"The handlingaware and intelligent,of opinions and the habits of the masses plays an important role in a democratic society, those who master this social device constitute an invisible power that truly directs the country.
We are largely governed by men of whom we know nothing but who are capable of shape our mentality, guide our tastes,suggest what to think».
He wrote like this way back 1928 Freud’s grandson, Edward Bernays, considered the founder of Public Relations and the ideologue of the current ones spin doctor. We can consider Bernays the "father" of the so-called "news wizards” as the journalist and writer Marcello Foa baptized them in his essay of the same name, that is, the father of those communication experts who manipulate public opinion to obtain consensus. Own Foa, now President of RAI, was a guest on Friday 11 January with me and my friend Marco Castelli of the Accademia Diciannove near the Space ONE to talk about fake news and media credibility.
Propaganda according to Edward Bernays
In his essay Propaganda, Bernays explained that in democratic systems the propaganda it is essential to "give shape to chaos": to prevent democracy from leading us to chaos and social paralysis, an “invisible government” manipulates, opinions, the habits and choices of citizens, leaving them theillusion of being free. The techniques used by those in power to shape public opinion were invented and developed gradually over the years, as society became more complex and the need for an invisible government proved increasingly necessary".
Bernays' lesson, in a nutshell, is that
today we prefer to combine repressive methods with“gentle” manipulationaimed at making citizens believe that they are free to choose when instead their decisions are oriented from above. No regime, but not even any democracy, it can sustain itself without the propaganda for which the mainstream media and entertainment in general act as a docile sounding board.
Invisible government and mass manipulation
With the advent of modern mass society, power has had to be exercised over an ever-increasing number of people.
The art of control has ended up becoming a science of Public Relations, Better, a "science of manipulation” which manages to influence behaviors and ways of being, sometimes without even having to use physical coercion (let's think about the phenomenon of spin doctors). It became invisible, permanent and capillary, and invests everyone in what the sociologist Marshall McLuhan called the "global village".
As anticipated, Bernays he was talking about «techniques used to frame public opinion» carried out by an “invisible government”.
Power today, to be more effective, in fact he prefers to remain "in the shadows", showing themselves as little as possible. A hidden power, It has the advantage of remaining practically unassailable. It can also favor one or another of the "visible powers" and even, if he deems it necessary, simultaneously favor two apparently opposing sides which will thus be able to, more or less unconsciously, pursue differently the only end to which this Power aims (the method of Divide and Conquer).
In the end, a hidden power (or in any case not immediately identifiable by most) it has the ability to do what no government or visible power can do all the way: manipulate mass feelings and mentality almost perfectly without giving the impression of doing so; control the people entering their imagination, that is, shaping minds, the consciences of individuals.
The fake news emergency: reality or exploitation?
It fits into this scenario the current battle mainstream against the so-calledfake news which seems to echo the work of Orwell's Miniver: that is, it is about a complex witch hunt aimed at repressing dissent. It exploits the issue of cyber bullying and the spread of hoaxes on the web to lead to the approval of censorship of the Internet, going so far as to hypothesize the introduction of the crime of opinion, a modern form of thought crime.
The aim is to continue to manipulate public opinion and in particular those who are considered "mere spectators", that is, that flock (us, the people) who must be oriented in their choices so that they do not wake up and above all that they do not express their thoughts in a free and critical way.
The controversy over fake news It therefore has the objective of creating certified information: only news with the "stamp" will be considered as such.All the others could even be expelled from the web and, under the pretext of fake news, social pages of uncomfortable thinkers or non-mainstream bloggers could be obscured, effectively introducing censorship.
We must therefore be aware that we are immersed in propaganda and that if we do not want to find ourselves in a dystopian society like those imagined by visionary essayists and novelists, we still have time to "wake up" and take back our future, knowing that freedom too, like the truth, requires constant commitment.
Source – https://unoeditori.com/manipolazione-governo-invisibile-e-propaganda-da-edward-bernays-ai-giorni-nostri/
