A Philosophical Happy Hour on propaganda’s causes, consequences, and cures.
The advent of mass communication—beginning with the national newspaper but greatly accelerated first through radio and second, with great totalization, through television—ushered in a new paradigm for shaping the actions of human beings: propaganda. It has been used to impose faux cultural homogeneity, to establish social hegemony, to justify violent revolutions, and most of all to induce unconscious compliance with beliefs never investigated for their truth.
In his seminal 1962 book, Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes, Jacques Ellul characterized propaganda as, most of all, a modern technique premised upon a kind of narrow and ideoscopic scientific psychological manipulation in search of exercising power. There is a certain irony, of course, in propaganda’s exercise being scientific; for it tends to be employed in the service of beliefs themselves thoroughly unscientific. Consider, for instance, what Solzhenitsyn writes of socialism in his preface to Igor Shafarevich’s Socialist Phenomenon:
World socialism as a whole, and all the figures associated with it, are shrouded in legend; its contradictions are forgotten or concealed; it does not respond to arguments but continually ignores them—all this stems from the mist of irrationality that surrounds socialism and from its instinctive aversion to scientific analysis… The doctrines of socialism seethe with contradictions; its theories are at constant odds with its practice; yet due to a powerful instinct… these contradictions do not in the least hinder the unending propaganda of socialism. Indeed, no precise, distinct socialism even exists; instead there is only a vague, rosy notion of something noble and good, of equality, communal ownership, and justice: the advent of these things will bring instant euphoria and a social order beyond reproach.
The mythos propounded by socialist propaganda can and has been extrapolated to other ideologies as well. Indeed, one could say much the same thing about many a political platform in the United States—to say nothing of the language employed by the European Union, large corporations, or the Chinese government. Indeed, it seems propaganda today is everywhere.
Mass “Communication”
In outlining the scientific practice of propaganda (download the PDF here), Ellul lists four primary characteristics. These four characteristics (given below) all belong to the structure of mass communication. What must be realized, however, is that mass communication is uniquely unidirectional. When you and I communicate by voice or mail (digital or analog), or when we message one another directly, we can make common our meaning to one another; we can agree or disagree with; we can shape one another’s thinking. Mass communication, on the other hand, does not allow for the recipient to participate in a dialogue. The individual is communicated to, but does not communicate—at least, never as an individual.[1]
This results in the paradoxical situation of the individual, as recipient of mass-communicated message, always being appealed to as an individual but precisely as that individual is lost in a crowd. Can we see how this follows from these characteristics?
- “First of all, modern propaganda is based on scientific analysis of psychology and sociology. Step by step, the propagandist builds his techniques on the basis of his knowledge of man, his tendencies, his desires, his needs, his psychic mechanisms, his conditioning–and as much on social psychology as on depth psychology.”
- “Second, propaganda is scientific in that it tends to establish a set of rules, rigorous, precise, and tested, that are not merely recipes but impost themselves on every propagandist, who less and less free to follow his own impulses.”
- “Third, what is needed nowadays is an exact analysis of both the environment and the individual to be subjected to propaganda. No longer does the man of talent determine the method, the approach, or the subject; all that is now being calculated (or must be calculated).”
- “Finally, one last trait reveals the scientific character of modern propaganda: the increasing attempt to control its use, measure its results, define its effects. This is very difficult, but the propagandist is no longer content to have obtained, or to believe he has obtained, a certain result; he seeks precise evidence.”
Distrust of the Dissenting
Ellul illustrates many further conditions concerning propaganda. I would suggest considering these: that it must be total (that is, admitting no dissenting voices); continuous (that is, never lapsing and allowing a silence within which it might be questioned); and organized (which is to say, ordered to some action). This organized continuous totality exercises a great power over the mind. Few, when subjected to it, have occasion to realize how their thinking has been shaped independently of their own conscious activity.
The immediate imperative of propaganda’s success therefore seems to be: do not trust any who dissent. By successfully issuing this command, propaganda not only dominates from without but from within; it turns its most-passive recipients into its amplifiers: active, but not from within—only as instruments. The more amplifiers, the less those hearing the message have an openness to trust of any individuals not echoing the same message.
Breaking the Spell
How do we break the spell of propaganda? How does mass communication enable addressing the individual precisely as part of a collective? What are the consequences of this for our psychological development—both as particular individuals and as a group? How do we recognize ourselves to have suffered the effects of propaganda?
Please join our Philosophical Happy Hour this Wednesday (16 October 2024 from 5:45–7:15pm—or later—Eastern Time; latecomers welcome!) to investigate these and other related questions.
[1] An individual might, that is, participate within a crowd to issue the simplest and loudest messages—cheers, jeers—but these are hardly using one’s human capacity for communication to its fullest.
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