Flashback Friday – Mind Control Theories & Techniques Used By Mass Media

via: VigilantCitizen
by: VC
April 28, 2010

[Editor’s Note]

Flashback Friday articles mirrored in-part from other websites will be high-caliber missives not only because they contain extremely pertinent information for our times, but also because those seeking truth may not realize they are available.

[Editor’s Note]

Mass media is the most powerful tool used by the ruling class to manipulate the masses. It shapes and molds opinions and attitudes and defines what is normal and acceptable. This article looks at the workings of mass media through the theories of its major thinkers, its power structure and the techniques it uses, in order to understand its true role in society.

Image source deesillustration.com

Programming Through Mass Media

Mass media are media forms designed to reach the largest audience possible. They include television, movies, radio, newspapers, magazines, books, records, video games and the internet. Many studies have been conducted in the past century to measure the effects of mass media on the population in order to discover the best techniques to influence it. From those studies emerged the science of Communications, which is used in marketing, public relations and politics. Mass communication is a necessary tool to insure the functionality of a large democracy; it is also a necessary tool for a dictatorship. It all depends on its usage.

In the 1958 preface for A Brave New World, Aldous Huxley paints a rather grim portrait of society. He believes it is controlled by an “impersonal force”, a ruling elite, which manipulates the population using various methods.

“Impersonal forces over which we have almost no control seem to be pushing us all in the direction of the Brave New Worldian nightmare; and this impersonal pushing is being consciously accelerated by representatives of commercial and political organizations who have developed a number of new techniques for manipulating, in the interest of some minority, the thoughts and feelings of the masses.”
– Aldous Huxley, Preface to A Brave New World

His bleak outlook is not a simple hypothesis or a paranoid delusion. It is a documented fact, present in the world’s most important studies on mass media. Here are some of them:

Elite Thinkers

Walter Lippmann

Walter Lippmann, an American intellectual, writer and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner brought forth one of the first works concerning the usage of mass media in America. In Public Opinion (1922), Lippmann compared the masses to a “great beast” and a “bewildered herd” that needed to be guided by a governing class. He described the ruling elite as “a specialized class whose interests reach beyond the locality.” This class is composed of experts, specialists and bureaucrats. According to Lippmann, the experts, who often are referred to as “elites,” are to be a machinery of knowledge that circumvents the primary defect of democracy, the impossible ideal of the “omnicompetent citizen.” The trampling and roaring “bewildered herd” has its function: to be “the interested spectators of action,” i.e. not participants. Participation is the duty of “the responsible man”, which is not the regular citizen.

Mass media and propaganda are therefore tools that must be used by the elite to rule the public without physical coercion. One important concept presented by Lippmann is the “manufacture of consent”, which is, in short, the manipulation of public opinion to accept the elite’s agenda. It is Lippmann’s opinion that the general public is not qualified to reason and to decide on important issues. It is therefore important for the elite to decide “for its own good” and then sell those decisions to the masses.

“That the manufacture of consent is capable of great refinements no one, I think, denies. The process by which public opinions arise is certainly no less intricate than it has appeared in these pages, and the opportunities for manipulation open to anyone who understands the process are plain enough. . . . as a result of psychological research, coupled with the modern means of communication, the practice of democracy has turned a corner. A revolution is taking place, infinitely more significant than any shifting of economic power. . . . Under the impact of propaganda, not necessarily in the sinister meaning of the word alone, the old constants of our thinking have become variables. It is no longer possible, for example, to believe in the original dogma of democracy; that the knowledge needed for the management of human affairs comes up spontaneously from the human heart. Where we act on that theory we expose ourselves to self-deception, and to forms of persuasion that we cannot verify. It has been demonstrated that we cannot rely upon intuition, conscience, or the accidents of casual opinion if we are to deal with the world beyond our reach.”
–Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion

Continue Reading At: VigilantCitizen.com

Recommended Reading – Progaganda, By Edward Bernays

TheRedPillGuide
October 30, 2014

“Bernay’s honest and practical manual provides much insight into some of the most powerful and influential institutions of contemporary industrial state capitalist democracies.”
– Noam Chomsky

Propaganda is a tool widely used by those holding positions in many facets of society, from politicians, religious leaders, agents of the state to corporate brass.

Edward Bernays, who is considered “the father of public relations”, penned his magnum opus Propaganda originally published in 1928.

This particular piece of work is dynamic because this book details how the mass manipulation of the human subconscious can place.

In a world where the propaganda vice-grip has reached unfathomable levels, knowledge of the form in which this takes place is not only imperative, but an individual responsibility.

Although glossed over by many, propaganda in it’s many forms – news, tv shows, songs, radio stations, advertisements, magazines, and more – has become an undeniable part of our society structure.

Webbing the populace at will, this tool, and all its functions, have served to greatly increase the influence/power of most individuals and institutions spreading it.

As VigilantCitizen eloquently states:

“Bernay’s trailblazing marketing campaigns profoundly changed the functioning of American society. He basically created “consumerism” by creating a culture wherein Americans bought for pleasure instead of buying for survival. For this reason, he was considered by Life Magazine to be in the Top 100 most influential Americans of the 20th century.”¹

Propaganda, in it of itself, is not negative per se. However, if lies are embedded within the messages being shared, then this tool can have very nefarious and wide reaching consequences for entire populations.

The book’s strength lays in showcasing the methods being studied by Bernays nigh a century ago, and how those methods were or might be employed.

Simply stated, if one wishes to understand how the rulers of our time operate and how they use and extend part of their power, then Propaganda is for you.

Personally, this book should be mandatory for anyone’s education. Only by knowing what you face and how it is employed can one learn how to overcome it.

To sum up this work, it is best to leave you with this Orwellian quote by Bernays:

“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. …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…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”

― Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda

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Source

[1] http://vigilantcitizen.com/vigilantreport/mind-control-theories-and-techniques-used-by-mass-media/

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Other Suggested Reading

Mass Control – Engineering Human Consciousness by Jim Keith

Mass Scale Engineering Of Consent

“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. …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…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”

― Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda

Propaganda Book

Propaganda PDF

Click to access bernays.pdf