propaganda, public relations and manufacturing consent

Why did the United States enter the First World War?

This is the 'official version' from the Voice of America:
American History: Wilson Is Re-elected in 1916 on a Promise: 'He Kept Us Out of War!' (VOA Special English 2006-03-15)
American History: 'Right Is More Precious Than Peace': U.S. Enters World War One (VOA Special English 2006-03-22)

The 'official' reason for entering the war was because the Germans sank a passenger ship - but what was it carrying?
The Lusitania



Well, the war was not actually that popular with Americans:

On August 1, 1917, the New York Herald reported that in New York City ninety of the first hundred draftees claimed exemption. In Minnesota, headlines in the Minneapolis Journal of August 6 and 7 read: "DRAFT OPPOSITION FAST SPREADING IN STATE," and "CONSCRIPTS GIVE FALSE ADDRESSES." In Florida, two Negro farm hands went into the woods with a shotgun and mutilated themselves to avoid the draft: one blew off four fingers of his hand; the other shot off his arm below the elbow. Senator Thomas Hardwick of Georgia said "there was undoubtedly general and widespread opposition on the part of many thousands ... to the enactment of the draft law. Numerous and largely attended mass meetings held in every part of the State protested against it. ..." Ultimately, over 330,000 men were classified as draft evaders. 

A people's history of World War I - Howard Zinn

So, what pushed men to enlist?
The Espionage Act helped:
Espionage Act of 1917 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
U.S. Congress passes Espionage Act — History.com This Day in History — 6/15/1917

As did owning most of the newspapers in the United States:

Second Session: 64th Congress of the United States of America: U.S. Congressional Record February 9, 1917
“In March 1915, the J.P. Morgan interests….…got together 12 men high up in the newspaper world and employed them to select the most influential newspapers in the United States and the sufficient number of them to control generally the policy of the daily press…….They found it was only necessary to purchase the control of 25 of the greatest papers.”

JP Morgan buys 25 Newspapers Policy through Propaganda - YouTube
Bullies in the Newsroom | Conservative News and Views
J. P. Morgan, Jr. - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

But it seems even 'bigger' than this:

On April 13, 1917 Woodrow Wilson created the Committee on Public Information (CPI) to promote the war [WWI] domestically and to publicize American war aims abroad. Under the leadership of a journalist crony of Wilson named George Creel, the CPI combined advertising techniques with a sophisticated understanding of human psychology. It marked the first time that a government disseminated propaganda on such a large scale. It was in every sense a precursor of the world depicted by George Orwell in his novel 1984.

Creel was joined at the CPI by one of the shrewdest propagandists in American history, a young Viennese-born naturalized American named Edward Bernays. Bernays brought with him intimate knowledge of a new branch of human psychology which had not yet been translated into English. He was the nephew and literary agent in America for Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud.

Using Creel's muckraking journalism and Bernays' Freudian psychology with its analysis of unconscious needs and drives - the Government's Committee on Public Information assaulted the unwitting American public with a calculated barrage of lies, jingoistic epithets demonizing Germans, coupled with horrifying images allegedly showing German soldiers bayoneting Belgian babies, and other manufactured atrocities. These images and symbols were fed continuously through the mainstream media in order to whip the American public into a pro-war frenzy against a nation, Kaiser Germany, which posed no actual threat to it.

... Creel and Bernays were joined at the CPI by anglophile journalist and close Wilson adviser Walter Lippmann. As a young Harvard graduate, Lippmann had been recruited to be a link between Wall Street interests around Morgan and the British secret society, the Round Table, which had been agitating England to prepare for war against Germany since its founding in 1909.

Lippmann's biweekly column in the New York Herald Tribune was syndicated in hundreds of local newspapers across America, making him one of the most influential pro-British voices in the country. His columns were critical to winning the allegiance of the educated middle class, a sector that would otherwise tend to be neutral or against war.

But it was Bernays' unique, perverse genius for fusing mob psychology and mass media techniques to manipulate specific human emotions on a large scale. He had learned these keys to influencing human behavior through the work of his uncle, Sigmund Freud.

Applying those insights on a mass scale, the Committee on Public Information achieved extraordinary results within months, orchestrating the American public into a mass frenzy in favor of war. With Bernays' genius in full play, the Freudian view of human nature was combined with what became Madison Avenue advertising techniques; the results were deployed by the CPI in the service of war.

... CPI [Committee on Public Information] propaganda consciously appealed to the emotions, not to the mind. It was heavily influenced by Bernays' adaptations from Freud. Emotional agitation was a favorite technique of the CPI strategists who understood that any emotion may drained off and re-directed into any activity by skillful manipulation.

Gods of Money: Wall Street and the Death of the American Century: Amazon.co.uk: F. William Engdahl: Books
American Oligarchy, J.P. Morgan, Bankers' Coup Creates Federal Reserve, Morgan's Fed Finances World War I excerpted from the book Gods of Money Wall Street and the Death of the American Century by F. William Engdahl



Committee on Public Information - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
First World War.com - Feature Articles - Of Fraud and Force Fast Woven: Domestic Propaganda During The First World War

And who was Edward Bernays?

Edward Bernays - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Museum of Public Relations

Freud's Nephew and the Origins of Public Relations : NPR

He wrote a very influential book in 1928:

Edward Bernays, comes right out of the Creel Commission. He has a book that came out right afterwards called Propaganda. The term "propaganda," incidentally, did not have negative connotations in those days. It was during the second World War that the term became taboo because it was connected with Germany, and all those bad things. But in this period, the term propaganda just meant information or something like that. So he wrote a book called Propaganda around 1925, and it starts off by saying he is applying the lessons of the first World War. The propaganda system of the first World War and this commission that he was part of showed, he says, it is possible to "regiment the public mind every bit as much as an army regiments their bodies." These new techniques of regimentation of minds, he said, had to be used by the intelligent minorities in order to make sure that the slobs stay on the right course. We can do it now because we have these new techniques.
This is the main manual of the public relations industry. Bernays is kind of the guru.

Propaganda by Edward Bernays (1928)

Propaganda: Edward Bernays, Mark Crispin Miller: 9780970312594: Amazon.com: Books
Karl Rove & the Spectre of Freud’s Nephew by Stephen Bender

Edward Bernays is seen as the 'Father of Public Relations':
[from 2 mins, 54 secs]

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John Pilger The War you don't see www.johnpilger com - YouTube [from 2 mins, 54 secs)
The War You Don’t See on Vimeo
The War You Don't See in Documentaries on Vimeo

With a little more here:
How smoking became a symbol of the "Emancipated Woman" - YouTube
Edward Bernays 1: Torches of Freedom - YouTube
Edward Bernays - "Public relations" is a polite term for propaganda. - YouTube

An excellent TV series from the BBC:

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Introduction to Century of the Self - YouTube
The Century of the Self - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Here is the episode in full:
The Century Of Self: Happiness Machines (Episode1) on Vimeo
The Century of the Self - Part 1 - RedPill.tv
The Century Of The Self - Happiness Machines (1) - Video Dailymotion

Which brings us to an interesting analysis of 'the media':

Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988), byEdward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, is an analysis of the news media, arguing that the mass media of the United States "are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions, and self-censorship, and without overt coercion".^[1]

The title derives from the phrase "the manufacture of consent" that essayist–editor Walter Lippmann (1889–1974) employed in the book Public Opinion (1922).^[2] The book introduced the propaganda model of the media. 

Manufacturing Consent - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Propaganda model - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Concentration of media ownership - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

An interview with the BBC: (from 4 minutes)



1 Chomsky media interview by Marr - YouTube
2 Chomsky Marr interview media - YouTube
COINTELPRO - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A question raised is: Who owns the media we watch?



Understanding the Media



Network - YouTube

How 'free' is the media you watch?

Do you watch BBC news?
- Biased BBC
BBC News - Scottish independence: Hundreds protest over 'BBC bias'

Or CNN?
'Clinton News Network': CNN Puffs Up Hillary's 2016 Prospects | NewsBusters

Or Fox News?
The British bias is subtle, covert and shielded by the myth of objectivity. There is no such thing. When Fox News claims to be fair and balanced, we're all in on the joke. When the BBC makes the same claim, they seem to actually believe it.

Media bias : BBC vs. Fox News:fair and balanced to you, too - New York Times

Fox News Channel controversies - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Or Russian Today?

Linas Antanas Linkevičius, Lithuania's Minister of Foreign Affairs, tweeted on March 9, 2014 amid the Crimean crisis, "Russia Today propaganda machine is no less destructive than military marching in Crimea".^[156]

United States Secretary of State John Kerry referred to Russia Today as a state-sponsored "propaganda bullhorn" and he continued by saying, "Russia Today network has deployed to promote president Putin's fantasy about what is playing out on the ground. They almost spend full time devoted to this effort, to propagandize, and to distort what is happening or not happening in Ukraine."^[157]Russia Today responded that they wanted "an official response from the U.S. Department of State substantiating Mr. Kerry's claims."^[158] Richard Stengel from the U.S. Department of State responded.^[159] Stengel stated in his response, "RT is a distortion machine, not a news organization," but he supports RT's right to broadcast in the United States.^[160]

RT (TV network) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Or Al Jazeera?
US urges Egypt to uphold press freedom - Middle East - Al Jazeera English
Caged in Cairo: Where journalism is a crime - Listening Post - Al Jazeera English

Or Chinese Cable TV news?
CCTV News - China, World, Biz, Video, Live events - English_CCTV.com
Lanzhou "New Area" set up to create environmentally sustainable economy CCTV News - CNTV English
Environment: Accelerate research on land creation : Nature News & Comment
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