A Note on the Mighty Wurlitzer: Anatomy of Modern Propaganda Techniques
Zahir Ebrahim | Project Humanbeingsfirst.org
Edward Bernays, the nephew of Sigmund Freud, began his seminal 1928 book simply titled Propaganda, with these ominous words:
‘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.' — Edward Bernays, 1928, pg.1, Propaganda
Aldous Huxley, on the 30th anniversary of his own seminal 1931 allegorical novel Brave New World, made the following dreadful observations in the very opening segment of his talk on the Ultimate Revolution upon which mankind and modernity are perilously perched:
‘You can do everything with bayonets except sit on them! If you are going to control any population for any length of time you must have some measure of consent. It's exceedingly difficult to see how pure terrorism can function indefinitely. It can function for a fairly long time, but I think sooner or later you have to bring in an element of persuasion. An element of getting people to consent to what is happening to them. Well, it seems to me that the nature of the Ultimate Revolution with which we are now faced is precisely this: that we are in process of developing a whole series of techniques which will enable the controlling oligarchy who have always existed and presumably always will exist, to get people actually to love their servitude! This is the, it seems to me the ultimate in malevolent revolution shall we say.' — Aldous Huxley, 1962 speech at UC Berkeley, minute 04:06
Read full article with photographs and many links.
See Also:
DefDog: The Technology of Political Control — Hardware, Software, & Liveware
