A series in early November by the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad highlighted how pro-Russia agitators in Holland have tried to smear the investigation and have reached out to victims’ families with misleading information.
“It has been astonishing,” Wilmer Heck, a veteran reporter who worked on the series, said in an interview, cautioning that proving Russia orchestrated the disinformation efforts is difficult. “We couldn’t pinpoint a direct link with the Russian state, and that of course is very important.”
De Amerikaan Edward Bernays, neef van Freud, en grondlegger van de public-relations industrie schreef voorafgaand aan de tweede wereldoorlog:
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. . . In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, 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 which control the public mind.
Het is niet verbazingwekkend dat Bernays' ideologie bijzonder aansloeg bij de elite, zowel die in de VS als in Nazi-Duitsland.
During Bernays' lifetime and since, propaganda has usually had dirty connotations, loaded and identified with the evils of Nazi PR genius Joseph Goebbels, or the oafish efforts of the Soviet Communists. In his memoirs, Bernays wrote that he was 'shocked' to discover that Goebbels kept copies of Bernays' writings in his own personal library, and that his theories were therefore helping to 'engineer' the rise of the Third Reich.
Bernays proudly referred to this all-important social process as the 'engineering of consent.' All of this had little, if anything, to do with real democracy. The objective for Bernays was to provide government and media outlets with powerful tools for social persuasion and control. As a matter of fact, so impressed was he with Bernays’ early works Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923) and Propaganda (1928) that Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels relied heavily upon them for his own dubious inspiration in the 1930s.
In his autobiography, titled 'Biography of an Idea,' Bernays recalls a dinner at his home in 1933 where Karl von Weigand, foreign correspondent of the Hearst newspapers, an old hand at interpreting Europe and just returned from Germany, was telling us about Goebbels and his propaganda plans to consolidate Nazi power. Goebbels had shown Weigand his propaganda library, the best Weigand had ever seen. Goebbels, said Weigand, was using my book 'Crystallizing Public Opinion' as a basis for his destructive campaign against the Jews of Germany. This shocked me... Obviously the attack on the Jews of Germany was no emotional outburst of the Nazis, but a deliberate, planned campaign.
Pas in 1965 liet Bernays weten dat het hem schokkeerde een leermeester te zijn geweest voor de nazi's, desalniettemin heeft hij zijn ideologie nooit veranderd. De technieken van Bernays worden ook in het Westen op grote schaal gebruikt in de westerse reclame en de zogeheten democratische politiek en natuurlijk in de commerciële mainstream media. Niet voor niets koos in 1999 het Amerikaanse tijdschrift Life Bernays als één van de honderd belangrijkste figuren van de hele twintigste eeuw. Zo kon het laissez-faire kapitalisme van de jaren twintig weer terugkeren in de jaren negentig, en opnieuw met desastreus gevolg, want de perioden van crisis zijn onlosmakelijk verbonden met het neoliberalisme.
Sommige artikelen van Wilmer Heck in de NRC zijn een schoolvoorbeeld van wat de nazi-minister van Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, als volgt verwoordde:
Wij spreken niet om iets te zeggen, maar om een bepaald effect te bereiken.
Inderdaad, zonder enig bewijs suggereert Heck van alles, om zodoende 'een bepaald effect te bereiken.' Zie Google over Wilmer Heck google wilmer heck.
