Propaganda
“Universal literacy was supposed to educate the common man to control his environment. Once he could read and write he would have a mind fit to rule. So ran the democratic doctrine. But instead of a mind, universal literacy has given him rubber stamps, rubber stamps inked with advertising slogans, with editorials, with published scientific data, with the trivialties of the tabloids and the platitudes of history, but quite innocent of original thought. Each man’s rubber stamps are the duplicates of millions of others, so that when those millions are exposed to the same stimuli, all received identical imprints. It may seem an exaggeration to say that the American public gets most of its ideas in this wholesale fashion. The mechanism by which ideas are disseminated on a large scale is propaganda, in the broad sense of an organized effort to spread a particular belief or doctrine.”
-p 48 of “Propaganda” by Edward Bernays-
Sphere: Related ContentPublished March 21, 2006 . Filed under: Critical Democracy Studies
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have you read about the Spanish-American war? It was a war started and fueled by the press. The press not only exaggerated stories of Spanish cruelty before the war, but they fabricated battles during wartime and were involved in the pure propagation of atrocities… some obviously that never took place. All for what? for money and recognition. And before war was declared, the people not only bought the propaganda, they demanded war. Mckinley was president during the time and just caved right in to the pressure, eventhough extremely reluctant.
the one impression you can get after reading about it is that history repeats itself. I had to present the role of journalism before and during the Spanish American war, and when i was finished I obviously asked the class if they saw any connections to today’s world affairs. After that, i got into this heated debate about how this history connected with post 9/11… it was awesome, ill leave it at that.
March 23, 2006 @ 3:02 am
yeah. why do people trust their governments so much? i doubt the founding fathers would’ve given so much deference to the executive.
March 23, 2006 @ 10:41 am
And before the Spanish-American war it was the Mexican-American war. And before that it was the war of 1812.
March 26, 2006 @ 9:55 pm