Bernays' Sauce
Mass Deception Started with Mass Media
Edward Bernays, the infamous “father of public relations,” is often blamed for inventing the American version of deceptive advertising and political propaganda, back during WW1. But Bernays actually understood just how horrible mass media would become, and warned that Americans were unprepared for an era of mass deception.
Our minds, Bernays warned, were unable to sort truth from lie, because both were now taken in as “a picture” and sat equally in the brain, side by side, equally credible. Sorting out politics was too difficult for an average person, who had no time or inclination to investigate manipulation.
Bernays had a bad solution—he was part of that early technocratic faith, believing that elites, experts, and leaders could better handle the truth while leaving the common man to his daily routines.
A century later, our leader is an Ivy League graduate who can’t tell a Photoshopped picture from reality, and demands that Americans agree with his lies.
The Short-Circuiting of the American Mind
A century-old book foresaw Trump’s most basic strategy.
Read in The Atlantic: https://apple.news/ASvqJuRWiQO2Q-C5kBSl7bg