This epidemic’s course has been measured in deaths and cases. Wars are normally counted in victories, not fallen and wounded soldiers – those counts are saved till the end, but we were the fallen. Daily body counts reminded us of the sacrifice, kept the fear alive, and primed us for compliance. Fear works best in wartime.
History shows us that governments have long used fear to control populations, from the ancient Egyptians to the vast campaigns of terror committed by totalitarian governments in China, Russia and Germany in the 20th century. The ‘Reign of Terror’ during the French Revolution, and the term ‘project fear’ used to describe the referenda for Scottish independence and the UK’s membership of the EU, did what they said on the tin.
British propaganda was accelerated during the First World War through the War Propaganda Bureau, using films, the press and advertisements. You might be familiar with the graphical depictions of the evil ‘German Hun’ during the First World War, and with the mobilisation of the UK state apparatus to encourage its people to fight. Since then we have honed our skills. The weapons are sharper.
Following the bloodshed of that period, the pioneering psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud wrote much about human nature; that there was a ‘pleasure principle’, in which we are driven to pursue gratification, and a ‘reality principle’, in which society must restrict and control the instinctual desires in all people, to a socially productive end. His nephew, Edward Bernays, who was living in America, took many of these ideas on board and pioneered the ‘Public Relations’ industry, named as such because he understood the negative connotations with the existing term ‘propaganda’. In his book Propaganda, published in 1928, Bernays wrote: ‘The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.’
Just how far do governments go? Edward Bernays offers a perfect example of how it’s done and it’s worth meandering at this point, away from Covid, to illustrate how a government will leverage fear and propaganda. Bernays argued in the US in the 1950s that instead of reducing people’s fear of communism and nuclear war it should be exaggerated, but in such a way that it became a weapon in the Cold War. Essentially, he wanted to weaponise the US population’s fear.
In his series Century of the Self, Adam Curtis illustrated how Bernays helped to eject the popularly elected Guatemalan leader, Juan Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán, and restore the malleable ‘Banana Republic dictators’ controlled by the US’s United Fruit Company. And he did it in a way that made it look like a victory for American democracy.
He organised a trip to Guatemala for journalists and arranged for them to meet selected politicians who told them that Árbenz was a communist in league with Moscow. During the trip there was a violent anti-American riot, which some believed Bernays arranged. He set up a news agency called the Middle America News Bureau and pushed out news stories saying that Guatemala was going to be used as a beach head for a communist invasion of the US. The New York Herald Tribune, Time, Newsweek, and Atlantic Monthly all described the threat and called for US government action. At the same time the United Fruit Company sent favourable articles and reports to Congress members and journalists.
Bernays was also part of a secret CIA plot to remove Árbenz and re-install a puppet dictator. Howard Hunt, CIA officer, confessed that they organised a ‘terror campaign’. The CIA ran a psyop to present military defeat as a foregone conclusion in Guatemala, and military support was provided to the new dictator of choice.
Bernays created the conditions in the public and the press to reshape political reality through this cleverly crafted campaign using universities, lawyers, the media, business and government. The reason it all worked? He exploited fear and manipulated people. He believed in democracy, he just thought people were too stupid to be trusted with it and that rational argument was fruitless. He called his process the ‘engineering of consent’.
Propaganda, as a heavy blunt instrument, had been used for centuries, but Bernays set out a clear scientific framework for how to engineer the consent of the public, even warning that these tools could just as easily be employed by demagogues. The key point is that Bernays saw himself as a true and liberal patriot, helping benevolent governments and organisations to overcome the irrational drives in their people to reach an altruistic goal. Modern politicians and behavioural scientists might agree with his ambition.
At around the same time, in 1957, William Sargent explained in his book, Battle for the Mind, how politicians and religious leaders use ‘brainwashing’ techniques, specifically highlighting the importance of fear in causing alteration in brain function to increase suggestibility. He gave China’s Cultural Revolution as a specific example:
‘Fear of continued civil war, or foreign intervention, or both, convinced the Chinese Communist leaders they they must use shock tactics to convert the masses. A more intellectual approach might have resulted in a more stable type of conversion, but it would have taken dangerously long, and been consummated only with the gradual dying off of those brought up in the old ways of thought, and the growing up of the children in the new. To make a new China overnight, emotional disruption was essential; and so effective were the methods used, that thousands killed themselves in despair… leaving the more resilient millions to dance, dance, dance for joy at their liberation from millenniary bondage – until they learned to tremble at the periodic visits of the Household Police who now keep a dossier on the history and activities of every household.’
Between all these examples and the present day, has anything fundamental about humanity changed? That doesn’t seem likely. No doubt governments and
