The Bare-Knuckled Truths of Edward Bernays

We may not like the father of modern PR (I don’t) but we must understand him

I am not sure that I personally like Edward Bernays (1891–1995). But I admire his skills as a communicator — and, it must be stated plainly, a manipulator of communication.

In Crystalizing Public Opinion, written in 1923, Bernays foresaw, from his early vantage point as a “public relations counsel,” how to manufacture media narratives and leverage the power of cultural debates. Although Bernays died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a generation ago, his fingerprints remain etched on nearly all facets of modern life.

The pioneering PR strategist considered himself part of an intellectual and economic elite entitled to govern public opinion and global policy. Yet Bernays also foresaw today’s cultural decay, from online hate to widely used debate tropes and marketing concepts, like few intellectuals of the last century.

Crystalizing Public Opinion captures uncomfortable truths about the malleability of public attitudes. Given the coarsened state of our politics and culture, I believe we must learn how to use the master strategist’s ideas — and use them ethically, a matter that Bernays, not always convincingly, insisted he cared about.

During his long and storied career, Bernays, the Austrian-born nephew of Sigmund Freud, sometimes placed himself in service of horrendous causes, such as promoting the CIA-backed coup against Guatemala’s democratically elected government in 1954. More commonly, Bernays taught companies and municipalities how to attract tourists, sell soap, and get people to eat more bacon or change hairstyles. Above all, Bernays was a mass manipulator of consumerism.

Yet people with nobler intentions than the strategic thinker cannot afford to dismiss him. Whether you work in politics, fashion, art, science, or sales, at one point — or many — you will be called to persuade people of your perspective. And Bernays knew how.

Like his contemporary Dale Carnegie, author of the 1936 perennial How to Win Friends and Influence People, Bernays grasped that personal communication was vital to effectiveness in the 20th century. The self-help writer Carnegie, who began teaching…