“Edward Bernays is inside your mind”

Edward Bernays, the father of modern public relations, wrote several books on how to manipulate the masses into believing, well, pretty much anything. He promoted the use of the phrase “public relations” rather than the negative sounding “propaganda”. They essentially mean the same thing: organize public consensus on issues ranging from what to eat for breakfast to going to war.

Here are the three Bernays works mentioned in the clip, for further reading:

Engineering Consent – how to organize social consensus around a particular issue

Crystallizing Public Opinion – A look at the future of PR, and what firms can do for clients. Joseph Goebbels was a fan, incidentally…

Propaganda – The tactics, techniques, motivations and consequences of Bernays PR campaigns. His most well known work, and you can read it here:
http://www.whale.to/b/bernays.pdf