Erinn Goes Abroad

What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

I’m currently reading Edward Bernays’ book Propaganda published in 1929. Among his varied accomplishments, Bernays is personally responsible for popularizing cigarette smoking following WWI. Through a campaign sponsored by the American Tobacco Company, he told the press at the New York City parade that a group of women’s rights marchers would light “Torches of Freedom”. He had hired these models to be in the parade and strategically signaled the models to light up for the photographers. These actions purportedly helped to break the taboo against women smoking in public.

I find these few pointed actions alone to be highly intriguing. Before questioning the ethical implications, it’s interesting to consider how herd mentality theory can play out into real life examples. It seems that Bernay unflinchingly utilized propagated techniques to sway the masses. To be fair, the dangers of smoking were not yet known. And as I mentioned “varied accomplishments” earlier, among them was hosting the first NAACP convention in Atlanta in 1920. It had no incidences of violence, which helped to contribute to its success. So before we assume that propaganda is a largely sinister phenomenon, let’s explore a bit of his book.

In the very first chapter, he posits:

“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.”

What an interesting way to explain economic demand. While we might expect power of demand to be controlled by the consumer, Bernays would disagree. 

“… Today, because ideas can be transmitted to any distance and to any number of people, this geographical integration has been supplemented by many other kinds of grouping, so that persons having the same ideas and interests may be associated and regimented for common action even though they live thousands of miles apart.”

Remember this book was published in 1929. My how he might have laughed (or more accurately, been blithely unsurprised) at the invention of the internet! And how much his words still ring true!

 In light of election coverage, the Syrian conflict, tension between Iran and Israel, (and other newsworthy topics), it’s critical to evaluate the purposeful actions being taken to shape the events we are reading about on the internet, in the newspaper, or any other medium. 

Chew on that, blogosphere! I’ll now remove my poncey scholarly spectacles. In other news, I’m starting a new blog now that the winds have shifted & my rotary scholarship has sailed. It’s in the brain storm phase. To be more specific, the brain cyclone phase. I want the blog to follow a coherent theme but not so much as to narrow the scope gratuitously. See my dilemma? Stay tuned.