'Torches of Freedom': more relevant now than in the 1920's

 Edward Louis Bernays
(November 22, 1891 – March 9, 1995)

Austrian-American pioneer in the field of propaganda now called ‘public relations’ &

Founding Sponsor * of anti-smoker group,  Action on Smoking and Health (ASH)

I wrote this as a comment earlier today in a Scottish Sun article that was stuffed full of anti-smoker propaganda with the optimistic delusional headline; “Huffing and puffing: Cig displays banned in bid to slash deaths”. My comment was removed within a couple of minutes, presumably they didn’t want their anti-smoker ‘success’ story undermined - here it is (but extended a bit);

Passive smoking is harmless! Extended ‘SHS harm’ was invented to sidestep valued principles of individual liberty, as defined by John Stewart MILL many years ago, and to facilitate a means to frighten and CONTROL people. In fact, if you look closely, you will find that pretty much EVERYTHING claimed by anti-smokers is based on propaganda designed to CONTROL individual behaviour to serve a pre-determined agenda.

It also serves to maintain/enhance professional anti-smoker individual bank accounts, their bloated tobacco CONTROL industry funding, and their sponsors wealth, but more importantly, intentionally or not, it diverts attention away from real ill health problems caused by wealthy polluting industry or simply aging and denies scarce funding for much needed care of the infirm, and research to find cures. 

It stopped being about health many years ago.
 
Smoking has been reducing for decades yet so-called ‘smoke related’ illness continues to increase, mainly in NON-smokers. This simple fact should be sufficient to raise questions in the mind of the most brainwashed individual but inevitably, in many cases abnegation creeps in and conditioning often wins over rational thought. That conditioning often extends to some politicians, scientists and medical professionals and it is sad to see them being exploited and manipulated by anti-smoker propagandists.

Anti-smoker propagandists are trained in the art of mass psychology inspired by Edward L Bernays who was once described as “a braggart.” He inspired Hitler and Goebbels as well as anti-smoker nutters. Bernays was a founding sponsor of ASH. (see appendix * below) He is something of a high priest and prophet of the anti-smoker cult and it is clear that his influence and methods survive intact today “to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing about it”.

Unsurprisingly anti-smoker nutters are reluctant to associate themselves with Bernays let alone publicly acknowledge him as their most influential founding sponsor, who appears to have set the baseline anti-smoker moral standard. They are probably a bit embarrassed that they are practicing the same sort of tactics today that he used to increase the amount of women smokers in the 1920’s whilst employed by the American Tobacco company. It was one of Bernays most successful campaigns that encouraged emancipation of women and their equality with men. His term for humble cigarettes was Torches of Freedom  - as relevant a description today if not more-so than it was then, and probably the reason why anti-smokers do not make reference to it, despite it being a perfect example of how the ‘evil tobacco company' used underhand methods to recruit women and inevitably  innocent children into the smoking habit! ie. it would demonstrate anti-smoker hypocrisy.

Display bans, Pack design bans, etc will have little or no effect on smoking prevalence, still less in ‘saving the children’ - (the #1 emotive plea to influence the masses) but they do move us bit by salami slice bit towards the anti-smoker goal of total prohibition, criminalization and dehumanization of smokers and in the mean time they do ease the conscience of politicians as they extort more and more money from smokers and can proudly say (not necessarily believe) they are doing it for health reasons!

The question is, what will they do at the end of the day when smokers still refuse to cower and comply as they are doing in their millions today? Boiling frogs may work with frogs but people are not frogs. Can anti-smoker nutters not understand that Newtons law - ‘every action has an equal and opposite reaction’ does not just apply to physics, or that the religious proverb; ‘They that sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind’ does not refer to seeding the lawn?

'Torches of Freedom'  

Relevant to women in the 1920s - relevant to everyone today!

Appendix *
Edward Bernays - founding sponsor of ASH;

UCSF Legacy Tobacco Documents Library; Ref TIMN 0240224 (2 pages)
http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/action/document/page?tid=ulj72f00&page=1