Randal Marlin
Page 8
mass action. Rather, it provides the basis for organized propaganda. For example, in
the United States, the “American way of life” is the backdrop for much propaganda.
Once one accepts the American way of life as superior, it becomes a criterion of good
and evil; things that are un-American become evil. Thus, it provided the rationale for
McCarthyism in the 1950s and supported Monroe Doctrine foreign policy, permitting
invasions of Central American countries. A good example of this kind of jingoism, US
style, is Red Nightmare, a Cold War propaganda film made in the 1950s, supported by
the US Department of Defence, and directed by Jack Warner. Good things like fam-
ily life, democratic meetings, involvement with schools, etc., are treated as if they are
peculiarly American rather than common to many other liberal democracies. Because
of the source of its funding, Red Nightmare can be considered to belong in the political category, but its ideas and images form the subtext of many Hollywood movies
not so funded.
2. Agitation versus integration propaganda. Agitation propaganda is the most visible kind. It is usually revolutionary, but it can be used by a government to whip up its people to some very high level of sacrifice—to go to war or increase productivity, etc. It
cannot be kept up for very long. The usual form of agitation, subversive propaganda is
easy to make. Hatred of a particular enemy is fomented; liberty, bread, and fulfilment
are offered as inducements. This propaganda feeds on itself and does not require the
continued use of the mass media.
By contrast, integration propaganda is a propaganda of conformity aimed at get-
ting the individual to participate in society in every way, stabilizing the social body,
and unifying and reinforcing it. It seeks a total moulding of the person in depth.
Intellectuals are particularly susceptible to this form of propaganda. It is difficult to
develop when a nation has been whipped up by agitation propaganda. Mao Zedong
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solved this problem by simultaneously subjecting his people to stereotypes, slogans, and interpretations that integrated them well into the group.
3. Vertical versus horizontal propaganda. Vertical propaganda is what people normally think of as classic propaganda; it occurs in a top to bottom direction, from the leader
to the people—Nazi propaganda is one example. The leader is a technician, a political
or religious head who acts from a position of authority. Such propaganda is conceived
in secret enclaves and uses all the technical methods of mass communication. The
masses undergoing this propaganda are seized, manipulated, and become committed.
In a sense, they are like hypnotic subjects. They become depersonalized, acting from
conditioned reflex. They do not act spontaneously, though they may believe they do.
They are mechanized, dominated, and passive.
By contrast, horizontal propaganda is made within the masses, not top to bottom.
The group leader acts as animator, letting individuals condition each other, but the
person who enters the group does so on the basis of information, data, and reasoning
that are distorted. Horizontal propaganda works with small groups—about 15 to 20
people. Reaching the masses therefore requires a huge organization of group leaders.
It is a characteristic of horizontal propaganda that it is not distinguished from educa-
tion by the participants. This is how Mao could proceed from subversive agitation to
integration propaganda.
4. Irrational versus rational propaganda.61Once again, irrational propaganda represents what we denote by propaganda in its familiar sense—emotive appeals, myths, symbols,
and so on, which are used to influence people. What is novel is El ul’s characterization
of some forms of rational communication as propaganda. Despite appearances, ratio-
nal and irrational propaganda have much in common. Rational propaganda has the
appearance of genuine scientific truth, but it is often mystification. Citations of facts
and figures leave the impression of great rationality, but the hearer is unable or unwill-
ing to analyze the figures and is persuaded by the appearance of rationality rather than
by coming to grips with genuine reality. The individual affected is often convinced by
an emotional feeling, treating science in effect as myth. As people become progressively
more educated, propaganda becomes more rational and factual in form. It is not clear
whether rational persuasion ceases to be propaganda when there is a genuine, rational
appraisal of the information offered. Ellul writes that the use of facts, statistics, and
economic ideas is still propaganda because it “uses these facts to demonstrate, rationally the superiority of a given system [the Soviet one in his example] and to demand everybody’s support.”62 His form of words suggests that genuinely rational persuasion can
still be propaganda, but the example points to the opposite. El ul does not believe for
a moment that the system in the Soviet Union was superior. Therefore, any facts used
to prove that it was would in his view have to be insufficient and misleading, if not
downright false. Genuinely factual and rational claims, made without, for example,
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misleading suppression of other pertinent facts, would not constitute propaganda as we have defined it earlier.
El ul’s categories provide a refreshing, inspirational base from which to approach the
understanding of propaganda. They throw into confusion any attempt to give a precise
definition for the term, but that is not necessarily a shortcoming, since, as we have
seen, there are already deep divisions in the way the word is understood. Ellul’s aim
is to concentrate on the phenomenon of propaganda and its effects on us. For this
purpose the widening of the concept of propaganda has the useful function of making
us aware of the more subtle ways in which we can be manipulated. As we develop our
understanding of propaganda in the following chapters, it will be useful to keep these
categories in mind, even though we will not always refer specifically to them. What
most people typically think of as propaganda is political, agitative, vertical, and irratio-
nal. Yet, if El ul is right, we have every reason to be concerned also about sociological,
integrative, horizontal, and supposedly rational propaganda.
A final problem arises from El ul’s repeated assertion that propaganda, to be wor-
thy of the name, must be total. Total propaganda in El ul’s view only came into being
with the development of psychological, sociological, and other sciences of the human
being together with the manipulative possibilities they provided. In that sense, pro-
paganda is very recent, arriving only with the twentieth century. It appears that El ul
does not adhere consistently to such a narrow understanding of propaganda, since he
provides a history of propaganda that goes back to Ancient Greece, and his defini-
tion of propaganda in terms of gaining or maintaining power does not stipulate total
control. We arrive at consistency only if we allow that El ul has a wider and a narrower
understanding of what “propaganda” means. The narr
ower one, in which propaganda
must be total, helps us to see the immense power the phenomenon of propaganda has
to enslave us.63
PLAn oF THE BooK
In the following chapters, we will view propaganda first from a historical perspec-
tive and then from an analytical standpoint. For lack of space, the historical section
is not a complete survey but a chronological examination signaling new, or what I
feel to be particularly striking, developments of propaganda in history. Succeeding
chapters will examine propaganda, rhetoric, and persuasion from an ethical stand-
point. We live in a time when complex ethical questions are easily subordinated to
the demands of efficiency, profit-maximization, and maintenance or furthering of
political power. Each of these demands has its own ethical component, but is far from
the whole ethical story. What is needed is a look at wider ramifications of persuasive
devices designed by some body or groups to support or advance a particular concern.
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Government information, corporate public relations (PR), and advertising figure prominently, but the relevant list is much broader.
It is not difficult to show that the negative associations attached to propaganda
are often richly deserved. This book aims to expand awareness of the most pernicious
forms of propaganda and to draw attention to social and legal controls over it. It seems
indisputable that propaganda has contributed mightily to some of the worst evils of
our time, but is there any form of control over it that will not require compromis-
ing with the ideal of self-reliance and self-development? And if compromise is neces-
sary, to what extent? The Internet has brought with it added complexities related to
the technical difficulties—some would say impossibility—related to control of that
medium. The question of control occupies the penultimate chapter of this book.
notes
1 The idea that advertising and public relations learned a lot from World War I activities is only part of the truth. The other part is that some of the techniques were well-established in advertising and that there was indebtedness in the other direction. The famous Alfred Leete poster, “Britons: Lord Kitchener wants you!”
appears to have taken its cue from a noted BCV cigarette advertisement a few years earlier. See Nicholas Hiley, “‘Kitchener Wants You’ and ‘Daddy, What Did YOU Do in the Great War?’: The Myth of British Recruiting Posters,” Imperial War Museum Review II (1997): 40–58, at 53.
2 On December 29, 2011, The Ottawa Citizen carried a story from The Times (London), headlined “Iran Warned Not to Shut Oil Route.” Well down in the story was the following paragraph: “The West has stepped up sanctions against Iran since the International Atomic Energy Agency published compelling evidence last month that it was pursuing nuclear weapons....” A similar claim made obliquely by The New York Times has been contested by FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) with the result that the public editor Arthur Brisbane agreed that his newspaper had been incorrect in referring to “a recent assessment by the International Atomic Energy Agency that Iran’s nuclear program has a military objective.” FAIR noted that the November report did not come to such a firm conclusion and that critics have questioned the evidence col ected by the Agency (see
3 Jacques El ul, Histoire de la propagande (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1967).
4 Brendan Bracken, Parliamentary Debates, Fifth Series, Vol. 401, 926.
5 Lewis Carrol , The Complete Illustrated Lewis Carroll (Ware, UK: Wordsworth Editions, 1996) 196.
6 Charles Stevenson, Ethics and Language (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1944) 210. It may be preferable to speak of “emotive force” or some such rather than “emotive meaning.”
7 Quoted in Douglas Walton, Media Argumentation: Dialective, Persuasion, and Rhetoric (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007) 112.
8 Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance, ed. Ian Small (London: A&E Black, 1993) Act I:19.
9 Harold Lasswell, Propaganda Technique in the World War (London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Tubner, 1927; New York: Alfred Knopf, 1927) 4.
10 Leonard Doob, Public Opinion and Propaganda, 2nd ed. (Hamden, CT: Archon, 1966) 240.
11 Jacques El ul, “Propagande,” Larousse, La Grande Encyclopédie (1975) 9888.
12 Bertrand Russell, Education and the Social Order (1932; London: George Allen and Unwin, 1967) 126. On
“party feeling,” see Richard Whately’s remarks in Chapter 4 of this book (p. 171 below).
13 Bruce L. Smith, “Propaganda,” Encyclopedia Britannica Macropedia (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1985).
14 Garth S. Jowett and Victoria O’Donnell, Propaganda and Persuasion (Beverley Hills: Sage Publications, 1986) 16.
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15 Alex Carey, Taking the Risk Out of Democracy: Corporate Propaganda versus Freedom and Liberty (Champaign, IL: University of Il inois Press, 1997) 20.
16 Edward Bernays, Crystallizing Public Opinion (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1923) 212.
17 Richard Taylor, Film Propaganda: Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany (London: Croom Helm, 1979) 28.
18 Vernon McKenzie, Through Turbulent Years (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1938).
19 Bracken 926.
20 See Forsyth Hardy, Grierson on Documentary (1946; New York: Praeger, 1971) 246.
21 For this point I am indebted to P. King, who commented on an exploratory paper dealing with this issue at the Ockham Society, Oxford University, March 7, 1988.
22 See Joel Rudinow, “Manipulation,” Ethics 88 (1978): 338–47.
23 David Halberstam describes a case like this in The Powers That Be (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1979) 115–16.
See also Upton Sinclair, The Brass Check (Pasadena, CA: 1920).
24 See Steve Butterfield, Amway: The Cult of Free Enterprise (Montreal and Buffalo: Black Rose Books, 1986).
“The test of all ‘truth’ in Amway is whether it strengthens the business and increases PV [point value]” (84).
25 The speech is recorded in the movie, Have I Ever Lied to You Before (National Film Board of Canada, 1976), which is about Jerry Goodis.
26 Naomi Klein, No Logo (Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000) passim.
27 Walton 117.
28 The interested reader is referred to Barry Allen, “A Note on the Definition of ‘Propaganda,’” The Canadian Journal of Rhetorical Studies 3 (September, 1993) 1–12.
29 William Lutz, Doublespeak (New York: HarperPerennial, 1990) 127–28.
30 George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia (1938; Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1962) 64.
31 See Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus, eds., The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, Vol. 1
(Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1970) 352. For identification of Pol itt’s position, see Bernard Crick, George Orwell: A Life (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1980) 314.
32 George Orwell, in Orwell and Angus, The Collected Essays, Vol. 2, ed. Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (1968; Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1970) 336.
33 Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Press, 1963) 50; Jean-Paul Sartre, “A Plea for Intellectuals,” Between Existentialism and Marxism (New York: Morrow Quill Paperbacks) 228–85, see, especially, 261.
34 Orwell, Homage to Catalonia 234, 236. It is worth noting that the original publication date of this text was 1938.
35 “Chrétien Would Scrap GST,” The Globe and Mail, October 29, 1990: 1.
36 The New York Ti
mes, August 19, 1988: A14.
37 George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1949) 45.
38 Orwell,
Nineteen Eighty-Four 31–32.
39 Orwell,
Nineteen Eighty-Four 200.
40 George Orwell, “A Farthing Newspaper,” G.K.’s Weekly, December 29, 1928.
41 George Orwell, “Boys’ Weeklies,” Collected Essays (London: Mercury Books, 1961) 110, 114 (emphasis added). I am reminded of the pseudoscientific displays in occupied France during World War II, in which were labelled parts of a face “the Jewish nose,” “the Jewish eye,” etc., precisely with the harmful effect al uded to by Orwell (on page 101) of treating a human being as an insect.
42 George Orwell, “Notes on Nationalism” Collected Essays (London: Mercury Books, 1961) 265–87, 275.
43 Orwell, “Notes on Nationalism” 275.
44 The irrationality of some of the Tea Party demands is nicely captured by Alex Himmelfarb in his description of: “... a now famous video of a Tea Partier holding a sign demanding that the government keep its hands off ‘my medicare.’ More recently, another protest photo shows a group of anti-taxers with a sign that reads:
‘Cut Taxes, not Defense.’” See Alex Himmelfarb, “Cutting Taxes Gives Us an Unjust Society, Not a Free Lunch,” The CCPA Monitor, November 2011,
cutting-taxes-gives-us-unjust-society-not-free-lunch>.
45 This phrase was used by an Air Force teacher to describe the religious section of their ethics training. See
“Air Force Cites New Testament, Ex-Nazi, to Train Officers on Ethics of Launching Nuclear Weapons,”
Truthout, July 27, 2011,
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46 Taki Oldham, (Astro)Turf Wars.
47 George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language,” Collected Essays 337–51.
48 See The New York Times, “Excerpts from Primer for Insurgents,” October 17, 1984. Soldier of Fortune Magazine (February 1985), republishing the manual, comments that “There is no specific direction to indicate that the term means kill, kidnap or simply relocate. Adherence to the basic philosophies presented would indicate the first choice would be the last one made by a guerilla leader concerned with his image among the people” (95-IA). But if “kill” is not a central part of the thinking, why the need for such extreme precautions?