Page 52 - Lunacy and the Age of Deception

However, with the advent of democratic forms of government, the elite needed to look to other tools
to maintain their control. Chief among these tools is the mass media. By purchasing newspaper and
magazine publishing companies, “press barons,” as they were called, were able to wield tremendous
political influence over the populace. By the year 1920 nearly all of the major newspapers in
America were run by large media corporations such as Gannett, Hearst Corporation, The McClatchy
Company, Cox Enterprises, and The Tribune Company.

This aggregation of print media under the control of large corporations coincided with the
establishment of the Federal Reserve which handed control of America’s money supply over to
private corporate interests. Thus, the government and the media became the instruments of
international financiers and industrialists who covertly rule the masses. By obtaining a majority
interest in these media organizations, the global elite could appoint the editors of the newspapers and
publishing houses and thereby control what issues are reported on and what views are expressed.

As I was growing up and attending public schools in America, I remember being taught that
communist countries like the Soviet Union and China did not have a free press. Rather, they had a
state controlled press. This state press was able to propagandize the citizens of these nations, plying
them with a distorted, lying, and false view of the world. I was assured by my teachers that America
was different, for it had a free press. I was told that in no way were Americans propagandized. It was
only in much later years that I discovered the lie.

The deceit is accomplished by suggesting that America’s government is run democratically by the
people, and the government does not own or control the press. It is corporations that own and control
the press. A very different reality comes to light once a person understands that it is also the
corporations that control American government, and they have done so for more than a century.
Thus, just like in the Soviet Union or Red China, the press is in the hands of the powers that run the
government. This is a perfect situation to accomplish the propagandizing of the American populace.
The situation is no different in any of the other so-called democratic nations of the world. You and
I have been propagandized from birth. An elite group, very small in number, wield the power to
propagandize the people, molding public opinion and herding the masses like sheep in whatever
direction they desire.

Edward Bernays wrote his seminal book Propaganda in the year 1928. This book expressed
concisely and openly the policies and methods of those who control mankind through the media.

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized 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.

We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have
never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which democratic society is organized...

Whatever attitude one chooses toward this condition, it remains a fact that in almost every act of our
daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or ethical thinking,
we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons - a trifling fraction... who understand
the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control