Perhaps the most dramatic examples for me have been some truly amazing statements about the Arab war on Israel made by some rather well-educated and generally skeptical people. On other topics, we ought to be much more careful. On these topics, we ought to listen, but we also ought to be unafraid to state facts and make judgments. And this is definitely a phenomenon one ought to look for in others if one wants to cure oneself! I do think we ought to try to become so informed about at least a few topics that we can recognize nonsense. On a few topics, I actually am well enough informed so that (while I still may be susceptible to propaganda myself) I can recognize the symptoms of others falling for it. Still, the answer is not to simply give up. I'm sure I'm taken in by much of it as well, but even I can't be fooled all the time. I've witnessed the phenomenon of bright people falling for propaganda, hook, line, and sinker, on numerous occasions. Read it, be afraid, but above all, be aware of what is going on in your name. However, I have read it since and it actually makes even more sense today. This was one of the books I used when working on my Master's thesis in political science. 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. War makes it an absolute necessity for control over the populace. Hitler, Stalin and Mao were masters of mind control. We don't have to look much further than today to see it in action. The story of bending minds to a single will is as old as history. 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. We are inundated with information at an increasing and alarming rate on a daily basis. 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. 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.Įllul is a French writer and theorist, therefore verbose.
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). 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.
Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes (Jacques Ellul)
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