Randal Marlin. The Oxford Handbook of Propaganda Studies. Editor: Jonathan Auerbach & Russ Castronovo. December 2013.
Jacques Ellul’s importance as a propaganda theorist shows no signs of diminishing since the publication of his major study, Propaganda, in 1965 (first published in French as Propagandes in 1962) or his death in 1994. What sets him apart from other propaganda theorists is the diversity of perspectives he brings to the subject. He attends to specific techniques of persuasion, and has made detailed studies of particular propaganda campaigns, but he also provides a bold, synthesizing analysis of propaganda as a specifically modern phenomenon, inseparably linked to technological society and threatening human freedom at its foundation. The depth and breadth of his preoccupation with the subject guarantees a central place for his thoughts in the study of propaganda.
Crucial for understanding and appraising his work properly is to relate it to context. Ellul sometimes works within accepted definitions of propaganda, explicitly or implicitly. At other times, he is concerned with reshaping our views about the nature of propaganda, arguing that it is a much more pervasive phenomenon than is commonly realized and issuing a wake-up call to heed its impact on our lives. One respect in which Ellul differs from many theorists of propaganda relates to the attention and importance he attaches to understanding the target of propaganda, the propagandee. Central to his understanding of propaganda is his perception of an individual’s especially strong need in modern society for self-identity and self-validation. He traces this isolation back to the breakdown of the old order that came with the French Revolution, preceded by advances in printing technology a few centuries earlier. Further nineteenth-century mass circulation media techniques continued the unsettling effects, with mass consciousness replacing a sense of rootedness in community (family, town, region, church).
The result of modernity, according to Ellul, is a thirst among deracinated psyches for reassurance, leaving a wide-open field for exploitation by experts in opinion manipulation. Modern propagandists, whether in advertising, public relations, or political campaigning, can easily exploit the desire among individuals in mass society for security, belonging, and the need to be well regarded by one’s peers.
We see today, for example, no less than in the time Ellul wrote, the existence of a form of journalism that succeeds by presenting a highly charged, emotional vision of national and international current events, together with a simplified view of history and contemporary reality. The reason Ellul gives for the success of this approach is that democracy requires people to be well informed, and a simplified worldview provides handy protective coloring for masking widespread ignorance. Believing mass-mediated versions of “truth” makes one less likely to be targeted as ignorant or perverse by the crowd.
Against this background, we can highlight some uniquely Ellulian insights into propaganda, as well as contributions that overlap with more conventional studies but which still have some claim to originality. It will help to divide his thought into different segments and deal with each one separately. We will consider in turn (1) definition, (2) pre-propaganda, (3) categories of propaganda, (4) relation to truth, (5) intellectuals and susceptibility to propaganda, (6) propaganda and democracy, and (7) propaganda and ethics.
Apparent inconsistencies within Ellul’s thinking challenge an overall assessment of his thinking. As already indicated, these contradictions can largely be explained by the context and purpose of his writings, but some difficulties still remain and will be dealt with in the course of what follows.
Definition
Ellul believed that propaganda in the full sense did not exist before the arrival of mass media of communication, of scientific advances in psychology and sociology, and the ability of power holders to affect people’s thinking in the context of uprooted and insecure individuals sharing a mass consciousness. This particular insight does not prevent him from defining propaganda in a way more consistent with accepted usage, as when he defines it as “a means of gaining power thanks to the support of psychologically manipulated groups or masses, or for using this power with support of the masses.” The reference to “groups” paves the way for treating long-standing persuasive techniques as propaganda and not just something merely resembling it. We need to see this broader definition as a concession to ordinary usage in the context of supplying a dictionary definition, even though at odds with his developed view that, without a root and branch transformation of the persuadee, there is no propaganda in the full sense.
As envisaged by Ellul, modern propaganda does indeed take over the whole character and consciousnesses of its targets. Propaganda in that sense is total. The most conspicuous example of such total propaganda emerged in Nazi Germany. Ellul witnessed the phenomenon of orchestration, reinforcement of Nazi ideology from many different media sources, in music, art, radio, cinema, posters, coins, speakers, demonstrations, exhibitions, and more. As a professor at the University of Strasbourg at the time of Nazi occupation, he cautioned his students against these influences and specifically against joining the Nazi military, saying French recruits would be sent to the Eastern front and would be killed. He was denounced by a student, lost his job, and spent the rest of the war secluded in a remote farm east of Bordeaux. Ironically, the student did join, was sent to the Eastern front, and was killed.
Added to the saturation of all the arts with Nazi ideology, there was the deliberate unsettling of people’s previous beliefs through the use of psychological methods involving terror. Random violence was used by the Nazis to instill fear in targeted groups so that their customary rational world would be replaced by uncertainty and irrationality, circumstances that favored abandoning any attempt at resistance. Rather than sustaining a natural resentment and resistance against the perpetrators of such random violence, the ordinary individual is pressured to recover from his or her dislocated world by joining those who seem to be in control. The individual thus wants to share the new ideology and, as a result, ends up willingly embracing it.
Given this conception of total propaganda, encompassing all the pertinent data supplied by social sciences regarding mind manipulation, one would expect a narrow definition of propaganda. In fact, Ellul covers a much broader compass. Focusing on the persuadee, he draws attention to the subtle psychological and sociological forces working on individuals in mass society to the detriment of individual autonomy and freedom. Some of these attempts may be deliberate and contrived, others may lack the visibility of Nazi controls but are not less effective; indeed, the very visibility of a propaganda source allows at least for internal mental resistance, whereas “sociological propaganda,” explained below, lacks an identifiable source that might be guarded against. To appreciate his argument, we need to examine the separate but related pillars upon which it rests.
Pre-Propaganda
As with rhetoric, propaganda must always appeal to some background beliefs or values held by the persuadee. For Ellul, propaganda in the fullest sense will need to attach itself to the deepest, life-guiding ideals. When these inner convictions are not suited to the propagandist’s goals, preparation in the form of pre-propaganda may be needed. Here, we need to introduce a central idea of Ellul’s, that of guiding myths. A myth, as he defines the concept, is something that shapes a person’s basic outlook on the world. It orders the world in a value-laden way but is accepted unquestionably by the myth holder. Those who think of “progress” as both good and inevitable, refusing to entertain possible critical evaluations of what is claimed to be progress, are examples of myth holders. For Ellul, the modern world was governed by two basic myths—that of history and materialism, which does not mean that history and materialism are in themselves myths. Rather, it means that they can become—and for many have become—mythical, in the way just described.
Against the background of these two basic myths, Ellul reflects on the many different myths governing life outlooks in different societies in the modern world. Among them we find myths of the Fuhrer, of Progress, of the Hero, of Youth, of the Nation, of Race, of Work, and even of Democracy. Each of these ideas can play a useful role in our thinking, but they become mythical when they dominate and even supplant thinking. We think of Nazi Germany in connection with the Race and Fuhrer myths, but Work (“Arbeit macht frei”) and Nation also had roles to play. The myth of Progress is well suited to Communist or Socialist forms of government, but it can also underlie Capitalist society, as can a mythified view of Democracy. More recently, it has become apparent that some economists view “the Free Market” in terms evocative of an Ellulian myth, as they oppose government regulation of financial institutions despite the existence of disaster-prone imperfections revealed in the financial crisis of 2008.
Ellul uses the word “sub-propaganda” (Fr. sub-propagande) as equivalent to “pre-propaganda” in places, and it should be borne in mind that the underlying myths continually support the more visible propaganda. Once myths have been accepted, it then becomes possible to utilize them to accomplish more immediate goals. Because the myths, by definition, are unquestioned, the propagandist has an easier time getting those under the spell of the myth to accept directives skillfully tied to those myths. We can understand this proclivity better when we focus on “sociological propaganda,” explained in the next section.
Categories of Propaganda
Ellul’s eightfold categorization of kinds of propaganda has deservedly received a lot of attention and constitutes a large part of the originality in his contribution to propaganda studies. The inspiration for his classification comes from his distinction between propaganda’s familiar attributes and a contrasting set of characteristics that people commonly do not recognize. Ellul provides an important service in drawing attention to these less evident features of propaganda, although the question remains whether, in so extending his observations about the phenomenon of propaganda, he has not widened the scope of the term to unmanageable proportions. Ellul himself recognizes this problem but seems more interested in pursuing his insights about the general phenomenon of propaganda than in giving ironclad justifications for his terminological choices.
We need to pay attention to his central thesis that propaganda is a total phenomenon and something that transforms an individual’s personality. From this insight, we are led to see the different strands of influence that shape this transformation and to call them characteristics of propaganda by virtue of their close and often essential connection to what is clearly recognizable as propaganda.
Ellul provides us with two sets of contrasting pairs of four categories. As commonly conceived, propaganda is (1) political, in the sense that it is organized by a definite group, to affect a definite target and for definite aims (Ellul 1973, 62); (2) agitational, in the sense that it gets people to act, stirring them to revolt, for example; (3) vertical, in the sense of being directed from a few people at the top to affect the actions of the masses at the bottom of a chain of command; and (4) irrational, in the sense of appealing to myths and emotions rather than to facts and reason. These four characteristics easily come to mind when we think of propaganda in a dictatorial society, that of the Nazis being a prime example. Since these four categories are easily recognized, there is no great need to expand on these short descriptions.
The four less familiar categories of propaganda are, respectively, (1) sociological propaganda, which does not start with a definite group influencing others to achieve clearly defined goals but is transmitted more or less unwittingly, as something presupposed rather than stated; (2) integration propaganda, aimed at giving cohesion to a group rather than stirring up division and revolt; (3) horizontal propaganda, in which group leaders interact with the masses in a way that gives the appearance of equality and nondomination; and (4) rational propaganda, influencing people with facts and figures rather than by an overt emotional appeal.
Political and Sociological Propaganda
According to Ellul’s notion of sociological propaganda, instead of some group spreading an ideology to influence others, the direction is to some extent reversed, so that “[t]he existing economic, political, and sociological factors progressively allow an ideology to penetrate individuals or masses” (Ellul 1973, 63). The makers of motion pictures, advertisers, public relations practitioners, those involved in “human engineering,” all may be instilling an ideology in their audiences, without consciously intending to do so. For example, Ellul thought American movie-makers of the 1950s may not have had a propagandistic purpose, but they nevertheless produced films extolling the American way of life. As with all sociological propaganda, the influence of this pro-American imagery was diffuse, gradual, and imperceptible, lacking the appearance of propaganda, but it progressively took hold of people’s judgments. The same imagery can be seen as providing a bedrock foundation for future appeals to American exceptionalism in world politics. The point at which a film is made with the deliberate intention of swaying the masses is the point where sociological propaganda crosses over into the more overt political kind.
Movies made with a deliberate propagandistic purpose, such as Mrs. Miniver, Triumph of the Will, or Red Nightmare, occupy the category of political propaganda. But the dividing line separating the two kinds of propaganda can be a fine one. J. Arthur Rank’s highly successful series of movies with Ealing Studios, with their favorable image of the British way of life, suggest a fit with sociological propaganda. But some of Rank’s statements suggest that he deliberately set out to promote the British way of life with his films, to counteract Hollywood influences. At this point, Ellul concludes that Rank crossed over into political propaganda (Ellul 1973, 67). It seems best to allow that the two categories of propaganda can coexist in the same film, or in communication more generally.
For Ellul, what makes sociological propaganda important is that the “influences follow the same stereotypes and prejudices as [political] propaganda; they stir the same feelings and act on the individual in the same fashion” (Ellul 1973, 65). His central concern is the effect propaganda has on our lives, and he rightly sees the loss of autonomy brought about by political propaganda as mirrored in the case of sociological propaganda. The latter also shares some characteristics of total propaganda reminiscent of Nazi Germany. “It conditions, it introduces a truth, an ethic in various benign forms, which, although sporadic, end by creating a fully established personality structure.” The difference is that sociological propaganda is “inadequate in a moment of crisis” (66). But he believed that sociological propaganda prepares the ground for political propaganda, which is then easily grafted onto it.
Whether one is French, British, American, or another nationality, the effect of nationalistic, sociological propaganda is the same. Those who have absorbed it believe their nation has reached the highest stage of civilization. They then make value judgments based on this belief and think that what is un-French, un-British, un-American, or the like is necessarily evil. If Ellul’s idea here seems far-fetched, a look at discourse prevalent in times of fear, apprehension, and conflict, as during the McCarthy hearings in the United States in the early 1950s, should vindicate his claim. A lot of post-9/11 discourse also is of this sort, in which exploration of possible motives for the terrorist attacks on U.S. territory tended to exclude anything that would attribute fault to the United States for previous military actions in the Middle East.
Although Ellul has a special category of “agitation propaganda” to be described, he still brings into his discussion of sociological propaganda the existence of agitators in the United States who target insecure groups not yet fully integrated into the national life—new immigrants, demobilized soldiers, those struggling economically, for example. The agitator foments hatred against Communists, Blacks, Jews, and foreigners, without it being clear exactly whose interests are being promoted. The influence of such agitators “may crystallize suddenly in unexpected forms” (Ellul 1973, 69). Here, it is essential to bear in mind the extent to which deliberate, clearly-thought-out, defined goals are absent from this agitation; otherwise, we would be leaving the realm of the sociological for the political, in Ellul’s terms. This part of his discussion has a contemporary flavor, considering the continuing prevalence of such agitation on the Internet today.
As with the case of films, there is a crossover point into the political. Big business may find it convenient to harness such agitators to promote antipathy toward government, skepticism about climate change, opposition to regulation, and confusion about causes of economic dislocation. The film by Larrikan Films titled (Astro) Turf Wars (renamed Th e Billionaires’ Tea Party, 2010) shows some of the corporate backing for groups going under the Tea Party banner, “Americans for Prosperity,” as one such among many examples of agitation. Many frustrated victims of economic dislocation may appeal to different myths and stereotypes without knowing how to translate them into effective action. These people are easy targets for manipulation by those who do have the expertise and PR skills to make the links between myths and action, but whose interests may be diametrically opposed to those they appear to be assisting.
Although Ellul gives us good reason to guard against those myths, stereotypes, and prejudices that constitute what he calls “sociological propaganda,” he leaves us with a category that is potentially so broad as to threaten its serviceability for rigorous study of propaganda. Are we to include under this category all the generally shared foundational beliefs of any given society at any given time? One answer might be to include under “sociological propaganda” only those beliefs that seem dubious, ill-founded, or wrong. This would make the term clearly normative, but insofar as the term “propaganda,” in one established sense, already is normatively negative, that would not constitute an objection.
Without the element of conscious agency and intention, the definition of “propaganda,” when extended to include sociological propaganda, does seem in danger of losing coherence and perhaps thereby muddying discourse about propaganda generally. But using the term in Ellul’s extended way opens our minds to some useful insights. Unless and until some more lasting solution to this problem is found, the proposal here is to use the term “sociological propaganda” in a guarded way to preserve those insights.
Agitation and Integration Propaganda
The second contrasting pair of propaganda categories is that of agitation as against integration. Agitation propaganda is highly visible and seeks to subvert an existing government, undermine internal enemies of a government, or rally against an external enemy. Agitation propaganda creates a sense of excitement, summoning an individual from a humdrum life into one of adventure, asking people to give their utmost for a specified cause in circumstances of crisis (real, imagined, or created by the agitation itself). The problem with agitation propaganda is that it is difficult to maintain people for long at the “highest level of sacrifice, conviction, and devotion” (Ellul 1973, 72). Hatred is one emotion found most useful for promoting propaganda of agitation, as seen with Hitler’s repeated attacks on Jews, Stalin’s on Kulaks, and with Allied depictions of Japanese and Germans in the Second World War. In George Orwell’s satirical novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, regular hate-fests are ordered but against changing targets and with rewritten historical narratives justifying the hate. The simplicity of agitation propaganda means that it will feed on itself as each convert in turn affects others (74). It is especially suited to the less-educated and economically disadvantaged segments of the population.
In contrast to agitation propaganda, integration propaganda seeks conformity. It tries to achieve uniformity in a society, in which “each member should be only an organic and functional fragment of it, perfectly adapted and integrated.” It seeks to have the population sharing “the stereotypes, beliefs, and reactions of the group.” This propaganda is “more extensive and complex than propaganda of agitation” and has to be “permanent, for the individual can no longer be left to himself” (Ellul 1973, 75). It is not limited to government, and corporations can engage in it. A good illustration of this kind of propaganda can be found in Roland Barthes’s discussion of a cover of Paris Match (June 26-July 3, 1955), where a young Black soldier is shown with glistening upward-gazing eyes saluting what is presumably the French flag. The message conveyed is that people have reason to take pride in being French and that all is well with French rule in the colonies. Once again, the problem of whether to classify this magazine cover as an example of sociological or political propaganda arises. It seems clear that at least Barthes sees enough deliberateness and intentionality to warrant viewing it as political.
Ellul considers integration propaganda the most important concern in modern times, engaging as it does in the “total molding of the person in depth” (Ellul 1973, 76). This is the kind of propaganda that works well on the more “comfortable, cultivated, and informed” segments of the population. Such people can be found making use of stereotypes and myths such as Technology, Nation, and Progress, even when they are opposed to their country’s involvement in war, as with the French and their involvement in Algeria. In such cases, a problem arises for a society emerging from a successful revolution. Previously encouraged hatreds and habits of violence remain and make integration difficult. A “New Order” needs to be advertised to bring previous opponents into collaboration with the new state. Ellul blamed Patrice Lumumba’s “unrestrained” propaganda against the Belgians in the Congo in 1959 for making impossible the cooperation needed to restore order, although Belgian conduct toward the Congolese both prior and subsequent to Lumumba’s becoming prime minister of an independent Congo would likely have made exercising such restraint difficult or impossible.
Chinese communism supplied Ellul with a contrasting example in which both kinds of propaganda were used simultaneously, thus smoothing the transition to postrevolutionary society. Under Mao, those who entered the army became subject to “political education,” thereby making them more receptive to the new society following victory.
Between the two types of propaganda, it was clear to Ellul that the propaganda of integration used by the French was no match for the agitation used by the Front de Liberation Nationale (FLN) in the Algerian war for independence. The latter spread the message that unhappiness was caused by French rule and that overthrowing this rule would bring freedom. Further, the FLN proclaimed that it would come to the aid of the Algerian people, solving all their problems. Countering the FLN appeal with the attractiveness of the French way of life proved ineffectual.
Vertical and Horizontal Propaganda
With the third contrasting pair, vertical versus horizontal propaganda, we once again start with a familiar form of propaganda. Vertical propaganda is what we commonly think of: a leader who tries to influence the crowd from a position of authority, above the rest. Targets of this kind of propaganda are passive, depersonalized, and react to suggestion at a meeting in a quasi-hypnotic way, as in a kind of conditioned reflex. The propagandee will come to act vigorously on behalf of the cause and ideology imparted to him or her, but in a mechanized response, despite the targets’ belief that their response is autonomous (Ellul 1973, 80). The targeted individual becomes part of, and indistinguishable from, the rest of the crowd. The effects of this propaganda are not long-lasting, however, and, in that way, contrast with horizontal propaganda.
Ellul sees horizontal propaganda as much more recent, although one might wonder whether he is thinking, in 1962, simply against the backdrop of the Second World War, since early Soviet propaganda often seemed to fit this category. Two familiar forms are Chinese propaganda and group dynamics. Here, the propaganda is made with a given group and does not come from above. It is led by an animator who purports to be on an equal footing with the rest but who supplies skewed information, designed to lead the group to a given conclusion. Individuals in the group are not passive. They speak out, but in connection with ideas and facts that tend in a certain direction, the one desired by the leader. Frequent meetings may be required to impart specific ideas and messages to the group. For propaganda to be firmly instilled, the operation has to proceed at a slow pace. A very large organization is needed to have a leader in each of the small groups, optimal size being about fifteen to twenty people. The groups should be homogeneous regarding age, sex, class, and environment, to avoid divisiveness that would act as a distraction. The family stands in the way of such homogeneity, and, in the case of communist China, government officials felt it necessary to take people out of the family milieu for purposes of instilling propaganda. Ellul sees Western families as less cohesive and providing less of a barrier to such propaganda.
A further feature of horizontal propaganda is that it is always presented as education. Whether in communist or capitalist society, it can take place in schools, with the aim of making children adapt to their society.
Although difficult to convey and enact, this form of propaganda has strong staying power because members of the group are constantly reinforcing it, and because it offers individuals the opportunity to express themselves regularly.
Irrational and Rational Propaganda
That propaganda should trade on myth and irrationality fits the common conception of propaganda. That there should be a category of rational propaganda needs explaining, however. Surely scientific evidence is of the kind that has objective validity and advances our knowledge? That’s not something we commonly think of as propaganda. Nevertheless, Ellul rightly makes room for such a category, because much that is presented in the form of scientific proof is often deliberately manipulated to give false impressions.
A prime example is the use of opinion polls to mislead a public. Let’s say the issue is one of passing legislation to control the irresponsible behavior of one’s own country’s mining companies abroad. A bill is drafted and it looks like it might succeed. To defeat the bill, one strategy is to devise an opinion poll asking people whether they would prefer some improved version of the bill. The “improved” version might be politically impossible to achieve, but pollsters don’t reveal this. The opinion poll then shows that a majority of people oppose the bill as drafted, and politicians feel they can safely vote against it. The poll seems to be objective and scientific, and presumably it is, to the extent of following good polling procedures. But the questions themselves are framed to produce a predetermined result.
Statistics and figures designed to impress without imparting genuine understanding are also common. G. K. Chesterton once wrote that the blackest of all lies can consist entirely of truths, but so selected as to give a wrong impression. An elaborate array of scientific evidence can be used to show that some ore sample is high in gold content. But such proofs are misleading if the ore sample sent for testing was “salted” and the blue ribbon scientists don’t mention that the sample handed to them by a mining company was not independently checked.
When Ellul wrote Propaganda in the early 1960s, he could say that people were increasingly seeking factual information as distinct from emotional forms of persuasion. He noted that even Hitler often made use of factual material in his propaganda. More and more, propaganda takes the form of information, he wrote (Ellul 1973, 85).
Today, it may still be true that people seek factual information, but it appears that the masses have no great desire to dig deeply into the evidential weight and force of such information. The term “truthiness” has gained currency, to indicate putative factual evidence that has the ring of truth to average ears, without actually being true. Talk show hosts thrive on truthiness. Sometimes, alleged facts with a high degree of truthiness will outweigh genuine truth in the matter of persuasion. Napoleon’s comment, that the truth is not half as important as what people believe to be true, applies here.
People tend to be impressed when information is presented that seems scientific because of the arcane terms used and the proliferation of mathematical numbers and symbols that they don’t understand. It can be pure mumbo-jumbo, but it may be effective from a propaganda standpoint. In advertising a car, a whole lot of technical information may be provided, impressing a customer who does not really comprehend the significance of the data (86).
As Ellul writes, an individual can retain one item of information, but when presented with a hundred items of information, a person can neither remember, coordinate, nor understand them. What remains is an impression, the one a skillful propagandist desires to impart. The individual is dependent on factual information for forming opinions, but overloading with factual information ends up depriving him or her of genuine choice. Rational propaganda lands its targets in an irrational situation, leaving them with spurious autonomy.
Truth
As commonly understood, propaganda involves deception, but Ellul argues forcefully that messages spread by a propagandist are not necessarily false. In fact, as he notes, skilled propagandists such as Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Minister of Propaganda, were concerned to be accurate on factual matters, to avoid being caught in a lie and thereby losing credibility.
Often, the aim is to get a targeted population to think of one set of facts with a view to distracting attention from other facts that the propagandist wants to obscure. German propagandists reminded the French of the many times the British had been their enemy and frequently made sure to mention the British scuttling of the French fleet at Mers-el- Kebir, killing over a thousand young Frenchmen. With such examples, there is no need to lie, and the truth (although not the whole truth) is likely to be more successful.
When facts work against the interests of a propagandist, it is usually better to conceal them rather than lie about them. Ellul estimates that about a fifth of Goebbels’s wartime directives to the press were orders simply to be silent about certain facts instead of inventing lies to counteract them.
As Ellul observes, the truth pays off in the realm of facts, but deception still remains in the area of intentions and interpretations (Ellul 1973, 53). Obviously, the strategy of distraction has to be concealed, for otherwise the target audience would resist succumbing to it.
Ellul’s example of how different interpretations are placed on the same factual occurrences is insightful and still resonates. He writes (57, footnote):
All bombings by the enemy are acts of savagery aimed only at civilian objectives, whereas all bombings by one’s own planes are proof of one’s superiority, and they never destroy anything but military objectives.
One thinks of the current expression “collateral damage” used to partly sanitize bombing operations in which innocent civilians are killed. The expression has a sanitizing effect because it could apply merely to property damage.
Truth, understood philosophically as correspondence between statement and reality, has less of a role to play in connection with propaganda analysis than related terms such as honesty, candor, sincerity, and the like. A person of honesty and integrity will not state facts damaging to a person’s character without adding other facts that would restore this character if he or she is aware of such. The propagandist selects those facts that bolster the objective sought and conceals those that count against it, such as the circumstances requiring the British to act at Mers-el-Kebir. As Ellul writes: “The propagandist automatically chooses the array of facts which will be favorable to him and distorts them by using them out of context” (Ellul 1973, 56, footnote).
Ellul also draws attention to the propaganda practice of meshing moral judgment with factual claims. The factual claims may be dubious, but combining the alleged facts with a strident moral denunciation shifts attention away from the question as to whether the factual assumptions are accurate. Moral judgments making use of intention-imputing words, such as “murder,” can conceal the fact that the intentions thus imputed may not be factually accurate.
Ellul makes it clear in the final analysis that he views propaganda as necessarily connected to untruth of some kind: “Propaganda is necessarily false when it speaks of values, of truth, of good, of justice, of happiness—and when it interprets and colors facts and imputes meaning to them” (Ellul 1973, 59).
His reasoning is that the kinds of things dealt with in propaganda would require qualification to be presented truthfully. That the United States of America stands for freedom is one such idea, and, within limits, it can be defended (how successfully being a debatable matter). But “[w]hen the United States poses as a defender of liberty—of all, everywhere and always—it uses a system of false representation” (Ellul 1973, 60). Similarly when the Soviet Union posed as a defender of true democracy: simplicity and exaggeration help the aim of propaganda, but not the cause of truth.
Intellectuals and Susceptibility to Propaganda
Like Jean-Paul Sartre and Noam Chomsky, thinkers whose ideas in many ways differ significantly from his, Ellul was distrustful of intellectuals’ ability to withstand propaganda. For Sartre, social conditioning in a class system where intellectuals are well rewarded favors their acceptance and perpetration of propaganda sustaining that system. Chomsky notes how government and corporations that together make up the military-industrial complex supply vast sums of research money to universities. Those accepting this funding will naturally be inclined to go along with the propaganda of fear and threats of war, insofar as it drives the funding from which they benefit.
Ellul’s analysis is tied more to the psychology of the intellectual and the effect of the social milieu on his or her thinking. Whereas Sartre and Chomsky’s arguments are suited to exposing susceptibility to Right-wing propaganda, Ellul is conscious of propaganda from both the Right and the Left. So, starting from the acquisition of literacy, Ellul observes that the liberating effect of reading depends on the kinds of things that are available for reading. Reading is not so liberating when the messages available to the newly literate mainly have to do with propaganda in support of a communist state.
The intellectual is especially vulnerable by misconceiving propaganda to be falsehoods that an educated person should be able to detect. Being educated, the intellectual thinks him- or herself immune. But, for Ellul, this supposed immunity is far from the case. We have seen that propaganda is not tied necessarily to factual falsehoods. What often matters is where one directs one’s attention, what facts one chooses to see. The intellectual is trained to be sensitive to the spirit of universalism, and when confronted with rebellion by a colonized people of a different race or ethnicity, he or she will seek reconciliation with the rebel leaders and will tend to legitimate the rebellion. The intention would be all well and good, but the influence of propaganda encourages the intellectual’s unwillingness to look at critical complexities. Ellul writes:
This universalism also leads to a totally unreal, abstract and ideological way of conceiving possibilities of reconciliation, without taking account of the multiplicity of facts and exigencies restricting action.
Intellectuals are guided by myths, but often, as in the case of the myth of progress, differently interpreted. Intellectuals are particularly sensitive to the values of reason, fairness, justice, equality, democracy, self-determination, and the like. Propaganda that appeals to these values has a good chance of success with them. Propaganda by the FLN of Algeria in the years leading up to 1962 rested exclusively, Ellul claims, on the values of independence of peoples, social justice, and antiracism. Intellectuals were swayed by these values without considering whether independence was likely to lead to more oppression, more social injustice, and retaliation. The French government’s appeal to the greatness of France and the 100-year occupation exerted no strong countervailing force against FLN propaganda.
The intellectuals’ skepticism, part of a tradition of doubt beginning with Descartes, induces the intellectual to discredit official government versions of facts and events. When the French government was found to have lied about involvement in torture, FLN propaganda had an easy time persuading people not to believe other government claims.
Ellul’s portrayal of intellectuals as following fashionable values of a given time, and of being under the sway of FLN propaganda, no doubt alienated him from them, and his popularity never reached the heights achieved in the United States. But his remarks stand up well against the most conspicuous intellectual of his time. Sartre’s distrust of intellectuals was class-oriented. He felt that intellectuals, as part of the ruling class, were only “pseudo-intellectuals” if they were not self-critical of the ideology instilled within them by the system. He advocated that a genuine intellectual should automatically give support for whatever actions a united group of oppressed people might choose to make (wildcat strikes, for example). Sartre’s unqualified and enthusiastic support for the violence of the FLN showed a poor grasp of historical and sociological reality in Ellul’s view.
Propaganda and Democracy
Ellul is a strong proponent of democracy but very conflicted when it comes to accepting a proper role for propaganda within a democracy. The value of democracy is found in the respect for persons in a system whereby all individuals have a chance to make their views known and to vote for representatives in whom they have confidence, to form a governing body. Actual systems of government said to be democratic do not always fit the ideal. Perhaps good people do not put themselves forward for election and Plato’s insight holds, that the fate of good people is then to be governed by inferiors. A big deterrent to running for office is the extent to which media will engage in personally derogatory remarks, thus dissuading people who value their reputations. Ellul was aware of the modern replacement of words by images, but in theorizing about propaganda and democracy, he focuses on the difficulty of making complex decisions in harmony with public opinion.
The problem of democratic governance in the modern world of communications was well recognized early in the twentieth century by Walter Lippmann. The world is too complex for the ordinary person to understand. It requires highly skilled, knowledgeable reporters to interpret the world to the ordinary person. Several factors stand in the way of achieving satisfactory communication. One has to do with the economics of publishing. Informed and knowledgeable writers on law, economics, or other specialized areas command high salaries. But readers of mass circulation media often lack the ability to appreciate in-depth commentary and would prefer a simplified version of complex events. Some high-salaried people in electronic media gain popularity based not on their depth of insight but on their entertainment value, which can encompass glibness, quickness of wit, and often verbal bullying.
More importantly, today, there is bias in media ownership, an issue constantly raised and explored by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky with the “propaganda model” expounded in their Manufacturing Consent. When conglomerates, including corporations with strong involvement in the production of military weaponry, own a large section of the mass media, it can be expected that the media will give favorable treatment to large government expenditures on such weaponry. Ellul saw the mass media as, in effect, a part of technological society’s propensity toward technological self-augmentation.
Yet another impediment to democracy, for Ellul, lies with the general population, for reasons that have already been described. People feel the obligation to be knowledgeable, but they don’t have the time to do their own investigations of complex societal problems, so they rely on the mass media to come up with a version of events that is accepted, perhaps for no other reason than that the version is widely propounded by the mass media. Not having their beliefs rooted in a deep understanding, the masses are fickle and can easily be swayed to contrary opinions, much as George Orwell described in Nineteen Eighty-four.
Very reluctantly, Ellul concludes that, even in democracies, governments may need to engage in propaganda as a way of keeping public opinion stable long enough to pursue necessary objectives. This necessity is particularly true when a democratic country is threatened with attack by another state, or when subversive forces are at work within, perhaps in conjunction with a foreign power. What he poses is a classic dilemma: either a democracy does not engage in propaganda, in which case it will be overcome from without or subverted from within by those who do make use of propaganda, or a democracy does engage in propaganda, defeating the threatening powers, but in the process becoming itself undemocratic in its methods.
This stark formulation has its uses, reminding one of the dangers of a simplistic “we must never engage in propaganda” or “of course we should engage in propaganda” attitude. Having lived under Nazi occupation following very feeble French prewar propaganda, Ellul fully understood the need to make compromises regarding democratic ideals. In conversation with the author, he gave an example of the kind of compromise that might have been made prior to the Second World War. When the Spanish Civil War ended, there were active groups in France who could have served the cause of anti-Nazism very well, but they died out following Franco’s victory. Had the French government subsidized the publications of the networks of the Left, they would have been a powerful base for anti-Nazi resistance.
It seems possible that Ellul’s example might be used to defend the U.S. government’s support, through secret Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) funding of the magazine Encounter, an influential anticommunist publication that helped to turn people against Stalinism. The magazine became discredited when the funding was revealed in Ramparts, a Left-wing publication in the late 1960s. Alternatively, it could be argued that circumstances in the 1960s were different from the prewar period or the immediate postwar collision with the Soviet Union, and that furthering the Cold War mentality supported militarism and the ill-fated Vietnam War.
It would be wrong, in presenting Ellul’s ideas, to dwell on the particular possibilities of compromise. His main targets are those who underestimate the power of propaganda, given the psychosocial techniques made available by modern science to those who can afford them, and on the other side, those who capitulate too easily to such powers. Propaganda can and will take over and redefine the human being but only if people are willing to let it do so by readily acceding to the myths and commonplaces of the age.
Yes, the mechanisms of propaganda can work effectively on us, but only if we let them. They work on our needs and our laziness, our need to be reassured, to have ready explanations for things, to be in agreement with others. They will not work if we have the extraordinary courage to admit that we are torn apart, that we don’t have ready explanations, that we are uncertain about the future. “If we accept this difficult condition of the human, we will deprive propaganda of one of its surest means.”
Propaganda and Ethics
Curiously, Ellul’s major work on propaganda has little to say directly about the ethics of propaganda. He treats it dispassionately, as a social scientist rather than an ethicist, so that propaganda appears as amoral, rather than as something fundamentally immoral. The amoral aspect is consistent with his acknowledgment that propaganda may be necessary to preserve freedom and orderly government, just as it can be used for the opposite purpose. Yet we have seen that Ellul’s dominant view of propaganda is as something morally negative. He sees it as taking over and directing the essential being of propagandees, undermining their freedom and autonomy. Propaganda, if justified at all, would have to appeal to well-known arguments applied to “dirty hands” situations, in which one’s range of options is of necessity limited and all of those options are in situations normally considered immoral. In such a situation, the choice of the “least worst” (as it is sometimes called) option can get a relative ethical justification.
Ellul addressed the ethics of propaganda in an article published in 1981, “The Ethics of Propaganda: Propaganda, Innocence and Amorality.” At the conclusion of this essay he discusses the nature of ethics, making it clear that moral existence is only possible “with reference to others, in dialogue and in reciprocal participation in a common life. All ethics is necessarily an ethics of encounter.” Ethics dies when it “becomes a rigid law imposed from without.” Propaganda “substitutes for this relationship a sort of collectivity, where each person remains completely alone and yet still belongs to a collective mass, where there are no interiorizations of a law, where behaviors stem from an external impetus, from a manipulation of which man remains completely unconscious” (1981: 174-175). Propaganda thus appears as the antithesis of morality, so why not call it immoral?
If propaganda is total, then it carries with it a self-enclosed system with its own morality. Moral criticism of that system does not effectively reach those who are within its protective walls because of a difference in fundamental moral principles. It would be like going to a court of law in the United States and arguing on the basis of Soviet legal principles. So it would make sense for Ellul to argue on an amoral plane on the basis of a need to reach people who were not attuned, in a world dominated by propaganda myths. In the 1950s and early 1960s, positivism was a dominating force, and, to influence an audience, appeals to scientific arguments were needed. By adopting a scientific stance and treating propaganda as amoral, Ellul was able to reach a readership that would have turned away from an explicitly moral treatment of the subject. But he was able to communicate the moral message against propaganda indirectly, leaving unstated the idea that undermining our freedom and autonomy is bad.
Ellul makes it clear that he believes that the means chosen have a role in defining the ends and should not be separated from them. But recall that we have been speaking of propaganda as immoral on the basis of treating it as total. If we allow, as Ellul must do, that there are actions that are commonly called propaganda that stop short of trying to take over a person’s whole outlook to life, then we may find cases where propaganda in this attenuated sense does not always exclude respect for the freedom and integrity of the other. And so we may reasonably argue for the morality or immorality of a given case of propaganda activity on a case-by-case basis, rather as moralists have treated acts of lying.
In an early work, he cautions against a one-sided view of propaganda: “Once again, we must avoid constructing what all propaganda presents us with: a Manichean world with white on one side, black on the other; good on one side, bad on the other—on one side sound information, on the other diabolical propaganda. The reality of the devil lies in having created ambiguity.”
It is not surprising that Ellul chose not to concentrate on this aspect of propaganda ethics. The much bigger fish to fry pertained to the different myths that have captured so much of the modern human being’s mass consciousness, undermining his or her identity. It is the main aim and accomplishment of Ellul’s contribution to propaganda studies that he takes us from a relatively superficial view of propaganda to a very deep understanding of it, crossing all kinds of political, ideological, and geographical boundaries and bringing us smack up against its existential dimension.
Conclusion
Ellul’s explorations of many specific aspects of propaganda have value independently of their connection with his larger efforts to analyze the condition of the modern human as highly propagandized. The notion that propaganda must be total to be considered properly as propaganda and the idea that there are all-encompassing myths dominating our thinking also have a valuable role to play in alerting us to many unexamined preconceptions, but critical examination of both of these and Ellul’s claims about them is likely to leave us wondering whether the myths in question have quite the dominance that he attributes to them. Perhaps it is Ellul himself who can take credit for our skepticism about his claims, since the critically assessed myth loses its dominance by virtue of that very critical examination.