One of the intellectual pioneers of this ‘risk-free’ approach to democracy was Walter Lippmann, regarded as the most influential journalist and social critic of his time. Already a confidant of President Woodrow Wilson by the age of twenty-five, he was soon dubbed by Roosevelt ‘the most brilliant man of his age’.3 Lippmann called the practice of managing democracy ‘the manufacture of consent’.4 If Lippmann was the theoretician, then Edward Bernays was the hands-on practitioner. Today Bernays is widely regarded as the father of modern public relations (a term he coined) and, according to some, one of the most influential people of the twentieth century.
The ideas and strategies developed by these men were very much a product of their time. Towards the end of the First World War, they took part in creating the largest propaganda machine the world had ever seen. President Woodrow Wilson had been elected in 1916 on an anti-war platform: ‘Peace Without Victory’ was his slogan. Nevertheless, Wilson intended to go to war. The problem he faced was how to deal with the ardent anti-war sentiment in his country; many felt it was simply a ‘rich man’s war’ to recover Wall Street loans. Ewen describes the challenge Wilson faced: ‘Sensing that middle-class public opinion was volatile and that a revolt of the masses was possible, a number of noteworthy social analysts began to lobby President Wilson, calling for the establishment of an ideological apparatus that would systematically promote the cause of war.’5
One of these analysts was Walter Lippmann. With US involvement in the First World War less than a month away, he advised Wilson to create a government news bureau to make the case that this war would ‘make a world that is safe for democracy’. A week after entering the war, Wilson set up the Committee of Public Information (CPI), also known as the Creel Committee. It united the most prominent journalists, artists, advertisers, speakers and intellectuals in the United States with a single ambition: to saturate the perceptual environment with the message that the US had a moral obligation to join the war.
The results were impressive. George Creel, head of the Committee, declared that ‘The printed word, the spoken word, motion pictures, the telegraph, the wireless, posters, signboards, and every possible media should be used to drive home the justice of America’s cause.’6 In cinemas around the country, a group known as the Four Minute Men, comprising 75,000 individuals selected by the Committee for their status in the local community and their speaking talents, would stand up between screenings and deliver a rousing, apparently impromptu speech conveying the Committee’s central message. Billboards, slogans, adverts of all varieties – drawing on the talents of people who had previously promoted household products – were utilised across the nation. The public were fed fabricated stories of German atrocities and warned of German spies spreading doubts in the minds of the American people. They were asked to fulfil their patriotic duty by alerting the authorities to anyone who was against the war effort. Dissenters were whisked off to jail.
Thousands of ‘official war news’ press releases were sent to people through the mail. ‘Human-interest’ features were distributed to capture the attention of those who skipped over the news section of their paper. To target the immigrant population, contact was made with 600 foreign-language papers. The CPI also began publishing its own paper: the Official Bulletin had a circulation of 115,000 and targeted public officials, newspapers and other organisations equipped to disseminate information. Hollywood movies, whose plots had been written by the Committee, were soon being filmed by seasoned producers.7
Within a few months there was growing war hysteria and a keen hatred of the Germans. By shaping the perceptual environment, a tiny minority had changed the mind of a nation. This was thought-control on a massive scale. The CPI heralded a new age of propaganda (or ‘public relations’ as it came to be known). At the forefront of these developments were Lippmann and Bernays.
Implicit throughout their work is the idea that public consent is not attained through reasoned, honest discussion but through deception and manipulation. It is worth quoting at length from their writings to demonstrate just how conscious was this attempt to stage-manage democracy. It portrays a very different – and to most people, unfamiliar – conception of democracy, but, as we will see, their strategies and ideas have become commonplace. From think tanks to spin doctors, their legacy pervades our corporate and political life.
Bernays’ classic 1928 manual Propaganda begins by setting out his vision of a well-functioning democracy:
The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organised 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 molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.8
In a similar vein, Lippmann declared: ‘The creation of consent is not a new art. It is a very old one which was supposed to have died out with the appearance of democracy. But it has not died out. It has, in fact, improved enormously in technique . . .’.9 Harold Lasswell, an American political scientist and perhaps the first analyst of modern propaganda, would write soon after: ‘The modern world is busy developing a corps of men who do nothing but study the ways and means of changing minds or binding minds to their convictions . . . more can be won by illusion than coercion.’10
Lippman’s goal was to ensure the ruling elites could ‘live free of the trampling and the roar of the bewildered herd’. He believed the public must be ‘put in their place’, kept as ‘spectators’ not genuine participants. In order to keep the public in its place, it is necessary to censor the truth, to redact reality. ‘Without some form of censorship, propaganda in the strict sense of the word is impossible . . . Access to the real environment must be limited, before anyone can create a pseudo-environment that he thinks wise or desirable.’11
In order to do this, Bernays stressed the importance of an ongoing ‘scientific’ study of the public, a ‘survey of public desires and demands’.12 With enough data, a publicist can adjust propaganda ‘to the mentality of the masses’.13 What the public want or don’t want, desire or detest, fear or hope for can be tracked by focus groups, polls, surveys and market research. Armed with this information, Bernays thought it possible to stimulate the public’s fears and hopes to achieve a desired outcome. Symbols – be they a national flag, emotive concept or religious image – play a central role in this process. According to Lippmann, ‘The symbol in itself signifies literally no one thing in particular, but it can be associated with almost anything. And because of that it can become the common bond of common feelings, even though those feelings were originally attached to disparate ideas.’14 Used effectively, the symbol is ‘an instrument by which a few can fatten on many, deflect criticism, and seduce men into facing agony for objects they do not understand’.15 Not only must the ‘master of current symbols’ use the ‘pseudo-environment’ to unite disparate groups, he must, argued Bernays, also manufacture public events to direct public attention. These ‘stage-managed’ moments might include a carefully planned ‘spontaneous’ photo shoot, a well-worked ‘off-the-cuff’ sound bite, an orchestrated ‘public’ protest, or an apparently objective scientific report.
Lippmann repeatedly emphasises the potential for exploiting our limited capacity to make sense of an infinitely complex world. The ‘way in which the world is imagined determines at any particular moment what men will do’, he writes, but the ‘real environment is altogether too big, too complex, and too fleeting for direct acquaintance’. Before we act on the world, ‘we have to reconstruct it on a simpler model’ in symbolic form.16 How does a particular symbol take root in the mind of an individual? Lippmann claims that ‘It is planted there by another human being whom we recognize as authoritative. If it is planted deeply enough, it may be that later we shall call the person authoritative who waves that symbol at us.’