Book review: Propaganda

How marketers and politicians shape their message to change our minds

Not too long ago there was a story about how some naughty European technocrats admitted that they were planning to use this or that method to deliberately influence the thought waves of the unwashed masses.

Backlash ensued.

People shared the expose and expressed their righteous indignation but as far as I can tell the only thing that’s unusual is that these supposedly omniscient technocrats were technically illiterate enough to let their dumbass selves get recorded. You’re supposed to talk about brainwashing off camera, didn’t they learn anything at Deep State Tech?

All jokes aside I actually have a point to make. Propaganda is the sixth element in our world. It’s happening all the time from all angles and being perpetuated by everyone from the local bakery to the WEF. That a handful of our glorious leaders admitted to practicing it should come as no surprise to anyone. And as you’ll see in this review, propagandized messages are everywhere and that’s just the nature of the beast.

Anyways… Shout out to longtime reader Moody Millennial for recommending that I read Propaganda, I always appreciate a hat tip in the right direction. If you have a book you think I’d like definitely leave me a comment below 👇. Otherwise, let’s take a walk down Influence Boulevard.

The question naturally arose: If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing about it?

Edward Bernays has a different definition of propaganda than what you or I might put forward. To Edward, propaganda is simply a method that a person/group/government uses to most effectively convey their point to a large audience.

To Edward propaganda is a means of communication, not an insidious tool of influence. As such, he’s very much in favor of propaganda and expends a great many words helping us to realize how we can use it to further our own causes.

This book was written only shortly after the Gutenberg Bible, so one of the more interesting aspects of turning its pages is that we find Edward speculating on a future that seems quite obvious to us now.

The political leader of today should be a leader as finely versed in the technique of propaganda as in political economy and civics. - I often wonder whether the politicians of the future, who are responsible for maintaining prestige and effectiveness of their party, will not endeavor to train politicians who are at the same time propagandists.

Uh yeah, no shit there Eddie. But we’ll give you a pass since you were born when cowboys and Indians were still a hot topic.

Given the amount of reading I do I like to flatter myself slightly less affected by political propaganda than the average person. Maybe, but now let me tell you my Achilles heel: I’m the world’s biggest sucker for paying more to get the shiny thing.

There’s something to be said for buying high quality goods, but I’m the type of guy who will pay $1,000 extra to get a bit of chrome on his car even though it costs the manufacturer $100, serves no discernible purpose and nobody will ever notice it’s there. The marketing propaganda team has my number big time, and although I’m at least semi-consciously aware of my depravity I’m only batting .300 at resisting the urge to splurge.

Men are rarely aware of the real reasons which motivate their actions. A man may believe that he buys a motor car because, after careful study of the technical features of all makes on the market, he has concluded that this is the best. He is almost certainly fooling himself. He bought it, perhaps, because a friend whose financial acumen he respects bought one last week; or because his neighbors believed he was not able to afford a car of that class; or because its colors are those of his college fraternity.

Reading Propaganda and achieving a clearer picture of how the human brain is influenced you might ask: is there a solution? Well, here’s my take.

To the best of our abilities we may seek knowledge and understanding such that we become more capable of making our own informed decisions free from outside influence. Beyond that, maybe the second-best solution is to not take ourselves too damn seriously. As part of a highly interconnected society we’re influenced in ways that we’ll never even begin to comprehend. This amazing scene from one of my favorite movies is testament to just how little we understand our own choices.

So I’m influenced to buy the chrome package even though I know it’s ludicrous. You bought an unnecessary item on a whim last week, or fell for a politician’s story which later turned out to be completely false. Well, fuck it. We’re both half-stupid, life is infinitely complex and we’re trying to do the best we can. Let’s laugh it off and not take ourselves too seriously. We live in an environment that is so over-saturated in propaganda that short of living in a cave and shoving a stick up an opossum’s ass to grill it over an open fire, there’s no way to exist in the 21st century and not be influenced at least a little bit.

In a typical review this would be the section where I tell you all about how politicians use propaganda techniques to mold the minds of voters, how the mainstream media is bought and paid for, how corporations use marketing and PR departments to sway public opinion, etc. etc.

But today I’m not going to do that. This book is quite short and compared to something like The True Believer, it’s an easy read. If you’re interested in these topics then definitely pick up a copy, I think you’ll like what you get. If you have no intention of reading this book that’s fine too. I’ll just close out this review with a single parting thought.

The digital rails upon which propaganda flows are also the rails that deliver onto us an unlimited stream of cheap or free knowledge that was inaccessible for 99.99% of human history. The tools of our own free thinking and action are at hand, all we have to do is pick them up.

PS - There are 3 more quotes from Propaganda that didn’t fit into this review. You can read them here if you’d like.

Modern propaganda is a consistent, enduring effort to create or shape events to influence the relations of the public to an enterprise, idea or group. This practice of creating circumstances and of creating pictures in the minds of millions of persons is very common. Virtually no important undertaking is now carried on without it.