Water Fluoridation: The propaganda and public relations game.

George Glasser

At the onset of selling fluoride to the public as protective measure against tooth
decay in the late 1940s, the companies involved brought in the mastermind and
father of modern public relations, Edward Bernays. Alcoa Aluminium needed to
get rid of toxic fluoride waste, and like any other giant corporation that had a big
public relations and marketing problem – they called in Bernays to solve it.
Bernays was to perform some PR alchemy – turn rat poison into a publicly
accepted cavity fighter. He succeeded with successfully selling fluoride to the
public in toothpaste for his old client Proctor and Gamble.
Edward Bernays wasn’t just any backslapping public relations huckster running
around glad-handing people at parties or someone pumping out fliers at the water
company; he was THE public relations advisor to presidents, the US government,
and multinational corporations. Among his many monumental achievements of PR
hucksterism, he orchestrated and implemented a successful US Government hate
campaign against Germans during the First World War. It was designed to incite a
reticent American public to enter into the European fray.
However, ironically, Hitler's propaganda chief, Joseph Goebbels, was one of
Bernays biggest fans and used the same precepts from his 1923 book
“Crystallizing Public Opinion” to orchestrate the hate campaign against the
German Jews which resulted in the holocaust – “The final solution.” Curiously,
Bernays’ approach to getting rid of toxic waste was ‘The solution to pollution is
dilution in the public water supply.’
Bernays moulded public opinion and manipulated the masses by the use of visual
symbols and words that have and will continue to impact every person in the world
well into the future. His basic rules are still applied to advertising and public
relations today.
To Bernays, people were “The masses” and referred to them as a “Herd” to, more
or less, drive like dairy cattle from pasture to pasture, told what to eat and drink,
and even what clothes to wear and cars to drive. He saw himself as the leader of an
elite group of people (“The invisible government”) working behind the scenes to
create compliant social order out of a chaotic democracy. The base and aggressive
animal instincts of the population were to be satiated by consumerism and thus
domesticated like a compliant herd of dairy cattle.
• “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 our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of
human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a
smoothly functioning society.” (Propaganda” – 1928, Bernays)
When I first got involved with the water fluoridation issue, I saw his name and
knew that winning the fight was about public relations and propaganda. All the
science and other altruistic arguments were simply distractions – ‘dog and pony
shows’ staged to give the masses the illusion of participating in the democratic
process, when in fact the decision to fluoridate the drinking water of a nation was
predetermined by Bernays and his clients.
In 1947, fluoridation of the Nation’s drinking was government policy. The
mechanisms, sales pitch, and bureaucracy to impose the new policy were in place
well before they began to pitch drinking water fluoridation to the masses in the
early 1950s.
I would imagine a strategy to marginalise and discredit dissidents was also devised
well in advance. It would have been fairly simple strategy based on Freudian
concept of mans need to be part of the herd; Marginalise a dissident and their
primal instinct to belong would bring them back into compliance with the group
consciousness.
• “Because man is by nature gregarious he feels himself to be member of a
herd, even when he is alone in his room with the curtains drawn. His mind
retains the patterns which have been stamped on it by the group influences.”
(Propaganda).
The marginalisation and isolation tactic is still used on scientists who speak out
against fluoridation. If a scientist speaks out against fluoride, they are discredited
as a scientist. If one does a little research, there is a long list of scientists whose
careers were ended by speaking out against water fluoridation. Essentially, they
were made examples to keep the scientific community corralled like a herd of
domesticated cattle. For the most part, the tactic has successfully worked.
The next thing I realised was that of all the successful PR campaigns Bernays
masterminded for governments and corporations, he never actually got all of the
“herd/masses” to accept water fluoridation although a majority would reluctantly
acquiesce. Bernays pulled every trick out of his books on hucksterism to get
everyone to accept fluoridation, and sixty-years-on, the heated battle still ensues,
and today, on several continents.
People like to call it a debate about fluoride, but it’s not – fluoridation is basically a
bitter battle of wills cloaked in a translucent veil of civility. Scientists, activists,
and doctors argue back and forth about health issues, and at the end, they walk
away politely ‘agreeing to disagree.’
Nothing much has changed in the basic rhetoric or tactics over the past sixty years.
For every study that says fluoride is bad, the pros pump out ten studies trashing the
study and the scientist, and the people who oppose fluoridation are still labelled as
‘kooks and crackpots.’
Sixty years later, it’s more than evident that Bernays’ tried and true PR strategies
didn’t work. There were too many dissidents among the bovine ‘masses’ – So, I
asked myself, “Why?”
In revisiting his 1928 ‘bible’ of public relations, “Propaganda,” it became evident
that he violated one of his cardinal principles:
• “The public has its own standards and demands and habits.
You may modify them, but you dare not run counter to them.”
His strategy to sell fluoridation was contrary to what people are led to believe
about democracy and their freedom of choice – the very foundations upon which
Bernays based his PR concepts – ‘give the masses the illusion that they have a
choice.’
Strip away all the superficial reasons and arguments people offer for opposing
fluoridation and what remains is person’s need to feel that he/she has a choice.
Violate that somewhat delusional belief, and you’re in trouble.
Marketing fluoride in toothpaste was successful because people felt as if they had a
choice, but put fluoride into their drinking water, and you’re imposing your will
upon the individual – the person’s perceived right to make a choice is taken away
which elicits either a conscious or a subconscious resentment and incites a
reaction.
Bernays made the fatal mistake of assuming that people below his self-perceived
intellectual status were nothing more than a mindless herd relying on people like
him to make decisions for them. Forcing something on someone runs contrary to
that fundamental belief in ‘sense of self,’ and the reality that all humans are
individuals and prefer to believe that have some control over their lives.
However, the governmental policy of fluoridating drinking water sends a
demeaning message: ‘The public is too stupid to be educated about basic dental
hygiene, so we have to take draconian measures to reduce tooth decay.’
In essence, fluoridating the drinking is running counter to the individual’s
standards and belief that they have a choice and the ability to think for themselves
because the politicians are perceived to be brutally forcing something down their
throat without their consent.
However, from a psychological standpoint, fluoridation of the drinking water is
much more than a simple public health program to governments. Symbolically, it’s
more about dictatorial power and the subconscious and symbolic imposition of
authority.
For all intents and purposes, fluoridation is the symbolic imposition of ultimate
authority and dominance by politicians – ‘shoving something down my throat. –
forcing me to do something against my will.’ To most individuals that is abhorrent
behaviour and completely unacceptable.
While some government officials may well delude themselves into thinking that
they have the best interest of the citizens at heart, in fact, they’re saying to the
individual, ‘You will do what I say, and I don’t care what you think – I’m in
control of your life. Take your medicine and shut up.’
The truth of the matter is that when drinking water fluoridation comes into the
frame, battle lines are drawn. Beyond all the superficial, altruistic reasons someone
will give for their opposition to fluoridation, the bottom-line is that it is a personal
issue, and most people don’t like to have anything force-fed to them - it’s an
affront to and violation of their personal dignity. While the government has the
power to win, they never really win because imposing one’s will on individuals
only generates seething resentment and a need to retaliate in some form.
In reality, if the government was actually concerned about tooth decay, using
Bernays tried and true methods of propagandising the public with multimedia
public education would be more cost effective and ultimately, much more
successful than attempting to ‘make inoculate the herd.’ About 99.7% of all the
fluoride added to the water goes down the drain – not in people’s bodies.
Personally, I think Bernays’ involvement in water fluoridation was another of his
grand societal experiments in manipulating public opinion, as he published “The
Engineering of Public Consent” the same year he became involved with marketing
fluoride. Persuading the entire population to accept drinking water tainted with rat
poison would be his ultimate public relations triumph – something he could brag
about in another book.
He knew it was rat poison, but being a self-aggrandising megalomaniac, Bernays
actually thought he could persuade everyone to believe that it was a magic elixir
and they needed it in their water. However, he forgot that ‘masses/herd’ don’t like
to be forced to do anything, and fluoridating drinking water is just that.
As the old adage goes, “You can take a horse to water, but you can’t make it
drink.”
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