Propaganda: The Life and Works of Edward Bernays and Why His Story Matters Now More Than Ever

The life and works of Edward Bernays – memorialized in Larry Tye’s excellent biography as “The father of spin” – have lessons to teach us which today are more relevant than ever.

Born in New York City 22 November 1891, Edward Bernays was the scion of a wealthy grain merchant, and the nephew of Sigmund Freud. Throughout his life he made much of his connection to the father of psychoanalysis, so it may come as a surprise to learn he had no formal training in psychiatry or psychology. The only degree he ever earned was a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University in, of all things, agricultural science – a subject in which he had no interest whatsoever.

But during his time at Cornell he was active in student journalism, and it was there the young Eddie Bernays found his true calling: controlling people not by brute force but by subtle psychological manipulation. In doing so, he is widely regarded as the originator of the modern-day profession of public relations.

Bernays propounded his philosophy in his 1928 book Propaganda. Anticipating the pronouncements of the modern-day sages exhorting us to “follow the science,” Bernays told readers:

In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons – a trifling fraction of our hundred and twenty million – who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses.

It is not usually realized how necessary these invisible governors are to the orderly functioning of group life. Intelligent men must realize that propaganda is the modern instrument by which they can fight for productive ends and help bring order out of chaos.

The reader will recall from his own experience an almost infinite number of instances in which the amateur has been fully prepared to deliver expert advice and to give final judgement in matters upon which his ignorance is patent to every one except himself.

Marvin N. Olasky, a professor of journalism who interviewed Bernays toward the end of his life, stated:

Bernays’s fundamental faith has been his lack of belief in God.

He saw what he called in our interview ‘a world without God’ rapidly descending into social chaos. Therefore, he contended that social manipulation by public relations counselors was justified by the end of creating man-made gods who could assert subtle social control and prevent disaster.

Pulling strings behind the scenes was necessary not only for personal advantage but for social salvation.

Does any of this sound familiar?

How did all this string-pulling by these self-made gods work out for us?

One of Bernays’s early clients was the American Tobacco Company, the maker of Lucky Strikes. Bernays realized there was a vast untapped market awaiting his client – women. And the scope and scale of the assault on women’s lungs he organized was truly jaw-dropping.

Advertisements appealed to women’s fear of fat, exhorting them to “reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet.” He saturated editors with press releases such as one containing an admonition from the former Chief of the British Association of Medical Officers of Health warning that sugar caused tooth decay, adding that “the correct way to finish a meal is with fruit, coffee, and a cigarette.” Another press release contained these words of wisdom from the famous dance instructor Arthur Murray: “Dancers today, when tempted to overindulge at the punch bowl or the buffet, reach for a cigarette instead.”

Bernays urged hotels to add cigarettes to their dessert lists, and distributed a series of menus prepared by an editor of House and Garden encouraging diners to “reach for a cigarette instead of dessert.” He advised home economics writers to “stress the importance of cigarettes in home-making” and to remind women not to let supplies of this essential commodity run low.

Bernays took his campaign to the streets – literally – organizing a “Torches for Freedom” march, in which debutantes promenaded from Forty-Fourth Street to Fifty-Fourth Street, puffing away as they did so. In order to emphasize the wholesome nature of the event, other women joined them from churches situated along the way. The newspapers loved it, and copycat events were staged in cities from coast to coast.  

The hoped-for rise in smoking rates came to pass, and millions of women’s lives ended prematurely – often by means of slow, lingering, miserable deaths.

Eddie Bernays himself never smoked.

Later in life Bernays piously maintained he had no idea cigarette smoking was harmful, but his own papers (donated to the Library of Congress on the condition that they not be opened until after his death) revealed he was well aware of contemporary research linking smoking and cancer, and he recommended flooding editors with press releases citing expert opinion skeptical of the link. Even if they didn’t use the material, he reasoned, it might make them more resistant to publishing articles on the deleterious effects of smoking.

Colonizing the lungs of millions of American women was by no means Bernays’s only accomplishment. Retained by Mack Trucks to increase their business, Bernays came up with the idea of promoting a national highway system to do so. His campaign was kicked off with a luncheon at the Waldorf-Astoria in which Mack president E. L. Bransome delivered an address on the urgent need to pave over the countryside. Bransome and other speakers delivered the same message to gatherings of truck drivers, milk dealers, tire and rubber workers, as well as driving clubs. Bernays organized a fleet of what today we would call astroturf lobbying groups – the Trucking Information Service, the Trucking Service Bureau, and Better Living Through Increased Highway Transportation – which mailed out promotional letters and founded state associations to run local political campaigns.

It worked. For the endless hours you spend in your car amid these snarling rivers of asphalt and steel we have allowed to defile so much of our nation, you have, in a large measure, Eddie Bernays to thank.

Eddie Bernays himself never learned to drive.

Indeed, after moving to Cambridge to enjoy his semi-retirement, he became the consummate NIMBY, organizing neighbors to oppose the re-engineering of Memorial Highway on the grounds that this would entail the cutting down of twenty sycamore trees.

Bernays’s tender concern for the sycamore trees did not necessarily extend to all of his fellow creatures. In 1944, the people of Guatemala rose up and deposed their dictator, General Jorge Ubico Castañeda, under whose auspices the United Fruit Company had been allowed to treat the country as its own private fiefdom – exempting themselves from paying taxes and import duties, and controlling the nation’s only Atlantic seaport and almost every mile of railroad – all the while paying its workers no more than fifty cents a day.

General Castañeda was replaced by Juan José Arévalo, who built schools and hospitals, established a limited social security network, and gave Guatemalan workers the right to strike. Arévalo’s successor, Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, extended these reforms, seizing lands owned by United Fruit (with compensation) and distributing it to poor families.

Bernays swung into action, planting articles in the New York Times, the New York Herald Tribune, the Atlantic Monthly, Time, Newsweek, the New Leader, and others, about the growing communist threat to the fair nation of Guatemala. He also took a group of prominent editors and publishers on a two-week tour of that nation, treating them to a series of carefully staged media events.

After a piece on the rise of communism in Latin America appeared in the Saturday Evening Post, Bernays wrote to the editor, urging him to send copies to a list of “100 special writers” Bernays had compiled, as well to as members of the House and Senate Foreign Relations committees and key officials at the State Department, the Defense Department, and the CIA. Bernays himself arranged to have 300,000 copies of the article mailed to American Legion posts and auxiliaries.

The media blitz worked. A US-backed-and-trained army organized by CIA Director Allen Dulles marched into Guatemala and overthrew Arbenz. (Dulles, a man of many talents, also served on the board of United Fruit.) Bernays was charged with feeding news favorable to the coup plotters to the Associated Press, United Press, the International News Service, and the New York Times.

After engineering the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion, Dulles was fired from his post as CIA director by President John F Kennedy. Dulles later served on the Warren Commission which exonerated the CIA from any involvement in JFK’s assassination.

Communism was a great evil – perhaps the greatest evil the world has ever seen. But we enormously magnified the problem by ignoring people’s legitimate aspirations to self-determination and, in the name of anti-communism, backing every tin-pot dictator willing to sell out his country’s natural resources to gigantic multinational corporations Hell-bent on plundering them.

Of course, the modern-day successors to Allen Dulles and the United Fruit Company – e.g., Albert Bourla and Pfizer – are not so much interested in pillaging agricultural or mineral resources as they are in gaining dominion over our own bodies. And the modern-day successors of Eddie Bernays – the Trusted News Initiative, the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency – are even more ruthless in their campaign to control our very thoughts.

This conflict is shaping up to be the defining struggle of the Twenty-First Century. Stay tuned.

Patrick D Hahn is a lecturer, researcher, and author of four books, including The Day the Science Died: Covid Vaccines and the Power of Fear.