Anonymous ID: b8f1bc Aug. 31, 2018, 6:43 p.m. No.2825255   🗄️.is 🔗kun

'''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.''' This is a logical result of

the way in which our democratic society is organized.

Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in

this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly

functioning society.

 

Our invisible governors are, in many cases, unaware

of the identity of their fellow members in the

inner cabinet.

 

They govern us by their qualities of natural leadership,

their ability to supply needed ideas and by their

key position in the social structure. Whatever attitude

one chooses to take toward this condition, it

remains a fact that in almost every act of our daily

lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business,

in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are

dominated by the relatively small number of persons – a

trifling fraction of our hundred and twenty

million – who understand the mental processes and

social patterns of the masses. '''It is they who pull the

wires which control the public mind''', who harness old

social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide

the world.

 

It is not usually realized how necessary these invisible

governors are to the orderly functioning of

our group life.

 

'''In theory, every citizen may vote

for whom he pleases.''' Our Constitution does not

envisage political parties as part of the mechanism

of government, and its framers seem not to have

pictured to themselves the existence in our national

politics of anything like the modern political machine.

But the American voters soon found that

without organization and direction their individual

votes, cast, perhaps, for dozens or hundreds of candidates,

would produce nothing but confusion. '''Invisible

government, in the shape of rudimentary

political parties, arose almost overnight. Ever since

then we have agreed, for the sake of simplicity and

practicality, that party machines should narrow down

the field of choice to two candidates, or at most three

or four.'''

 

In theory, every citizen makes up his mind on

public questions and matters of private conduct. In

practice, if all men had to study for themselves the

abstruse economic, political, and ethical data involved

in every question, they would find it impossible to

come to a conclusion about anything.

 

'''We havevoluntarily agreed to let an invisible government

sift the data and high-spot the outstanding issues so

that our field of choice shall be narrowed to practical

proportions. From our leaders and the media they

use to reach the public, we accept the evidence and

the demarcation of issues bearing upon public questions''';

from some ethical teacher, be it a minister, a

favorite essayist, or merely prevailing opinion, we

accept a standardized code of social conduct to which

we conform most of the time.

 

It might be better to have, instead of propaganda

and special pleading, committees of wise men who

would choose our rulers, dictate our conduct, private

and public, and decide upon the best types of clothes

for us to wear and the best kinds of food for us to

eat. But we have chosen the opposite method, that

of open competition. We must find a way to make

free competition function with reasonable smoothness.

To achieve this '''society has consented to permit

free competition to be organized by leadership and

propaganda.'''

 

Some of the phenomena of this process are criticized – the

manipulation of news, the inflation of

personality, and the general ballyhoo by which politicians

and commercial products and social ideas are

brought to the consciousness of the masses. '''The instruments

by which public opinion is organized and

focused may be misused. But such organization and

focusing are necessary to orderly life.'''

 

 

'''The minority has discovered a powerful help in influencing

majorities. It has been found possible so to mold

the mind of the masses that they will throw

their newly gained strength in the desired direction.

In the present structure of society, this practice is

inevitable.'''

 

'''Whatever of social importance is done

to-day, whether in politics, finance, manufacture, agriculture,

charity, education, or other fields, must be

done with the help of propaganda. Propaganda is

the executive arm of the invisible government.'''

 

As civilization has become more complex, and as

the need for invisible government has been increasingly

demonstrated, the technical means have been

invented and developed by which opinion may be

regimented.

 

Propaganda (1928)

by Edward Bernays