starsuckers is a must see.