{"id":12785,"date":"2010-09-23T00:12:21","date_gmt":"2010-09-23T06:12:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oooorgle.com\/BeyondTheCorral\/?p=12785"},"modified":"2014-11-06T07:56:30","modified_gmt":"2014-11-06T14:56:30","slug":"flying-the-flag-faking-the-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oooorgle.com\/BeyondTheCorral\/flying-the-flag-faking-the-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Flying the Flag, Faking the News"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"JonPilger.com<\/a> | In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger traces the history of propaganda to Edward Bernays, the American nephew of Sigmund Freud, who invented the term “public relations”. Bernays believed in “engineering public consent” and creating “false realties” as news. Here are examples of how this works today.<\/p>\n

Edward Bernays, the American nephew of Sigmund Freud, is said to have invented modern propaganda. During the first world war, he was one of a group of influential liberals who mounted a secret government campaign to persuade reluctant Americans to send an army to the bloodbath in Europe. In his book, Propaganda, published in 1928, Bernays wrote that the \u201cintelligent manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses was an important element in democratic society\u201d and that the manipulators \u201cconstitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power in our country\u201d. Instead of propaganda, he coined the euphemism \u201cpublic relations\u201d.<\/p>\n

The American tobacco industry hired Bernays to convince women they should smoke in public. By associating smoking with women\u2019s liberation, he made cigarettes \u201ctorches of freedom\u201d. In 1954, he conjured a communist menace in Guatemala as an excuse for overthrowing the democratically-elected government, whose social reforms were threatening the United Fruit company\u2019s monopoly of the banana trade. He called it a \u201cliberation\u201d.<\/p>\n

Bernays was no rabid right-winger. He was an elitist liberal who believed that \u201cengineering public consent\u201d was for the greater good. This was achieved by the creation of \u201cfalse realities\u201d which then became \u201cnews events\u201d. Here are examples of how it is done these days:<\/p>\n

False reality<\/strong> The last US combat troops have left Iraq \u201cas promised, on schedule\u201d, according to President Barack Obama. TV screens have filled with cinematic images of the \u201clast US soldiers\u201d silhouetted against the dawn light, crossing the border into Kuwait.<\/p>\n

Fact <\/strong>They are still there. At least 50,000 troops will continue to operate from 94 bases. American air assaults are unchanged, as are special forces\u2019 assassinations. The number of \u201cmilitary contractors\u201d is currently 100,000 and rising. Most Iraqi oil is now under direct foreign control.<\/p>\n

False reality<\/strong> BBC presenters and reporters have described the departing US troops as a \u201csort of victorious army\u201d that has achieved \u201ca remarkable change in [Iraq\u2019s] fortunes\u201d. Their commander, General David Petraeus, is a \u201ccelebrity\u201d, \u201ccharming\u201d, \u201csavvy\u201d and \u201cremarkable\u201d.<\/p>\n

Fact <\/strong>There is no victory of any sort. There is a catastrophic disaster; and attempts to present it as otherwise are a model of Bernays\u2019 campaign to \u201cre-brand\u201d the slaughter of the first world war as \u201cnecessary\u201d and \u201cnoble\u201d. In 1980, Ronald Reagan, running for president, re-branded the invasion of Vietnam, in which up to three million people died, as a \u201cnoble cause\u201d, a theme taken up enthusiastically by Hollywood. Today\u2019s Iraq war movies have a similar purging theme: the invader as both idealist and victim. Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

JonPilger.com | In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger traces the history of propaganda to Edward Bernays, the American nephew of Sigmund Freud, who invented the term “public relations”. Bernays believed in “engineering public consent” and creating “false realties” as news. Here are examples of how this works today. Edward Bernays, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[294],"tags":[505,16,504],"class_list":["post-12785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article","tag-bernays","tag-false-flag","tag-public-relations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oooorgle.com\/BeyondTheCorral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oooorgle.com\/BeyondTheCorral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oooorgle.com\/BeyondTheCorral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oooorgle.com\/BeyondTheCorral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oooorgle.com\/BeyondTheCorral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12785"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/oooorgle.com\/BeyondTheCorral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12785\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oooorgle.com\/BeyondTheCorral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oooorgle.com\/BeyondTheCorral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oooorgle.com\/BeyondTheCorral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}