INFLUENCING|THE MASSES
The psychological techniques through which a few|learned to guide billions of people.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without written permission from the publisher, except for brief quotations used in articles and reviews.|For information and enquiries, contact Influenza Mentale through the official website.|ISBN: 979-12-5774-056-6
1§THE MAN WHO INVENTED THE CROWD§7¦2§FREUD’S NEPHEW WHO SOLD BACON§18¦3§MR LIPPMANN’S PSEUDO-ENVIRONMENT§36¦4§THE WOLVES INSIDE US§52¦5§THE TEN GOLDEN RULES§63¦6§THE FIVE FILTERS§80¶7§MARKETING IS PROPAGANDA IN A SUIT§95¦8§THE ALGORITHM IS THE NEW BERNAYS§111¦9§SIGNS OF THE MANIPULATOR§129¦10§THE CITIZEN’S MENTAL HYGIENE§142¦11§CAN POSITIVE INFLUENCE EXIST?§157¦12§SURVIVING THE 21ST CENTURY WHILE STAYING ALERT§170¦a§EPILOGUE§180¦a§GLOSSARY§183¦a§ESSENTIAL CHRONOLOGY§190¦a§FURTHER READING§194
On 5 September 1934, at ten in the morning, seven hundred thousand right arms rose at the same instant in a square in Nuremberg.|Seven hundred thousand people, arranged in perfect rows, made the same gesture in the same fraction of a second while Leni Riefenstahl filmed what would become Triumph of the Will.|The question from which this book begins is simple: how does it happen? How do hundreds of thousands of people come to think the same thing at the same moment?|It does not happen by accident. There are techniques, a history, names and books that can be read.¶fig§https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0789/2497/2375/files/norimberga-1934.jpg?v=1791759617§«Nuremberg, 1934. A crowd that has stopped being made of people.»|The story begins in France in 1895 with a doctor convinced that the crowd behaved like a wild animal. It moves to New York in 1928, where Sigmund Freud’s nephew helped turn propaganda into public relations.|It passes through twentieth-century politics, Madison Avenue advertising and eventually reaches the screen of the phone you probably have in your pocket.|This is not a manual for manipulating anyone. The point of studying propaganda is mainly to recognise it when it is being used around us.|The difference between being informed and being manipulated is not a secret knowledge. It is often simply knowing what has been public for more than a century.
Paris, 28 May 1871. A city is burning. In the middle of it, imagine a thirty-year-old man with a dark beard, dressed as a military doctor, walking through the streets and taking notes.|His name is Gustave Le Bon, and he carries away one question: what makes ordinary people become first a crowd of revolutionaries and then a crowd of executioners?|In 1895 he publishes Psychologie des foules, The Psychology of Crowds. It is short and initially attracts little attention. Then it begins to sell, is translated and becomes a classic.¶fig§https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0789/2497/2375/files/barricate-1871.jpg?v=1791759617§«Paris, 1871. The barricades from which Le Bon drew his lifelong obsession.»|h§A crowd is not a sum|Le Bon’s first claim is that a crowd is not simply the sum of its members. When a thousand people gather around the same cause, a different creature appears, following rules unlike those of the individual.|He uses a chemical metaphor: hydrogen and oxygen are gases, but combined in the right proportion they become water, which has properties neither gas possessed alone.|The second idea is that crowds think in images, react to impulses and amplify emotion, while critical reflection becomes easier to suppress.¶figL§https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0789/2497/2375/files/gustave-le-bon.jpg?v=1791759617§«Gustave Le Bon (1841–1931). A Parisian gentleman on the nightstand of every twentieth-century dictator.»¶h§Assertion, repetition, contagion|The decisive point is his description of three tools used to move a crowd: assertion, repetition and contagion.|Assertion states without proving. Repetition makes an idea feel familiar. Contagion begins when people imitate what they see others doing.|Those mechanisms did not remain inside an 1895 book. They were read, adapted and industrialised. The rest of the story starts there.
