Bernays

 

Transcripción

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a hundred years ago a new theory about human nature was put forward by sigmund freud

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he had discovered he said primitive sexual and aggressive forces hidden deep inside the minds of all human beings

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forces which have not controlled led individuals and societies to chaos and destruction

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this series is about how those in power have used freud's theories to try and control the dangerous crowd in an age of

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mass democracy

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at the heart of the story is not just sigmund freud but other members of the freud family

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this episode is about freud's american nephew edward bernays bernays is almost completely unknown

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today but his influence on the 20th century was nearly as great as his uncles

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because bernays was the first person to take freud's ideas about human beings and use them to manipulate the masses

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he showed american corporations for the first time how they could make people want things they didn't need by linking

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mass-produced goods to their unconscious desires out of this would come a new political

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idea of how to control the masses by satisfying people's inner selfish

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desires one made them happy and thus docile it was the start of the all-consuming

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self which has come to dominate our world today

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freud's ideas about how the human mind works have now become an accepted part of society

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as have psychoanalysts every year the psychotherapist ball is held in a grand palace in vienna

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this is the psychotherapy board psychotherapists come some advanced

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patients come or former patients come and

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many other people friends but also

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people from the viennese society who like to go to a nice elegant comfortable

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boy but it was not always so

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a hundred years ago freud's ideas were hated by viennese society at that time vienna was the center of a

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vast empire ruling central europe and to the powerful nobility of the

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habsburg court freud's ideas were not only embarrassing but the very idea of examining and

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analyzing one's inner feelings was a threat to their absolute control

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you see at that time these people had the power and of course you just were not allowed to show your bloody feelings

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i mean you just couldn't you know i mean you couldn't if you were unhappy can you imagine you for instance you sit

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somewhere in the country in a castle you are deeply unhappy you are a woman you couldn't go to your mate and cry on her

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shoulder so you couldn't go into the village and and complain you know about your feelings i mean you couldn't

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it was like selling yourself to somebody you just couldn't you know

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because they had to respect you now of course freud you see put that

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thought very much into question because you you see to examine yourself you

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would have to to put a lot of other things into question your society

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everything but surrounds you and that wasn't a good thing at that time why not

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because your self-created empire to a certain extent would have fallen into pits much earlier

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already but what frightened the rulers of the empire even more was freud's idea that

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hidden inside all human beings were dangerous instinctual drives

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freud had devised a method he called psychoanalysis by analyzing dreams and free association

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he had unearthed he said powerful sexual and aggressive forces which were the remnants of our animal past

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feelings we repressed because they were too dangerous troy devised a method for exploring a

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hidden part of the mind which we nowadays call the unconscious which support that is totally unknown to

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our consciousness that there exists a barrier in all our minds which prevents these

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hidden and unwelcome impulses of the unconscious from emerging

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good night

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in 1914 the austro-hungarian empire led europe into war

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as the horror mounted freud saw it as terrible evidence of the truth of his findings

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the saddest thing he wrote is that this is exactly the way we should have expected people to behave from our

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knowledge of psychoanalysis governments had unleashed the primitive forces in human beings

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and no one seemed to know how to stop them

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at that time freud's young nephew edward bernays was working as a press agent in

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america his main client was the world famous opera singer caruso who was touring the

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united states

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bernard's parents had emigrated to america 20 years before but he kept in touch with his uncle and

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joined him for holidays in the alps the bernays was now about to return to

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europe for a very different reason on the night that caruso opened in toledo ohio

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america announced it was entering the war against germany and austria

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as a part of the war effort the u.s government set up a committee on public information and bernays was employed to promote

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america's war aims in the press the president woodrow wilson had

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announced that the united states would fight not to restore the old empires but to bring democracy to all of europe

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bernays proved extremely skillful in promoting this idea both at home and abroad

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and at the end of the war he was asked to accompany the president to the paris peace

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to my conference they asked me to go over with woodrow wilson to the peace conference

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and at the age of 1926 i was in paris

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for the entire time of the peace conference that was held in the suburb of paris and

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we worked to make the world safer democracy that was a big slogan

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wilson's reception in paris astounded bernays and the other american propagandists

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their propaganda had portrayed wilson as a liberator of the people a man who would create a new world in

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which the individual would be free they had made him a hero of the masses

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and as he watched the crowd surge around wilson bernays began to wonder whether it would

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be possible to do the same type of mass persuasion but in peacetime

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when i came back to the united states i decided

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that if you could use propaganda for war you could certainly use it for peace

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and propaganda they got to be a bad word because of the germans

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using it so what i did was to try to find some other words

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so we found a way to counsel on public relations

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bernays returned to new york and set up as a public relations council in a small

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office off-broadway it was the first time the term had ever been used

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since the end of the 19th century america had become a mass industrial society with millions clustered together

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in the cities bernays was determined to find a way to manage and alter the way these new

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crowds thought and felt to do this he turned to the writings of his uncle sigmund

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while in paris berners had sent his uncle a gift of some havana cigars

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in return freud has sent him a copy of his general introduction to psychoanalysis

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bernie's reddit and the picture of hidden irrational forces inside human beings fascinated him

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he wondered whether he might make money by manipulating the unconscious

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what eddie got from freud was indeed this idea that there is a lot more going

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on in human decision making not only among individuals but even more importantly among groups

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than this idea that information drives behavior and so eddie began to formulate this

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idea that you had to look at things that would play to people's irrational emotions and you see that moved eddie

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immediately into a different category from other people in his field and most government officials and managers of the

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day who thought if you just hit people with all this factual information they would look at that and say oh of course

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and eddie knew that was not the way the world worked

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bernie bernays set out to experiment with the minds of the popular classes his most dramatic experiment was to

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persuade women to smoke at that time there was a taboo against women smoking and one of his early

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clients george hill the president of the american tobacco corporation asked bernays to find a way of breaking

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it he said we're losing half of our market because

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men have invoked a taboo against women smoking in public

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can you do anything about that i said let me think about it and then i said about your permission to

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see a psychoanalyst to find out what cigarettes mean to women

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you said what'll it cost so i called up dr brill

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a.a braille who was a leading psychoanalyst in new york at that time how come you

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didn't call your uncle why didn't you call your uncle because he was in vienna

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a.a bruhl was one of the first psychoanalysts in america and for a large fee he told bernays that

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cigarettes were a symbol of the penis and of male sexual power he told bernays if he could find a way

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to connect cigarettes with the idea of challenging male power then women would smoke because then they

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would have their own penises

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every year new york held an easter day parade to which thousands came and bernays decided to stage an event

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though he persuaded a group of rich debutants to hide cigarettes under their clothes

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then they should join the parade and as a given signal from him they were to light up the cigarettes

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dramatically bernays then informed the press that he had heard that a group of suffragettes

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were preparing to protest by lighting up what they called torches of freedom he knew this would be an outcry and he

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knew that all of the photographers would be there to capture this moment and so

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he was ready with a phrase which was torches of freedom and so here

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you have a symbol women young women debutants smoking a cigarette in public

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with a phrase that means anybody who believes in this kind of equality pretty much has to support them in the ensuing

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debate about this because torches of freedom

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i mean what's on all american coins it's liberty she's holding up the torch you

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see and so all of this is there together there's emotion there's memory there's a

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rational phrase even though it's using a lot of emotional elements it's a it's a phrase that works in a rational

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sense all of this is together and so the next day this was not just in

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all of the new york papers it was across the united states and around the world and from that point

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forward the sale of cigarettes to women began to rise he had made them socially

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acceptable with a single symbolic act

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what bernays had created was the idea that if a woman smoked it made her more powerful and independent

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an idea that still persists today embrace me

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my sweet brave it made him realize that it was possible to persuade people to behave

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irrationally if you link products to their emotional desires and feelings

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the idea that smoking actually made women freer was completely irrational but it made them feel more independent

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it meant that irrelevant objects could become powerful emotional symbols of how you wanted to be seen by others

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eddie bernays saw the way to sell product was not to sell it to your

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intellect that you ought to buy an automobile but that you will feel

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better about it if you have this automobile i think he originated that idea that they weren't just purchasing

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something but they were engaging themselves emotionally or personally in

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in their product or service it's not you you think you need a new piece of clothing but you'll feel

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better with the piece of clothing that was his contribution in a very real sense we see it all over the place today

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but i think he originated the idea of the emotional connect to a product or service

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what bernays was doing fascinated america's corporations they had come out of the war rich and

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powerful but they had a growing worry the system of mass production had flourished during the war

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and now millions of goods were pouring off production lines what they were frightened of was the

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danger of overproduction that there would come a point when people had enough goods and would simply

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stop by up until that point the majority of

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products were still sold to the masses on the basis of need

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while the rich had long been used to luxury goods for the millions of working-class americans most products were still

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advertised as necessities goods like shoes stockings even cars

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were promoted in functional terms for their durability

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the aim of the advertisements was simply to show people the products practical virtues nothing more

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what the corporations realized they had to do was transform the way the majority of americans thought about products

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one leading wall street banker paul mazer of lehman brothers was clear about what was necessary

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we must shift america he wrote from a needs to a desires culture

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people must be trained to desire to want new things even before the old have been entirely consumed

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we must shape a new mentality in america man's desires must overshadow his needs

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prior to that time there was no american consumer there was the american worker and there was american owner and they

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manufactured and they saved and they ate what they had to when the people shopped

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for what they needed and while the very rich may have bought things they didn't need most people did not

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and mazer envisioned a break with that where you would have things that you didn't actually need but you wanted

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as opposed to needed and the man who would be at the center of changing that mentality for the corporations was edward bernays bernays

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really is the guy within the united states more than anybody else who sort of brings to the table

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psychological theory as something that is an essential part

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of how from the corporate side of how we are going to appeal to the masses

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effectively and the whole sort of merchandising establishment and sales and sales establishment is ready for

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sigmund freud i mean they are ready for understanding what motivates the human

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mind and so that there's this real openness to bernays's techniques being used to

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sell products to the masses beginning in the early twenties the new york banks funded the creation of chains

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of department stores across america they were to be the outlets for the mass-produced goods and bernais's job

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was to produce the new type of customer bernays began to create many of the

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techniques of mass consumer persuasion that we now live with he was employed by william randolph

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hearst to promote his new women's magazines and bernays glamorized them by placing

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articles and advertisements that link products made by others of his clients to famous film stars like clara beau

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who was also his client bernays also began the practice of product placement in the movies

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and he dressed the stars of the film's premieres with clothes and jewelry from other phones he represented

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he was he claimed the first person to tell car companies they could sell cars as symbols of male sexuality

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he employed psychologists to issue reports that said products were good for you and then pretended they were

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independent studies he organized fashion shows and department stores and paid celebrities

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to repeat the new and essential message he bought things not just for need but to express your inner sense of yourself

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to others there's a psychology of dress have you

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ever thought about it how it can express your character you all have interesting characters but

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some of them are all hidden i wonder why you all want to dress always the same with the same hats and

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the same cults i'm sure all of you were interesting and have wonderful things

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about you but looking at you in the street you all look so much the same

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and that's why i'm talking to you about the psychology of dress try and express yourselves better in

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your dress bring out certain things that you think

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are hidden i wonder if you thought of this angle of your personality

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i'd like to ask you some questions why do you like short skates oh because

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there's more to see what what good does that do

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it makes you more attractive

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in 1927 an american journalist wrote a change has come over our democracy

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it is called consumptionism the american citizens first importance to his country

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is now no longer that a citizen but that of consumer

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the growing wave of consumerism helped in turn to create a stock market boom

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and yet again edward bernays became involved promoting the novel idea that ordinary

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people should buy shares borrowing money from banks he also represented

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and yet again millions followed his advice he was uniquely knowledgeable about how

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people in large numbers are going to react to products and ideas and so on

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but in term in political terms if he were to go out so i can't imagine that he'd get three people to stand and

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listen wasn't particularly articulate was a kind of funny looking and didn't

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have any sense of reaching out for people one-on-one none at all

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he didn't talk about didn't think about people in groups of one thought about people in groups of

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thousands

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hello bernays soon became famous as the man who understood the mind of the crowd

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and in 1924 the president contacted him president coolidge was a quiet taciturn

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man and had become a national joke the press portrayed him as a dull humorless figure

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bernays solution was to do exactly the same as he had done with products he persuaded 34 famous film stars to

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visit the white house and for the first time politics became involved with public relations

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and i lined up these 34 people and

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i'd say what's your name you say al jolson i'd say mr president al jobson

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next state every newspaper in the united states

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had a front page story president coolidge

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entertains actors at white house and the times had a headline

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which said president nearly laughed

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and everybody was happy

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but while bernays became rich and powerful in america in vienna his uncle was facing disaster

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like much of europe vienna was suffering an economic crisis and massive inflation which wiped out all of freud's savings

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facing bankruptcy he wrote to his nephew for help bernays responded by arranging for

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freud's works to be published for the first time in america and began to send his uncle precious

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dollars which freud kept secretly in a foreign bank account

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he was freud's agent if you will to get his books published well of course once the books were being published and he

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couldn't help himself but promote these books see that everybody read them

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make them controversial emphasize the fact that do you know what freud says about sex and what he says

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cigarettes are a symbol of and so on and so forth how do you suppose all those stories got out certainly the academics

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weren't spreading these around the country eddie bernays was then when freud became accepted well

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then of course to go to a client say well uncle ciggy see then that had some cachet but notice there first eddie

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created uncle sigie in the u.s made him acceptable secondly and thirdly

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then capitalized on uncle sigie typical bernay's performance

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bernays also suggested that freud promote himself in the united states he proposed his uncle write an article

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for cosmopolitan a magazine that bernays represented entitled a woman's mental

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place in the home freud was furious such an idea he said was unthinkable it was vulgar and anyway

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he hated america freud was now becoming increasingly

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pessimistic about human beings in the mid-twenties he retreated in the summers to the alps

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sometimes staying in an old hotel the partial moritz in bectus garden it is now ruin

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freud began to write about group behavior about how easily the unconscious aggressive forces in human beings could

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be triggered when they were in crowds freud believed he had underestimated the

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aggressive instincts in human beings they were far more dangerous than he had originally thought

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after world war one ford was a basically a pessimist

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he felt that man is an impossible creature

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a very very sadistic and bad

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species and did not believe that man can be

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improved man is ferocious animal the most ferocious

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animal they exist they enjoy torturing and

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killing and he didn't like men

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the publication of freud's works in america had an extraordinary effect on journalists and intellectuals in the

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1920s what fascinated and frightened them was the picture freud painted of submerged

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dangerous forces lurking just under the surface of modern society

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forces that could erupt easily to produce the frenzied mob which had the power to destroy even governments

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it was this they believed had happened in russia to many this meant that one of the

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guiding principles of mass democracy was wrong the belief that human beings could be

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trusted to make decisions on a rational basis the leading political writer walter

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lippman argued that if human beings were in reality driven by unconscious irrational forces then it was necessary

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to rethink democracy what was needed was a new elite who

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could manage what he called the bewildered herd this would be done through psychological

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techniques that would control the unconscious feelings of the masses

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so here you have walter whitman probably the most influential political thinker in the united states who is essentially

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saying that the basic mechanism of the mass mind is unreason is irrationality

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is animality he believes that the mob in the street which is how he sees ordinary people are

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people who were driven not by their minds but by their spinal cords the notion of kind of animal drives

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unconscious instinctual drives lurking beneath the surface of civilization and

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so they started looking towards psychological science as a way of understanding the mechanisms

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by which the popular mind works specifically with the goal

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of figuring out how to understand how to apply those mechanism to strategies for

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social control edward bernays was fascinated by lipman's arguments

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and also saw a way to promote himself by using them

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in the 1920s he began to write a series of books which argued that he had developed the very techniques lippmann

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was calling for by stimulating people's inner desires and then seating them with consumer

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products he was creating a new way to manage the irrational force of the masses

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he called it the engineering of consent democracy to my father was a wonderful

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concept but i don't think he felt that all those publics out there would had reliable

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judgment uh and that that they could that they very easily might

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vote for the wrong man or want the wrong thing so that they had to be guided from above

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uh it's enlightened despotism in a sense

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you appeal to their desires and their unrecognized longings that sort of thing

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that you can tap into their deepest desires or their deepest fears

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and use that to your own purposes and then in 1928 a president came to

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power who agreed with bernays president hoover was the first politician to articulate the idea that

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consumerism had become the central motor of american life after his election he told a group of

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advertisers and public relations men you have taken over the job of creating

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desire and have transformed people into constantly moving happiness machines

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machines which have become the key to economic progress

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what was beginning to emerge in the 1920s was a new idea of how to run mass

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democracy at its heart was the consuming self

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which not only made the economy work but was happy and docile and so created a stable society

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both bernays and littmann's concept of managing the masses takes the idea of

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democracy and it turns it into a palliative it turns it into

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giving people some kind of feel-good medication that will respond to an immediate pain

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or immediate yearning but will not alter the objective circumstances one iota

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i mean democracy really the idea of democracy at its heart was about changing the

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relations of power that had governed the world for so long and bernay's concept of democracy was

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one of maintaining the relations of power even if it meant that one needed to sort of stimulate the psychological

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lives of the public and in fact in his mind that was what was necessary

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that if you can keep stimulating the irrational self then leadership can

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basically go on doing what it wants to do bernays now became one of the central

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figures in a business elite that dominated american society and politics in the 1920s

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he also became extremely rich and lived in a suite of rooms in one of new york's most expensive hotels

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where he gave frequent parties oh my goodness he had a home in the corner suite of the sherry netherland

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hotel and here's this wonderful suite with all these windows looking out on central park and across at the plaza and

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on the square and he would use this place to hold a soiree

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the mayor would come all the media leaders would come the political leaders the business leaders the people in the

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arts i mean it was a who's who people wanted to know eddie bernays because you

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know he himself became a sort of a famous man a sort of a magician who could make these things

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happen he knows everybody he knows the mayor and he knows the senator and he calls politicians on the

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telephone as if he did get a literally a high or a bang

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out of doing what he did and that's fine but it

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it can be a little hard on the people around you especially when you make other people

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feel stupid people who work for him were stupid and children were stupid and

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if people did things in a way that he didn't that he wouldn't have done them they

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were stupid that was it was a word that he used over and over and over dope and stupid

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on the message they were stupid

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but bernays power was about to be destroyed dramatically and by a type of human irrationality he

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could do nothing to control at the end of october 1929 bernays

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organized a huge national event to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the invention of the light bulb

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president hoover the leaders of major corporations and bankers like john d rockefeller were all summoned by bernays

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to celebrate the power of american business but even as they gathered news came

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through that shares on the new york stock exchange were beginning to fall catastrophically

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throughout the 1920s speculators had borrowed billions of dollars the banks had promoted the idea that

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this was a new era where market crashes were a thing of the past but they were wrong what was about to

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happen was the biggest stock market crash in history investors had panicked and begun to sell

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in a blind relentless fury that no reassurance by bankers or politicians could halt

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and on the 29th of october 1929 the market collapsed

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the effect of the crash on the american economy was disastrous faced with recession and unemployment

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millions of american workers stopped buying goods they didn't need the consumer boom that bernie's had done

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so much to engineer disappeared and he and the profession of public relations fell from favor

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bernays brief moment of power seemed to be over

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the effects of the wall street crash on europe was also catastrophic it intensified the growing economic and

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political crisis in the new democracies in both germany and austria there were

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violent street battles between the armed wings of different political parties

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against this backdrop freud who is suffering from cancer of the jaw retreated yet again to the alps

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he wrote a book called civilization and its discontents it was a powerful attack on the idea

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that civilization was an expression of human progress

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instead freud argued civilization had actually been constructed to control the

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dangerous animal forces inside human beings what was implicit in freud's argument

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was that the ideal of individual freedom which was at the heart of democracy was impossible

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human beings could never be allowed to truly express themselves because it was too dangerous

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they must always be controlled and would thus always be discontent

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man doesn't want to be civilized and he is our civilization

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brings discontent but it's necessary to survive otherwise he couldn't survive so he must

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be discontent because this would be the only way to keep him within limits

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but what did freud think about the idea of the equality of man

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he didn't believe in it we had 32 parties and he was it before

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those parties don't vanish there is no germany that's true you can't have 32 parties and so they

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felt this one person will put an end to this

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comedy freud was not alone in his pessimism politicians like adolf hitler emerged

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from a growing despair in the 1920s about democracy the nazis were convinced that democracy

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was dangerous because it unleashed a selfish individualism but didn't have the means to control it

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hitler's party the national socialists stood in elections promising in their propaganda they would abandon democracy

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because of the chaos and unemployment it led to

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in march 1933 the national socialists were elected to power in germany and they set out to create a society

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that would control human beings in a different way one of their first acts was to take

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control of business the planning of production would in future be done by the state

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the free market was too unstable as the crash in america had proved

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workers leisure time was also planned by the state through a new organization called strength through joy

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one of its mottos was service not self

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but the nazis did not see this as a return to an old form of autocratic control

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it was a new alternative to democracy in which the feelings and the desires of the masses would still be central but

38:46

they would be channeled in such a way as to bind the nation together the chief expose of this was joseph

38:52

goebbels the minister of propaganda as mark futsein

39:13

organized huge rallies his function he said was to forge the mind of the nation into a unity of thinking feeling and

39:19

desire one of his inspirations he told an american journalist was the writings of

39:25

freud's nephew edward bernays in his work on crown psychology freud

39:32

described how the frightening irrationality inside human beings could emerge in such groups

39:38

the deep what he called libidinal forces of desire are given up to the leader

39:43

while the aggressive instincts are unleashed on those outside the group freud wrote this as a warning

39:50

but the nazis were deliberately encouraging these forces because they believed they could master

40:12

they love each other and delegates with their ideas and the things through

40:19

the chat on top

40:32

it is outside

40:48

hope

40:59

i could see from afar looking up williamsport towards linden

41:05

those hundred thousand of people when they passed hitler

41:10

they just became completely delirious they began to shout

41:16

these tries i will never get out of my ear i will see time

41:25

and here i got confirmation how are those irrational forces

41:31

uncontrollable forces in germany in the drones had erupted had broken out we are

41:39

running right where the punt marching marching on

42:03

and in america too democracy was under threat from the force of the angry mob

42:09

the effect of the stock market crash had been disastrous there was growing violence as an angry

42:15

population took out their frustration on the corporations who were seen to have caused this disaster

42:22

then in 1932 a new president was elected who was also going to use the power of

42:27

the state to control the free market but his aim was not to destroy democracy

42:33

but to strengthen it and to do this he was going to develop a new way of dealing with the masses

42:41

i am prepared under my constitutional duty to recommend the measures that a

42:46

stricken nation in the midst of a stricken world may require but in the event that the national

42:53

emergency is still critical i shall not evade the clear course of

42:58

duty that will then confront me i shall ask the congress for the one

43:04

remaining instrument to meet the crisis broad

43:09

executive power

43:16

it was the start of what would become known as the new deal roosevelt assembled a group of young

43:21

technocrats and planners in washington he told them that their job was to plan

43:26

and run giant new industrial projects for the good of the nation roosevelt was convinced the stock market

43:33

crash had shown that laser fair capitalism could no longer run modern industrial economies

43:39

it had become the job of government big business was horrified

43:45

but the new deal attracted the admiration of the nazis especially joseph goebbels

44:34

but although roosevelt liked the nazis was trying to organize society in a different way

44:39

unlike the nazis he believed that human beings were rational and could be trusted to take an active part in

44:45

government roosevelt believed it was possible to explain his policies to ordinary

44:51

americans and take into account their opinions to do this he was helped by the new

44:56

ideas of an american social scientist called george gallup

45:02

favorite reading of new deal washington the survey of u.s public opinion from offices at princeton new jersey a

45:08

famed statistician dr george gallup tells washington from week to week what the nation is thinking

45:16

and in new york fortune magazine's analyst elmo roper compiles for publication a continuous record of the

45:22

nation's approval or disapproval of how the country is being run gallup and roper rejected bernays view

45:29

that human beings were at the mercy of unconscious forces and so needed to be controlled

45:35

their system of opinion polling was based on the idea that people could be trusted to know what they wanted

45:42

they argued that one could measure and predict the opinions and behavior of the public if one asked strictly factual

45:48

questions and avoided manipulating their emotions

45:54

well how about this one do you think franklin d roosevelt's new deal has been bad for the nation in

46:00

general no that question is loaded it automatically suggests an answer

46:06

well how about this is your present feeling toward preston roosevelt

46:11

one of general approval or general disapproval that's better

46:18

prior to scientific polling the view of many people was that

46:23

you couldn't trust public opinion it was irrational that it was ill-informed chaotic unruly

46:30

and so forth and and so that opinion should be dismissed but with scientific polling

46:37

i think it established very clearly that people do are rational that they do make

46:43

good decisions and this offers democracy a chance to be truly informed by the

46:48

public giving everybody a voice in the way the country is run

46:53

i know my father wouldn't necessarily say the voice of the public is the voice of god but he he did feel very much that

46:58

the voice of the of the people is is a rational voice and should be heard

47:05

what roosevelt was doing was forging a new connection between the masses and politicians

47:10

no longer were they irrational consumers who were managed by stating their desires instead they were sensible citizens who

47:17

could take part in the governing of the country in 1936 roosevelt stood for re-election

47:24

he promised further control over big business to the corporations it was the beginning of a dictatorship

47:34

roosevelt interferes with private enterprise and is running the country into debt for generations to come

47:42

the way to get recovery is to let business alone but roosevelt was triumphantly

47:47

re-elected my friends like a real landslide this time

47:55

so please let me let me thank you again and tell you that i hope to see you all

48:01

very soon and visual an affectionate good faced with this business now decided to

48:07

fight back to regain power in america at the heart of the battle would be

48:13

edward bernays and the profession he had invented public relations

48:20

following that election business people start to get together

48:26

and start to carry on discussions primarily in private and they start talking to each other about the need to

48:32

sort of carry on um ideological warfare against the new deal and to sort of reassert the sort of

48:40

connectedness between the idea of democracy on the one hand and the idea of privately owned business on the other

48:48

and so under the umbrella of an organization which still exists which is called the national association of

48:54

manufacturers and whose membership included all of the major corporations of the united states

49:01

a campaign is launched explicitly designed to create emotional attachments

49:07

between the public and big business it's bernays techniques being used on a

49:13

grand scale i mean totally

49:21

the general motors parade of progress traveling the high roads and by roads of

49:26

america bringing to millions of americans in their own hometown the fascinating story behind modern

49:33

industry the campaign set out to show dramatically that it was business not

49:38

politicians who had created modern america better mode of living for all of us

49:47

bernays was an adviser to general motors but he was no longer alone the industry he had founded now

49:53

flourished as hundreds of public relations advisors organized a vast campaign

49:59

they not only used advertisements and billboards but managed to insinuate their message into the editorial pages

50:04

of the newspapers it became a bitter fight

50:10

in response to the campaign the government made films that warned of the unscrupulous manipulation of the press

50:16

by big business and the central villain was the new figure of the public relations man

50:25

they tried to achieve their ends by working entirely behind the scenes corrupting and deceiving the public

50:31

the aims of such groups may be either good or bad so far as the public interest is concerned but their methods

50:38

are a grave danger to democratic institutions the films also showed how the

50:43

responsible citizen could monitor the press themselves they could create a chart that analyzed

50:49

the reporting for signs of hidden bias but such earnest instruction was to be

50:56

no match for the powerful imagination of edward bernays he was about to help create a vision of the utopia that free

51:03

market capitalism would build in america if it was unleashed

51:15

in 1939 new york hosted the world's fair edward bernays was a central advisor

51:22

he insisted that the theme be the link between democracy and american business

51:33

at the heart of the fair was a giant white dome that bernie's named democracy

51:42

and the central exhibit was a vast working model of america's future constructed by the general motors

51:48

corporation to my father the world's fair was an opportunity

51:54

to keep the status quo that is capitalism

52:00

in a democracy democracy and capitalism that marriage

52:05

right linking like just like that he did that by manipulating people and

52:12

getting them to think that you couldn't have real democracy in

52:18

anything but a capitalist society which was capable of doing anything of

52:25

creating these wonderful highways of of making you know moving pictures inside

52:32

everybody's house of of telephones that didn't need cords of

52:37

sleek roadsters i mean it was if they were it was it was it was consumerist

52:43

but at the same time you inferred that in a funny way democracy and capitalism

52:49

went together the world's fair was an extraordinary success and captured america's

52:56

imagination the vision it portrayed was of a new form of democracy

53:01

in which business responded to people's innermost desires in a way politicians could never do

53:09

but it was a form of democracy that depended on treating people not as active citizens as roosevelt did

53:15

but as passive consumers because this bernie's believed was the key to control in a mass democracy

53:24

it's not that the people are in charge but that the people's desires are in charge

53:30

the people are not in charge the people exercise no decision-making power within this environment

53:36

so democracy is reduced from something which assumes an active citizenry to the

53:43

idea of the public as passive consumers

53:49

driven primarily by instinctual or unconscious desires and that if you can

53:54

in fact trigger those needs and desires you can get what you want from them

54:02

but this struggle between the two views of human beings as to whether they were rational or irrational was about to be

54:08

dramatically affected by events in europe events that would also change the

54:14

fortunes of the freud family

54:19

in march 1938 the nazis annexed austria it was called the angelus

54:25

hitler arrived in vienna to an extraordinary outpouring of mass adulation but even as he drove through the city

54:31

behind the scenes the nazis were systematically whipping up and unleashing the hatred of the crowd

54:38

against the enemies of the new greater germany the answers was a kind of explosion of

54:45

terrible hatred against the enemies so-called enemies or whatever they considered enemies

54:51

against the jews in in totally

54:56

and also against a lot of ladies asians who had opposed the nazis in austria

55:04

they said it's legitimate now you can do what you want so they did it stealing robbing and killing i can't say it

55:11

otherwise and human depravity of course is uh always very near to to normal behavior

55:20

it can change very quickly

55:31

as the violence and assassinations raged in vienna freud decided he had to leave

55:37

his aim was to go to britain but he knew that britain like many countries was refusing entry to most jewish refugees

55:46

but help came from the leading psychoanalyst in britain ernest jones he was in the same ice skating club as

55:52

the home secretary sir samuel hall and jones persuaded hor to issue freud a

55:58

british work permit and in may 1938 freud his daughter anna

56:05

and other members of his family set off for london

56:16

freud arrived in london as britain was preparing for war and he settled with his daughter anna in a house in

56:22

hampstead but freud's cancer was now far advanced and in september 1939 just three weeks

56:29

after the outbreak of war he died

56:38

the second world war would utterly transform the way government saw democracy and the people they governed

56:46

next week's program will show how the american government as a result of the war became convinced there were savage

56:53

dangerous forces hidden inside all human beings forces that needed to be controlled

57:00

the terrible evidence from the death camps seemed to show what happened when these forces were unleashed

57:07

and politicians and planners in post-war america would come to believe that hidden under the surface of their own

57:12

population were the same dangerous forces

57:18

and they would turn to the freud family to help control this enemy within

57:29

and ever adaptable edward bernays would work not just for the american government but the cia

57:38

and sigmund freud's daughter anna would also become powerful in the united states because she believed that people could

57:44

be taught to control the irrational forces within them out of this would come vast government

57:50

programs to manage the inner psychological life of the masses

58:37

you