How Would a Global Conspiracy Work? Part 1

Part 1

Worried about a global conspiracy? You might be justified. After 100 years of success, the masters of manipulation are more powerful than ever. Yet we understand their techniques and how to fight back.

Call it public relations, influence, subversion, crowd control, disinformation, manufacturing consent or brainwashing. Some people just want to control others. No less than Plato, Machiavelli and Adam Smith have all discussed this reality over the centuries.

For most of human history, brute strength did the job. But then the western democratic experiment began. By the end of the 19^th century, large populations had to be persuaded. So the science of group behaviour evolved.

In 1895, psychologist Gustave Le Bon wrote: “The age we are about to enter will in truth be the era of crowds…” He noted the “…Extreme mental inferiority of crowds, picked assemblies included.”

Early in the 20^th Century, American PR man Edward Bernays realised that crowds may need more than a nudge. He drew on Sigmund Freud's theories of group psychology to ask the critical question. “…Is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing about it?”

In his 1928 book Propaganda, Bernays’ answer was an unequivocal yes: “Those who manipulate the unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed… largely by men we have never heard of…we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind.”

Critically, he understood the importance of capturing a ruling elite. “If you can influence the leaders, either with or without their conscious cooperation, you automatically influence the group which they sway.”

Bernays and other PR pioneers such as George Creel and Walter Lippman deployed the new science with devastating effect. They helped change public opinion to get America into the First World War in 1917. And that was just months after US President Woodrow Wilson had been elected on the slogan: "He has kept us out of the War."

MP Charles Masterman did similar work in Britain. Fellow PR man and journalist Basil Clarke argued for what he called “propaganda by news”. They helped produce a stream of fake stories about German atrocities. Leading writers and journalists were told to get on board. The result was a hatred of Germans that fuelled recruitment and kept the war going.  

The Great War was a proving ground for the PR pioneers. From the 1920s they worked with world leaders and top global corporations. One of Bernay’s successes was to increase smoking among women with his ‘Torches of Freedom’ campaign. These men changed what millions of people believed. War and peace. Freedom and Tyranny. Life and death.

Make no mistake. Men like Bernays were not cranks. They were cold professionals. Apex predators. They conspired in the purest meaning of the word. With the awesome power of modern science, their professional descendants are even more powerful.

Yet mainstream commentators either deny these sciences exist. Or claim they are only deployed by our enemies. There can be no stronger evidence that such people are themselves victims of a higher influence or manipulation.

The history and science of population control are clear. By the 1930s the Germans learnt from their failures in the First World War. Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels used Bernays’ work to manufacture a cult-like worship of Hitler and hatred of Jews. He understood the use of fear as a tool. And the brainwashing value of repetition through every institution and social unit. 

Soviet Russia used similar methods on their people. But by the 1950s they had also developed a successful international subversion protocol, as explained by KGB defectors such as Yuri Bezmenov. Potential sympathisers in the west were groomed to become ‘agents of influence’.

Their job was to spread disinformation that would weaken the west, both politically and socially. Such people infiltrated government, trade unions, the media, civil service and other institutions. Some were unknowing, or ‘useful idiots’. For example US academic Frances Piven who advocated a strategy of overloading the welfare systems to bring about a crisis. Others like the Guardian’s Richard Gott was exposed as a paid KGB operative.

The KGB strategy was so successful that both Presidents John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan spoke in detail about this ‘ruthless conspiracy’. Such concerns were dismissed by left-wing intellectuals as irrational fear. This is no surprise as universities were some of the first institutions to be infiltrated. Many universities are still in the grip of Marxism.

As a closed society, Russia itself was immune from retaliation. But irrespective of the operator, the science of population control and changing behaviour share key techniques. They continue to evolve and are being deployed with devastating effect. What Bernays called our “mental processes” and “social patterns” have been cracked wide open.

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