Customer Reviews

Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes

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Published in 1965, this book is a significant, if creepy study of that oft-misunderstood concept of propaganda. The references are unfortunately dated, but the insights are valuable, especially given how much propaganda is ignored in American society, particularly. It's not an easy read by any means, mostly because he throws so much at you at once you're sort of left punch-drunk. He lays it all out forthrightly.

The most terrible revelation he offers is when he points out that the most informed individuals (in the sense of consuming the most media) are the most propagandized (but unaware of being so). This is why this book doesn't get more play -- it would put the Massive Media and the "public relations" (aka, propaganda industry) out of business if people understood their real social role.

The book is bleak, and leaves you reeling. But it does provide intellectual ammunition -- namely, critical thinking -- as a hopeful vaccination from propaganda, except for Ellul's statement that people who think propaganda doesn't affect them tend to be propagandized....

I guess the safest thing you can do is assume you are a victim of propaganda, and then deal with it by sorting out what opinions are genuinely yours, and what are the result of "conventional wisdom" and "common sense". The alternative is to pretend you're somehow immune.

Ellul takes a look at propaganda in its fullest and widest sense. Instead of trying to tinker with interesting but narrow experiments in mind manipulation, Ellul takes a view of propaganda from where it actually exists and springs forth in society and in history. He has a holistic theory of the workings and effects of the phenomenon.

And this is as it should be. After all, the propagandist is operating in full force right now, as he was in the 1960's when the book was written, and he is not using controlled labs to do it. He is doing it on a mass scale in real society and achieving results. Therefore a serious attempt to understand propaganda "in its actual place" and "as it is used" is valuable and enlightening. Ellul is not interested in "building" a technique for propaganda from the ground up, or in "proving" that it is possible. This much has already been done as evidenced by plain facts!! He is acknowledging what has already been achieved and is looking at these systems from many angles to determine their nature and tease out an understanding so we can know more what we are facing.

You will find many less than intuitive but fascinating notions in the book.

For instance: Education increases the ingestion of propaganda. In fact it is a prerequisite. It is no wonder Saddam Hussein worked to increase literacy in Iraq -- all the better to try to propagandize the people with words and mold them into a cohesive whole. Another idea: Democracies like the U.S. are very vulnerable to propaganda. In fact, this form of government makes propaganda all the more necessary, since you must work on people's minds more than their bodies (it is not a dictatorship.) People in democracies should expect to be heavily and relentlessly propagandized.

These are just a few samples of the many fascinating (and horrifying) ideas and insights in this volume.

One thing to note: Jacques Ellul is also a theologian and Christian, and he doesn't make much of a secret of that in his book or his other writings. I am not a Christian myself (I'm an atheist), but I frankly think Ellul's Christianity not only DOESN'T cloud Ellul's sharp powers of logic and observation, but it does him a bit of service in his examination of propaganda and its harmful effects on the human being. He makes few bones about the idea that propaganda has a tendency to separate man from himself and his true spirituality and/or personality. This he relates among the other harmful effects on the world at large in the form of exploitation and war.

All I can say is read this book: You'll never look at things the same way afterwards.

Jacques Ellul is meticulous and thoughtful, so this book is occasionally dense and hard to follow. In addition, most of the examples and allusions will strike modern Americans as dated and obscure. Nonetheless, Ellul saw long ago where moderns were headed. He saw that authoritarian use of modern technologies would mesmerize, stultify, and reduce humans to thralls, just as Orwell and Huxley, in far more hysterical prose, had dramatized.

Orwell's electronic miracles monitored citizens directly or indirectly. Huxley's miracles were far more therapeutic or medical. But routine surveillance or treatment is inefficient and overwhelms any state that would depend on omniscience or envelopment. Ellul foresaw tools both electronic and human that would so condition subject-audiences that close monitoring and careful prescriptions would be unneeded.

Ellul also argued that this "Brave, New World" could not but subvert democracy and decency. Once the will of the citizen is not his or her own, then democracy in any meaningful sense is at least devalued and perhaps transformed into reassuring internment.

Perhaps Ellul's most important insight was that the educated believed themselves immune to propaganda when, due to their proclivity for reading and watching news and other governmental outflow, such "intellectuals" were actually far more vulnerable than masses who did not receive propaganda as often.

So turn off the set and log off the internet and settle in with a truly life-changing read.

Ellul's study still stands out as one of the greatest achievements in the history of the study of propaganda, in terms of how it is practiced, how/why it is effective and how it is inescapable and tied to the very nature of democratic society. Ellul's picture is not a pretty one. He views propaganda as ultimately dehumanizing, necessary and inevitable at the same time. Propaganda, ANY propaganda, regardless of motives or veracity, serves to reduce the individual to function as a meaningless syphon. Whether one agrees with his conclusions or not, it is still a well-argued, compelling and frightening look and modern societies.

The biggest drawback is that the book published today is the same as that published in 1965 (Ellul died in 1994 and no real updated edition was ever produced), and the cases analyzed may seem obsolete, in that he focuses primarily on National Socialist, Maoist, Soviet and US cold war propaganda. But the analysis of is still second to none. For those familiar with the study of propaganda, Ellul's work was by far the most comprehensive and penetrating study of propaganda to that point. It was a HUGE and monumental advance from the previous research into propaganda of Bernays, Lambert, or Fraser. This book ought to be required reading for anyone who wishes to consider themselves even remotely literate or intelligent. Although one may not agree with all his conclusions, it nonetheless provides a compelling argument and portrait of modern man and how frighteningly easy it is to systematically 'persuade' him. Any thinking person cannot but attempt to be cognizant of how we are influenced.
This book is relevant for several reasons. 1) The student of history will appreciate the Ellul's examples. 2) The book analyzes what are, essentially, the beginnings of modern propaganda making it important for anyone studying the phenomenon. 3) Ellul breaks the phenomenon down into easily understood categories and places them in the context of the modern 'technological', urbanized society and what Ellul calls the predicament of modern man. 4) The research and sources that went into writing this book are as comprehensive as they could have been. 5) It provides an excellent explanation of much of 'modern life'. 6) Ellul was also an interesting writer and individual (simultaneously an Evangelist and Anarchist).


Again, the only real drawback is that some might find the examples obsolete and there are more recent studies of modern propaganda techniques, which have naturally advanced since from those used during the cold war. One would also be well served to read the more recent studies of propaganda by Chomsky, Cialdini (a more psychological approach), Jowett or Cunningham. I would still give Ellul's book more than 5 stars if I could.

Propaganda is a relatively recent phenomenon made possible by the channels of the mass media. In this work, Jacques Ellul analyzes propaganda in all its forms. He argues that propaganda is indeed effective, that it is indeed necessary, that it is indeed harmful to democracy, and that it need not be based on lies. It is precisely at this point that the dangers of propaganda become appparent because often the propaganda released is truthful in content. Propaganda is also necessary even for a government which claims to be a democracy (and yes the United States does engage in it on its citizens). Ellul examines the history of propaganda as it was used by Joseph Goebbels in Nazi Germany, Lenin and Stalin among the communists, and in the United States. In an appendix, he deals with scientific studies which have aimed at measuring propaganda's effectiveness, and with the propaganda of Mao in China (which includes the topic of "brainwashing", unfortunately not very developed in the text). He also discusses propaganda as put out by churches and concludes that a true Christianity cannot rely on propaganda. Also, the relation between propaganda and advertising is examined.

Overall this work is a thorough study of propaganda, although I wish that it had gone into further detail on the subject of "brainwashing".

Jacques Ellul is meticulous and thoughtful, so this book is occasionally dense and hard to follow. In addition, most of the examples and allusions will strike modern Americans as dated and obscure. Nonetheless, Ellul saw long ago where moderns were headed. He saw that authoritarian use of modern technologies would mesmerize, stultify, and reduce humans to thralls, just as Orwell and Huxley, in far more hysterical prose, had dramatized.

Orwell's electronic miracles monitored citizens directly or indirectly. Huxley's miracles were far more therapeutic or medical. But routine surveillance or treatment is inefficient and overwhelms any state that would depend on omniscience or envelopment. Ellul foresaw tools both electronic and human that would so condition subject-audiences that close monitoring and careful prescriptions would be unneeded.

Ellul also argued that this "Brave, New World" could not but subvert democracy and decency. Once the will of the citizen is not his or her own, then democracy in any meaningful sense is at least devalued and perhaps transformed into reassuring internment.

Perhaps Ellul's most important insight was that the educated believed themselves immune to propaganda when, due to their proclivity for reading and watching news and other governmental outflow, such "intellectuals" were actually far more vulnerable than masses who did not receive propaganda as often.

So turn off the set and log off the internet and settle in with a truly life-changing read.

I don't think I could have asked for a more precise and in-depth look at this topic. Each chapter went more and more into deep discussion about how propaganda is used, how it evolved, and how it is affecting the freedom of our own minds in the modern world. The book talks a lot about psychology itself, especially of groups and nations and how propaganda affects the lone, isolated individual most of all.

A few of the examples that Ellul uses here and there are rather "out of date" and very hard to follow if you don't have some foreknowledge about what event he may be discussing. This does not take away from the whole of the book however, events are presented only to show an example of a point, and only a few times are they hard to follow. This book has many examples, but the focus here is on the psychological analysis and of it and how propaganda works on people. If you want to just examples, read Chomsky's "Propaganda and the Public Mind," it is all examples with little analysis and I thought this book had more what I wanted.

Another thing to note, this book is very "full" there are an incredible amount of points made in each section. I don't think I have ever spent quite this amount of time making notes in and underlining things in a 313 page book. Those of you that like to read a book in a few hours or even a few days will probably have trouble doing that here, at least if you want to understand it on the level that I did.

Everyone needs to read this, it is a real eye opener in our day and time. When the other reviewers say it is mind blowing they are correct. I have read a few things of this nature in the past so it was not as much to me, but for a person new to this topic who thinks propaganda always comes from "the bad guy" or "the other guys," this would be a good introduction for them. I think if everyone read and understood this our society would probably shut down completely...

Like The Technological Society, this book is a wake-up call. It portrays the forces that are arrayed against us (humans) with chilling forthrightness. This should be required reading for all students of the media, politics, and anyone who wants to understand why and how such large numbers of people can do and believe the crazy things we see every day.

If one has read George Orwell's 1984 1984 (Signet Classics) you will have an idea of how powerful propaganda, or mind control, can be. An updated version of that is when one listens to or reads the daily news and the Orwellian doublethink that currently comes out of Washington (war is peace, etc). In his work, Propaganda, Ellul's analysis of propaganda as a tool of government control is unmatched, with the possible exception of Bernays' Propaganda Propaganda.

Ellul is a French writer and theorist, therefore verbose. However, if you get past that and think in terms of his analysis, a bleak picture of how the public is treated like so many cattle, can be drawn. We are inundated with information at an increasing and alarming rate on a daily basis. What is truth, what are lies and what is propaganda? As Ellul points out, propaganda is often a thinly veiled "story" - a combination of both truth and lies, about what some entity, whether it be government, advertising companies, the media, etc., want us to believe.

The story of bending minds to a single will is as old as history. We don't have to look much further than today to see it in action. Hitler, Stalin and Mao were masters of mind control. War makes it an absolute necessity for control over the populace. The problem is, as Ellul saw, that increasing technology makes it easier for the "controller", or propagandist, to do his or her work, which, as several have noted previously, obviously undermines the very basis of democracy.

This was one of the books I used when working on my Master's thesis in political science. However, I have read it since and it actually makes even more sense today. Read it, be afraid, but above all, be aware of what is going on in your name.

Ellul has written a marvelous volume on the topic of propaganda. He has covered every aspect of this political socialization machine that has been impregnating, manipulating, and corrupting our society with pseudo-ideologies, education, and attitudes in order to perpetuate complete control over the people by the elites and the propaganda masters.
Individualism, ideology, myth, literacy, and technology make the essence of this powerful and successful propaganda that brainwashes every recipient that is exposed to it. Ellul's book is mesmerizing as well as enlightening and would leave you spellbound and flabbergasted.
I would strongly recommend this book for every reader who is interested in comprehending the dynamics that mobilize our society and the strategies that form our attitudes.