How do plutocrats manipulate us? With social psychologists. Eddie Bernays, self-declaread “father of public relations” was the double nephew of Sigmund Freud. Bernays loved to dream up schemes to substantially profit his clients, while making fools of the American people – to their detriment.

Democracy and freedom are the two shining lights of Western ideology but like any system it can be manipulated, subverted, compromised and broken. One hack of the democratic system is known as “the manufacture of consent”.

Dictatorships tend to use violence to keep people under control but in democracies that tactic isn’t always possible. Instead propaganda is used to tell people how they should think and, by extension, to influence what you do.

One of the key proponents of this use of propaganda was Edward Bernays, the nephew of Sigmund Freud and the man who coined the phrase “public relations”.

This video explains how the idea of manufacturing consent came to be part of the political process.

via How Edward Bernays hacked democracy – Truthloader – YouTube.