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Influencing the Masses

November 8, 2026 · 2:16 pm ET · Leave a Comment

INFLUENCING THE MASSES: The Psychological Techniques a Handful of People Use to Steer Billions of Minds by Klaus Brenner.

“In 1895 a French doctor, Gustave Le Bon, published a book about how crowds move. Mussolini kept it on his bedside table. Hitler put it to work. Lenin annotated it in the margins. Thirty years later, in New York, Sigmund Freud’s nephew applied those same ideas to advertising: he persuaded millions of American women to smoke, millions of American men to eat bacon for breakfast, and the United States government to overthrow the government of Guatemala. His name was Edward Bernays, and his manual is still in use. Advertisers use it. Political parties use it. Social platforms use it. The algorithms in your phone use it.”

“Influencing the Masses reconstructs that manual from the first page to the last.”

INFLUENCING THE MASSES
The Psychological Techniques a Handful of People Use to Steer Billions of Minds
by Klaus Brenner · Aternal · 2026
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Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.

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