Thread by @docrussjackson

THREAD on Cory Wimberly's book, 'How #Propaganda Became Public Relations'.

Imho, his book contains new & useful insights into why progressives have failed to progress democracy in meaningful ways, & reconceptualizes 'corporate propaganda' to help us forge new approaches.

To start, a few quotes from two of the 'founding fathers' of public relations:

“The significant revolution of modern times is not industrial or economic or political, but the revolution which is taking place in the art of creating consent among the governed".

- Walter Lippmann

“The basic elements of human nature are fixed as to desires and instincts and innate tendencies. The directions, however, in which these basic elements may be turned by skillful handling are infinite.”

- Edward Bernays

“The appeal to the instincts & the universal desires is
the basic method through which [the PR counsel] produces his results.”

Edward Bernays

The aim of PR was not to graft a 'false need' on top of a true need but to “turn” instincts, to conduct them differently.

Bernays aimed to redirect human drives: the point being not that the new behaviours triggered by propaganda are false, but that instincts can result in a variety of different conducts, & it is the propagandist’s job to produce those conducts most valued by the client.

The aim of #propaganda is not simply to get us to purchase new products or services, or vote in particular ways, but rather to get us to become different kinds of people - people who conduct themselves in the way that the corporations or Parties that can afford propaganda wish.

Our ‘true’ self is not stable or enduring, but a function of formative influences of the governing forces circulating around us: aspirations such as 'freedom' or 'liberation' can be profoundly shaped by #propaganda to act in ways which serve their client's interests.

The ultimate purpose of corporate #propaganda is not to aid the target publics in making ‘better’ or ‘fairer’ or ‘well-informed’ decisions, but rather to produce the kind of conduct - behaviour - the client wants.

It's no coincidence that at the time of spreading suffrage, worker empowerment, & increased public participation in democracy that PR arose as an additional governmental apparatus for the corporation to mitigate the effects of democracy on the nation’s economic & political elite.

At the turn of the twentieth century, propagandists sounded the alarm bells within corporations about the changes taking place in the American public - & offered a solution to produce the kind of corporations & publics needed to secure the century for the corporate apparatus.

The aim of #propaganda is not democracy or equality but a more thorough government of the public, for the benefit of their clients: our resources for resistance have been evacuated & we have been taught that ‘liberation’ means giving free reign to our corporate-instilled desires.

To that extent at least, we do not need any simplistic form of perceived 'liberation', but an engagement in new processes of subjectification & government - new ways of thinking & interacting - to become other than who we are today.

In the late 1980s, politicians & their policies came to be formulated by PR counsels in the same ways that they designed consumer goods: they found out what most motivated the target voting publics’ conduct, & created policies & politicians that would appeal to those desires.

A greater selection of goods imbued with psychological affect, are presented to consumers as ‘greater freedom of self’ (goods are marketed as tools to define & construct subjectivity); if the self is defined by consumption, then greater consumer choice feels like greater freedom.

PR uses affirmations of images, symbols, & phrases repeated ad nauseum by those with prestige, to make a new norm spread through the target public like a contagion; they don't aim to aid deliberative or critical thinking, but to govern the publics at a largely subliminal level.

Put bluntly, the aim of public relations is domination not democracy, government and not reasoning; democracy is only important to public relations as a cover in the quest for domination & corporate/Political exploitation.

Democracy is not the goal of PR practice: what PR counsel would want to report to the client that they had served as a handmaid to democracy & helped the public come to a decision that was in the public’s best interest even though that decision put the client out of business?

Data which informs corporate propaganda is being collected about individuals and publics in unprecedented ways, not just from web browsing but from an ever-growing multiplicity of sources, which is used to shape & govern subjectivities:

internet-enabled devices that permeate homes, financial transactions, internet providers, cameras, microphones, & facial recognition devices, health care & Govt records, streaming services, GPS location data, cell phone & DNA records, retail stores, & wearable health monitors.

Hyper-personalization, predictive personalization, and super-targeted marketing are terms that less describe the present than the emergent wave of #propaganda beginning to break in the first half of the twenty-first century.

Data about family & friends’ specific histories like vacations, births, or shared moments are harvested (from social media posts, picture archives stored online etc), commoditized as data, sold to corporations, & incorporated into #propaganda & product design.

The aim is to co-opt the publics’ strongest drives & “turn” them towards new desires that stabilize & profit the corporation; our stories & histories get harvested, commoditized, sold, & used to create new conduct for us by those that can afford our data & its exploitation.

If we take democracy to arise with registering 'the will of the people' & we leave out considerations of how the publics & their wills are formed, then democracy can be manipulated or hollowed out by apparatuses which can now profoundly shape the constitution of publics.

The practical question that needs to be tackled with propaganda vis-à-vis democracy is how the elitist and tyrannical relations of #propaganda can be displaced to make room for more egalitarian and plural relations of subjectification and government?

But if #propaganda has co-opted our inner/instinctual drives & turned them to drive conduct opposed to progressive reforms, then the motive force for change is not just unlikely to come; it is likely to come in opposition to proposed reforms.

#Propaganda exactly strives to prevent such radical publics from coming into existence and then, if they do, works to co-opt, delegitimate, and disrupt them; this has been a primary goal of propaganda since 1900!

Populations have been acted on by corporations & governments in systematic ways for over more than a century to deprive them of the qualities that they would need to intelligently lead themselves into new relations of power, knowledge, and subjectivity.

When the publics can be shaped and their desires managed, then democracy need not threaten corporations because 'the will of the people' is just another item produced alongside bars of soap, worker morale, and political candidates.

Democracy, if it is only a means to poll the preferences of the people, is undermined by the anti-democratic force of propaganda in the form of public relations that can & does constitute and co-opt those preferences.

If #propaganda is able to govern conduct through constructing subjects to suit corporate & elite interests, then replacing propaganda with a different expertly administered program of subjectification & government is not the solution—no matter if it is from the Right or Left.

Combatting #propaganda means transforming relations of government & having the will to change ourselves; combatting propaganda democratically means building our own spaces in which subjects can assume control over our self-formation as individuals & groups outside of propaganda.

Facing an apparatus that manipulates, destroys, and creates relations of force which transform subjects so that they by their very nature govern themselves differently is not an apparatus best met with a discourse of liberation.

The way forward is not 'liberation' from 'propaganda', but rather the transformation of relations of force in order to constitute different conduct & a different subjectivity.

Words & ideas from Cory Wimberly's 2020 book. 'How Propaganda Became Public Relations'.