Ellul ''states that, in his view, propaganda is today a greater 'danger' to mankind than any of the other more grandly advertised threats hanging over the human race. His super-analysis ends with a warning, not a prophecy.''
Jacques Ellul (1912-1994), a French sociologist, was Professor Emeritus of Law and of the History and Sociology of Institutions at the University of Bordeaux.
''To warn him of his weakness is not to attempt to destroy him, but rather to encourage him strengthen himself. I have no sympathy with the haughty aristocratic intellectual who judges from on high, believing himself invulnerable to the destructive forces of his time, and disdainfully considers the common people as cattle to be manipulated, to be molded by the action of propaganda. . . . That having suffered, felt, and analyzed the impact of the power of propaganda on myself, having been time and again, and still being, the object of propaganda, I want to speak of it as a menace which threatens the total personality.'' (xvii)
'Menace threatens the total personality' - What would Ellul say now? Threatens the total society? Total world culture?
Chapter 1 - The Characteristics of Propaganda
1. External Characteristics
2. Internal characteristics
3. Categories of Propaganda
Chapter 2 - The Conditions for the Existence of Propaganda
1. The Sociological Conditions
2. Objective Conditions of Totsl Propaganda
Chapter 3 - The Necessity of Propaganda
1. The State's Necessity
2. The Individual's Necessity
Chapter 4 - Psychological Effects of Propaganda
Chapter 5 - The Socio-Political Effect
1. Propaganda and Ideology
2. Effects on the Structure of Public Opinions
3. Propaganda and Grouping
4. Propaganda and Democracy
Appendix 1 - Effectiveness of Propaganda
Appendix 2 - Mao Tse-tung's Propaganda
1. The War: From 1926 to 1949
2. Since 1949
3. Brainwashing
''Central to Ellul's thesis, is that modern propaganda cannot work without ''education'': he thus reverses the widespread notion that education is the best prophylactic against propaganda. On the contrary, he says, education, or what usually goes by that word in the modern world, is the absolute prerequisite for propaganda.''
Education opens the mind to - ''propaganda''!
''In fact, education is identical with what Ellul calls ''pre-propaganda'' - the conditioning of minds vast amounts of incoherent information, already dispensed for ulterior purposes and posing as ''facts'' and as ''education''. (vi)
''Facts'' are only true when ''education'' says they are.
Therefore - ''The 'need' for propaganda on the part of the ''propagandee'' is one of the most powerful elements of Ellul's thesis. Cast out of the disintegrating micro groups of the past, such as family, church, or village, the individual is plunged into mass society and thrown back on his own inadequate resources, his isolation, his loneliness, his ineffectuality.'' (vi)
'Alienated in a world he never made'
''Propaganda then hands him in veritable abundance what he needs: a 'raison d'être', personal involvement and participation in important events, an outlet and excuse for some of his more doubtful impulses, righteousness - all factious, to be sure, all more or less spurious.'' (vii)
News addict.
''The citizen of a modern state pays more taxes than the most heavily taxed people in pre-Napoleonic times the subject was forced to pay, whereas the free citizen of today must pay for reasons of conviction. His conviction will not about spontaneously, particularly when taxes are really heavy. The conviction must therefore be manufactured, ideals must be stimulated in order to give true significance to such a ''contribution to the nation''; here, too, propaganda is needed. This is the exact opposite of political freedom.'' (142)
Nationalism seems only sacred thing left standing.
''The man of whom such super-sacrifices are demanded finds himself in the middle of an incessant world conflict, pushed to the very limit of his nervous and mental endurance, and in a sort of constant preparation for ultimate sacrifice. He cannot live this way unless sustained by powerful motivations, which he will not find either inside himself, or spontaneously. They must be furnished him by society. . . . Man must be plunged into a mystical atmosphere, he must be given strong enough impulses as well as good enough reasons for his sacrifice, and, at the same time, a drug that will sustain his nerves and his morale.'' (143)
''History shows that plain truth can be so throughly snuffed out that it disappears, and that in certain periods the lie is all powerful. . . . Propaganda, in fact, creates truth in the sense that it creates in men subject to propaganda all the signs of true believers. For modern man, propaganda is really creating truth.'' (235)
Truth is given, received without struggle or pain, in contrast to the work of Socrates, Euclid, Grosseteste, Kepler, Aquinas, Newton, Faraday, Pascal, Locke, Wycliffe, Tyndale, Maxwell,
Pastuer, Plank, Einstein, etc., etc.. The decades of mental effort, heartbreaking struggle, produced treasure modernity still uses.
Newton's Physics has been replaced by Faraday's fields, but the insights of both were -never- given, they were produced/discovered through agonizing, heart wrenching struggle.
What a loss if such men disappear!
''The individual who is prevented by circumstances from becoming a real person, who cannot express himself through personal thought or action, who finds his aspirations frustrated, projects onto the hero all he would wish to be. He lives vicariously and experiences the athletic or amorous or military exploits of the God with whom he lives in spiritual symbiosis. . . . The hero becomes model and father, power and mythical of all that the individual cannot be.'' (172)
''Young is of the opinion that the propagandee no longer develops intellectually, but becomes arrested in an infantile neurotic pattern; regression sets in when the individual is submerged in mass psychology. This is confirmed by Stoetzel, who says that propaganda destroys all individuality, is capable of creating only a collective personality; and that it is an obstacle in the free development of the personality.'' (173)
(See also - ''Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies''. ''Propaganda'', by Edward Bernays. Probably the most renowned work on this theme. Gustave Le Bon’s 1897 work “The Crowd: A Study Of the Popular Mind” is great!)
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No right hand margin
If you are a faculty member or otherwise like to notate in the margins of your books this edition is worthless and at a high price. The margins range from a rare max of 5mm to a majority of 3mm and some like this page of LESS than a mm on most of the lines.
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Virgilio F Ciudadano Jr
il libro è arrivato.. grazie mille
Reviewed in Italy on January 4, 2023
Anthony King
I enjoyed this book. Most preach, this book delved into that phenomenon.
Reviewed in Australia on March 22, 2022
