Pacific Free Press was launched in March 2007 by Dutch-Canadian Richard
Kastelein of V.O.F. Expathos, in the Netherlands along with Chris Cook- CFUV radio journalist and Editor in Chief of Pacific Free Press. Cook is based in , Victoria, British Columbia.
The mission of Pacific Free Press is simple: to dig out nuggets of truth from
the slag-heap of lies, ignorance and witless diversion that has buried
public discourse today. Pacific Free Press provides a new venue for
disseminating hard news and insightful, fact-based analysis of the
harsh realities too often ignored or distorted by the mainstream press.
'Managing Consent': The Art of War, Democracy and Public Relations
by Ramzy Baroud It was Edward Bernays who fine-tuned the art of Public Relations in the twentieth century. Using many of the psychoanalytic theories put forward by his uncle Sigmund Freud, he developed a mastery of public manipulation, suggesting that such manipulation was essential to democracy itself.
Bernays strongly believed that people are simply 'stupid' and in need of being told how to behave, what to believe, what to eat, what to wear and how to vote. The outcomes of such an experiment reverberate to this day.
Some historians credit Bernays' efforts in the 1920s and 30s for
turning the modern citizen into a modern consumer. Not only did he
convince Americans that a 'hearty breakfast' must include eggs and
bacon, as opposed to the traditional toast and coffee, he also managed
to persuade women at the time that cigarettes were a symbol of man's
power and domination; to challenge the male sense of superiority, women
needed to smoke. A few public stunts later, sales of cigarettes (which
Bernays termed 'torches of freedom') soared, eventually doubling the
market for tobacco manufacturers, who, amongst many other businesses,
were Bernays' clients.
It was only natural that such tactics
would soon become politicized. Various presidents and presidential
candidates utilized Bernays' theories and services in the interests of
power and profit, though some did try to outset the increasing
influence of big businesses on American democracy. Roosevelt's New Deal
in the early 1930s - which purported to reengage the citizen as a vital
component in a functioning democracy - was resented by the
corporations, and they ferociously fought to win consumers back and
defeat the democratic initiative. Ultimately, they succeeded.
It
didn't take long for Bernays tactics to be exported internationally.
Guatemala is a textbook example; when the country was ready to embrace
serious popular change in the 1950s, with democratically elected
President Jacobo Arbenz implementing equitable land reforms that ran
counter to the interests of the US United Fruit Company (which was
naturally unwilling to concede its highly profitable 'Banana
Republic'), media manipulators back home immediately set about to
convince Americans that Arbenz somehow posed a threat to American
democracy.
A CIA engineered coup deposed the elected president and
installed its operative Castillo Armas, who was hailed by visiting US
Vice President Richard Nixon as a 'liberator.'
Freud's
Civilization and Its Discontents argues that man's subconscious desires
would be utterly violent and sadistic if uncontrolled; his nephew
suggested the cure was to curb these desires in a way that generated
immense profits. Successive US administrations have taken note and
their greatest achievement has been to exploit the subconscious factors
that infuse fear and paranoia amongst the masses. Wars have been
undertaken, regimes overthrown, and bombs dropped in the midst of
sleeping populations, all in the name of democracy.
What
Bernays brazenly dubbed 'managing consent' - and Chomsky and Herman
more honestly referred to as 'manufacturing consent' - remains the
defining factor that subverts true democracy in the US, and often leads
to the most violent consequences in countries that fall under the US
sphere of influence. Despite serious public efforts to counter the
anti-democratic union between the state and corporations in the 1960s
and 70s, the latter managed to prevail, using direct repression at
times, but also by underhandedly exploiting the same discontented
popular movements to promote their ideas and products; this tactic has
manifested itself invariably every time a discord between the state and
corporation on one hand and the people on the other took place.
A
more recent example is the way in which President Bush has constantly
attempted to manipulate to his advantage the anti-war movement which
opposed his 2003 invasion of Iraq. His logic - also used by former
British Prime Minister Tony Blair - was simple yet most deceptive: the
war in Iraq is aimed at achieving the same kind of democracy that
allows millions of Americans to disagree peacefully with their
government without facing persecution, as they would under Saddam.
While one finds laughable the deduced notion that Iraqis are now
reaping the benefits of democracy, one can hardly deny that Bush's
logic took hold among many, even those opposed to the war.
Such
dialectics managed to shift the debate in many circles from the
illegitimacy of the war and its true intentions to altruistic arguments
about how 'the world is better off without Saddam'. This type of
manipulation is anything but new and is hardly exclusive to the Iraq
case.
Since World War II, the US government and corporate
America have carried the democracy banner whenever they sought war and
profits. While doing so, the CIA has managed to topple many popular,
democratic governments around the world, replacing them with handpicked
puppet regimes. The Palestinian elections in January 2006 were the
closest the region had seen of true democratic elections in many years,
and yet the fact that it was Hamas - who violently fought the Israeli
military occupation and who strongly opposed US policies in the region
– elected to power justified an entire population being starved,
physically confined and violently oppressed by Israel, with the full
support of the US and the world's banking system. The Palestinian
experiment is unlikely to conclude soon, but the outcomes have been
utterly devastating thus far.
Edward Bernays' direct
influence is long gone, but his ideas continue to define the
relationships between the corporations, the American state and the
consuming citizen on one hand, and the state-corporations' union and
the rest of the world on the other. The carefully managed relationships
have undermined democracy and unleashed sadistic wars and
uncontrollable violence, of which Freud had warned, but which his
nephew shamelessly exploited.
Ramzy Baroud is a
Palestinian-American author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His
work has been published in numerous newspapers and journals worldwide.
His latest book is The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a
People's Struggle (Pluto Press, London). Read more about Ramzy Baroud
at ramzybarud.net
Writings 
It was Edward Bernays who fine-tuned the art of Public Relations in the twentieth century. Using many of the psychoanalytic theories put forward by his uncle Sigmund Freud, he developed a mastery of public manipulation, suggesting that such manipulation was essential to democracy itself. 
A
more recent example is the way in which President Bush has constantly
attempted to manipulate to his advantage the anti-war movement which
opposed his 2003 invasion of Iraq. His logic - also used by former
British Prime Minister Tony Blair - was simple yet most deceptive: the
war in Iraq is aimed at achieving the same kind of democracy that
allows millions of Americans to disagree peacefully with their
government without facing persecution, as they would under Saddam.
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