MOONDEERS NOTES on Bernays' PROPAGANDA

Who are the men, who, without our realizing it, give us our ideas, tell us whom to admire and whom to despise? If we set out to make a list of the men and women who, because of their position in public life, might fairly be called the molders of public opinion, we could quickly arrive at an extended list of persons mentioned in "Who's Who."

Such a list would comprise several thousand persons. But it is well known that many of these leaders are themselves led, sometimes by persons whose names are known to few.

There was a period in which the major policies of the national government were dictated by a single man, Mark Hanna*. A Simmons** may, for a few years, succeed in marshaling millions of men on a platform of intolerance and violence. The invisible government tends to be concentrated in the hands of the few because of the expense of manipulating the social machinery which controls the opinions and habits of the masses. The propaganda specialist.

Governments, whether they are monarchical, constitutional, democratic or communist, depend upon acquiescent public opinion for the success of their efforts and, in fact, government is government only by virtue of public acquiescence.

* Hannah was a United States Senator from Ohio. He is often credited with the invention of the modern presidential campaign after managing McKinley's run in 1896 (for which he also earned the nickname Dollar Mark).
** Simmons was United States Senator from North Carolina, a staunch segregationist, white supremacist and a leading perpetrator of the Wilmington insurrection of 1898.