48 pages 1 hour read

Edward Bernays

Propaganda

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1928

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Essay Topics

1.

How believable is Bernays’s conception of The Myth of the Invisible Government? If you followed the narrative credulously but then changed your mind, at what point in the text did you change course? If so, what were the details that betrayed the invisible government as a myth or metaphor?

2.

There are points in the text where the author seems to be very careful about emphasizing the completely benign activities of the invisible government, while at other times, he portrays these shadowy entities in deliberately ominous terms. What are some examples and evidence of this narrative device? If you think the author’s depictions of the invisible government are inconsistent, explain why.

3.

What points in the text did you find evidence of the author’s elitism? If you detected obvious elitism, then did this detract from his argument? What is the correlation between Bernays’s elitism and his ambiguity about democracy?