Propaganda

Propaganda (1928) is a plain-speaking and unashamed defense of the techniques of political and social manipulation. Far from being a dark art practiced by despots and dictators, Bernays suggests that propaganda instead plays an essential and necessary role in the life of modern democracies. Not everyone agrees, of course, but nearly 100 years later the enduring influence of Bernays’s arguments is reason enough to engage with them.

Edward Bernays was known to his contemporaries as the “father of public relations.” Born in 1891, he was a propagandist for the American government during the First World War. Drawing on the techniques he learned in those years, he developed a scientific theory of propaganda – the manipulation of public opinion by both commercial and political interests. By the time of his death in 1995, he’d become one of the most influential men in American public life.