Author’s Note: This paper was written for a class concerning the structure of the English Language. While I dont have a date on it precisely, I think it was written in the Spring of 2003. Regardless, with all the mis- and dis-information that has been going on for the last few years, it is hard for us to remember what was really going on just a few years ago. History has been written and re-written so often, that it often helps to go back and look at subjective commentaries from back in the day just to square one’s self with how confused we are as a society. This article is pretty much my own opinion, so read it liberally. - Thank you, William Stodden

Jacques Ellul and the Development of Modern Propaganda
By William Stodden

Section 1- Introduction and Thesis
The United States is at war against “evil doers” once again. This time, the evildoers that occupy the government’s thoughts to the point of obsession are not communists as they have been in the past. They are not the drug smugglers of the 1980’s or 1990’s. They are not the domestic civil rights or peace activists, though these “un-patriotic” individuals are rapidly becoming the new bane of all existence. They are not Libyans, though Libya may have something to do with them. These evildoers are terrorists, and specifically the “terrorist states” or Iraq and Afghanistan, who are according to the government, plotting to use weapons of mass destruction against the United States solely because they hate our freedom.

The above is of course an example of modern propaganda at work which is spread throughout the corporate media by both the government and the executives at corporate media stations for the purpose of getting Americans who would otherwise be disinterested to be in support of the current war against the people of Iraq. The propaganda employed by the government in support and justification of its war is based on a play of fear and hatred of the American people for the people responsible for the destruction of the World Trade Center, even though we all know that event and Iraq have nothing to do with one another. The type of propaganda at work here is modern propaganda, as defined by French social scientist Jacques Ellul. This type of propaganda is the common language of both the government and advertisers in selling consumers products, and has nothing to do with the truth about the given product, whether it be the quality of an item or the justness of a war.

Section 2- The Definition of the Term “Propaganda”
The definition of the word that has never been favorably applied to the tactics of any of the enemies of the United States, and is very rarely ever applied to the tactics of the United States Government itself is, according to the Institute for Propaganda Analysis is “opinion expressed for the purpose of influencing actions of individuals or groups.”(1) This definition of the term of course was made before the United States really understood a great deal of the experts of propaganda in the Nazi Party in Germany. The IPA suggests that propaganda always shrouds lies in half-truth that people are able to swallow whole due to the effects of the propaganda on their emotions. Since then a new definition for propaganda has been developed, in response to the evolution of propaganda.

The French social scientist Jacques Ellul wrote a definitive repudiation of the notion that propaganda is based particularly on lies, and is spread by insidious individuals for simple manipulation. His commentary was on ideas like those apparently held by Webster’s Dictionary that define propaganda as “…secret or clandestine dissemination of ideas, information, gossip, or the like for the purpose of helping or injuring a person, and institution, a cause, etc…”(2) To assume such is to assume that those we trust can never propagandize us. Ellul said, in his book, Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes “From the outset, it is obvious that there is great uncertainty about the phenomenon [of propaganda] itself… Propaganda is usually regarded as an evil…”(3) We tend to believe therefore, conversely that any good message cannot possibly be propaganda. If we are, for instance, convinced that the Government of our nation has our best interests at heart, we will be more susceptible to their propaganda, precisely because we don’t see it as such. Ellul would say of course that it is still propaganda, even if it is apparently benevolent.

Ellul defined modern propaganda as a new trend in the world, which developed right along side of the mass media and mass culture. Ellul states that propaganda embraces the following categories: Psychological action, Psychological Warfare, Re-education and brainwashing, and public and human relations.(4) What can since be added to this list is the realm of commercialization. Ellul wrote at a time when television was a relatively new invention, there was no such thing as a cable network, and news outlets were relatively free of government interference in the free nations of the world. Since then, with the rise of the mass media, propagandists guise themselves as unbiased reporters and apparently benevolent government and/or church officials and use that mass media to prop up the status quo.

Section 3- The Necessary Characteristics of Propaganda
The best thing therefore that propagandists and societies that rely on propaganda to control their populace and demonize their enemies have going for them then is the good will of the propaganda’s recipients. As Ellul says, once again, people believe (mostly irrationally) that propaganda is an evil only, and therefore good people, or people believed to be good, cannot possibly conduct propaganda. Ellul would perhaps be from a school of thought that believes people are necessarily good, and seek the good in others as well. But this search can be and is manipulated in a society that is built on mass consciousness. The only way to avoid this manipulation is, according to Ellul and others, to understand the nature of the social phenomenon of propaganda.

Ellul describes modern propaganda as possessing several characteristics. The first of these properties of propaganda is that it can only exist in areas with mass culture which is created by widespread mass media. “Modern propaganda could not exist without the mass media- the inventions that produced press, radio, television, and motion pictures, or those that produced the means of modern transportation and which permit crowds of diverse individuals from all over to assemble easily and frequently.”(5)
Though Ellul wrote in the early 60’s, he was not saying anything particularly striking in this case. In fact, his work thus far comes off as mere observation of a very objective reality. In the book Mobilizing for Chaos by O.W. Reigel, written in 1934, the importance of mass society created by mass media being necessary for propaganda’s development, is stated thus: “The principle means of internal communication in any country are the transportation systems, including railroads and motor lines, the postal system, telegraph, telephone, and radio broadcasting.”(6)

Reigel goes on to write “All governments, whether liberal or autocratic, have recognized the importance of radio as a means of controlling the public mind, and have assumed as much control over broadcasting as the political atmosphere allows.”(7) The use of the radio, and later television and cable networks by the government has been essential therefore for not only creating the mass culture which rely on those mediums, but also in the government’s use of those mediums to control the mass culture.

Ellul’s second condition necessary for the development of propaganda is a very specific cultural and sociological environment. This environment specifically “…must have two complementary qualities: it must be both and individualist and a mass society… Propaganda can only be effective in an individualist society…”(8) It would seem that the term “individualist” used to modify the word “society” would create a contradiction. However, these characteristics nonetheless present themselves in our society, where “individual” as a concept is considered far more important than the concept “society” even while we continually use common forms of media to exchange ideas, we claim to be loyal to a government “of the people, for the people, and etc…” and continue to benefit everyday from a revenue system that pays for our roads, our schools, and our common defense.

These characteristics of the society to be susceptible to the growth, and in fact dominance of propaganda have been discussed at length by other authors. In his book, Propaganda, author Edward L. Bernays writes of mass psychology, which is at the base of every propaganda campaign according to Ellul, that

“The systematic study of mass psychology revealed to students the potentialities of invisible government of society by manipulation of the motives which actuate men in the group… [Group psychologists have] established that the group has mental characteristics distinct from those of the individual, and is motivated by impulses and emotions which cannot be explained on the basis of what we know of individual psychology.”(9)

Ellul continues along these lines by stating very simply, “The individual [as such] is of no interest to the propagandist; as an isolated unit, he presents much too much resistance to external action… because to win men over one by one takes much too long…”(10)

These characteristics of the mass as opposed to the characteristics of the individual are played upon by propagandists who use mass psychology to appeal to the “individual” within a group. Ellul says

“Conversely, when propaganda is addressed to a crowd, it must touch each individual in that crowd, in that whole group. To be effective, it must give the impression of being personal, for we must never forget that the mass is composed of individuals… Thus all modern propaganda profits from the structure of the mass, but exploits the individual’s need for self-affirmation…” (11)

The most obvious occurrence, of course of this characteristic of appealing to the individual within the group are commercial advertisements that use the “band wagon” technique by saying “all your friends are doing it…” while hinting that you should as well.

Within the context of the simultaneous individual and the mass appeal of propaganda comes further requirements of the social conditions in which propaganda is expected to operate. These specific conditions include the need for an average standard of living and an average culture. The average standard of living is based on the need to have relatively equal access to mass media and the infrastructure. As an example, Ellul writes “Modern integration propaganda cannot affect individuals who live on the fringes of our civilization or have too low a living standard. In capitalist countries, the very poor, who have no radio or television and rarely go to the movies, cannot be reached by propaganda.”(12) For average culture, Ellul suggests, for instance that “a man who cannot read will escape most propaganda, as will a man who is not interested in reading.”(13)

Section 4- The Use of Propaganda Techniques to Form Opinion in Politics and Business
And so the environment necessary for the development of modern propaganda, (this is, the existence of a mass culture, of mass media, of individualist society, and of average standard of living and culture or formal education) has been laid out. We now turn to the purpose of the propaganda. Unfortunately, the word “propaganda” has fallen out of popular usage, especially in the United States, in reference to mass media and the use of that media apparatus by commerce and the government to get people to do certain things or agree to certain position. Consequently, there is not a lot of recent work on the topic as such. However, the principles set out by Ellul on modern propaganda still hold true, and can be applied to our current system with a little of our own modification to account for the growth of corporate media conglomerates.

In the book Our Media, Not Theirs, authors Robert W. McChesney and John Nichols argue that the corporate media are now the purveyors of pro-government and pro-corporate propaganda, in the guise of supposedly un-biased reporting.

“World class scholars… have made substantial arguments about the media’s structural bias toward the corporate and political status quo… The bottom line: The corporate media are more than willing to entertain the idea that [these scholars’] main problem is that they are too critical of big business, the military, and people in power, and too sympathetic to the dispossessed.”(14)

This book essentially makes the case that an oligarchy of pro-government, pro-capitalist media giants form public opinion and maintain a monopoly that keeps independent voices out of the media. The point it makes on the topic of modern propaganda is that the corporate media apparatus, as an oligarchy of monopoly on public opinion decides to endorse an idea, it puts considerable effort into disseminating that idea and forming the society in conformity with that idea until the point that the idea is unpopular, not among the public, but among the developers of the propaganda campaign.

But why does this sort of behavior happen and why do so many of us let the corporate media get away with it? After all, we live in what has at least in the past been termed a “democracy” where people rule (although now the common belief is that, for all the rhetoric of our founders, we never lived in a “democracy” as such… That was just a word we used to fool ourselves… in fact we have always lived in a republic that is representative, not democratic. However, this statement, of course sparks of Orwell’s Ministry of Truth, which routinely rewrote history and then convinced people that it has always been that way and that the people themselves were the ones in error about their facts. It does indeed seem to be a clever way of a mass denial that there was indeed once a time in the history of this nation where a person could reasonably expect that his vote meant something…)

Ellul goes into this notion and suggests that all governments (and now commercial systems) utilize propaganda as a matter of necessity. “Propaganda is needed in the exercise of power for the simple reason that the masses have come to participate in political affairs.”(15) Ellul says that people have come to expect that public opinion will guide government decisions, even in the most totalitarian nations. For instance, in Nazi Germany, Hitler always maintained that he was the manifestation of the popular will of the German people. And, due to his government’s propaganda efforts, indeed he was. Therefore, propaganda becomes necessary to form public opinion. The government creates the propaganda that lends legitimacy to the governments policies (including the policy that requires it to create propaganda.) This is a vicious cycle and betrays the government’s dilemma: “One must convince the present, ponderous, impassioned mass that the government’s decisions are legitimate and good and that its foreign policy is correct. The democratic state, precisely because it believes in the expression of public opinion … must channel and shape that opinion if it wants to be realistic…”(16)

The government therefore must engage in propagandizing its own citizens. Its propaganda must serve two functions at this point: first, that it shapes the public policies in accordance with its will, and second (especially in democratic countries) it must make its policies appear to be the result rather than the initiator of public opinion. Ellul continues: “The citizens must be tied to the decision of the government… [Propaganda] must give the people the feeling- which they crave and which satisfies them- ‘to have wanted what the government is doing, to be responsible for its actions, to be involved in defending them and making them succeed and to be with it…”(17) Ellul quotes an American author on the subject, Bradford Westerford, who says

“In the United States, the government almost always conducts its foreign policy on its own initiative, but where the public is interested in a particular question, it can only proceed with the apparent support of a substantial majority of the people…” Westerford stresses that at times concessions must be made to the people, but “if the President really directs opinion, and if the public accepts the foreign policy of the government as a whole, no great concessions will have to be made to elicit the necessary support.”(18)

Ellul uses this to describe the uses of propaganda techniques even by supposedly democratic nations, even while people believe that only totalitarian regimes and dictatorships made use of the techniques.

The use of these propaganda methods is not limited to the government, of course. Today mass media is commercialized in the extreme. News media is interspliced with commercial advertisement to the point of absurdity. However, the realm of commerce uses a much more obvious version of what Ellul spoke of above in the creation of public opinion. It is not necessary for commerce to prove provide substantial proof of the public acceptance of its product by the majority of people, as it is with the government. Instead commerce engages in “demand creation” through the mass media. For instance, “… when the metal furniture industry seeks to convince the public that it is more desirable to spend its money on metal furniture than for wood furniture, it is clearly seeking to alter the taste and standards of a whole generation.”(19)

Bernays described this being accomplished in two different ways: one called continuous interpretation and the second being “high-spotting”. “Continuous interpretation is achieved by trying to control every approach to the public mind in such a manner that the public receives the desired impression, often without being conscious of it.”(20) High-spotting is involved with fixating the public’s attention on a particular point of an item or idea and presenting that point as desirable. Both of these techniques were developed long ago, and depend on mass media (originally newspaper with national circulation, and then onto radio, and finally through television and corporate media) to be successful, and have been responsible directly

Section 5- Case Illustration: The War Against Iraq
These business techniques of advertisement find their way into the political realm via the mass media, and without exception, Presidents with backgrounds in business, such as the current President, utilize these techniques to sell the American people his policies. The propaganda campaign surrounding the war against the people of Iraq being a good example, we can see how all the techniques of propaganda (including those involved with demand creation) are at play.

First, we must make a few assumptions. The first is that the government is conducting propaganda. If we cannot arrive at this conclusion, we cannot continue with the illustration. The second assumption we are making is that the reader lives in the United States and has access to the mass media on some level. Obviously people who do not have electricity or cannot read will likely not be reading this paper, as it is accessed through the internet.

Now, let’s look at the conditions for the development of propaganda. We are not saying propaganda is malevolent in anyway, just that it still exists. The United States is the center of mass culture and the widest purveyor of mass media across the globe. Anyone can find statistics to prove this. It does not need to be restated here. Americanism (i.e. those things by which the world defines our culture in this country, for instance Wal-Mart, McDonalds, MTV, CNN, the Gap and Nike, as well as Chase Manhattan, the IMF, and a plethora of other commodities and corporations) is rampant across the globe and is generally speaking, beating local companies out of their respective markets. We can say all those things have their nucleus right here in the United States.

We also live in one of the most individualistic societies on the face of the planet. We have no real culture to call our own, and at the same time the United States is the birthplace and continual locus of the idea of “rugged individualism” which is still touted to this minute as the ideal for all Americans. Our local communities have long ago disintegrated, and now all we are, as a people are people who live in certain areas of a large country, rather than citizens. And yet we have one of the largest public infrastructure systems in the world. From satellite communications to the Interstate system to public education to public welfare to government contracts to the private sector to vast networks of coaxial cable and the Internet to transportation and distribution systems of public and private goods and services that is unparalleled in the world, the United States is a system with a massive infrastructure which could not have been possible without public development and continual maintenance by the society as a whole. Indeed, in our society, there are not complete individuals as long as we all speak some form of the same language.

We additionally posses a relatively average standard of living (few in this country, for instance, live in houses without some form of electricity, running water or public sanitation, and so epidemic is rare. Additionally, there are a lot of people who don’t get enough to eat every day, but few are in danger of perishing due to starvation), and a relatively standard level of culture (through mandatory education laws and etc, illiteracy is very low in this nation). So with these conditions, one could say the country is ripe to inundated with propaganda.

Now let us look at why the government, and specifically the administration of the President would want to use propaganda on us. It can’t even really be said to be a conscious decision on the part of the President. We can safely say that he has an idea about Iraq, formed even though he has never met the man he demonizes, by people who have met Hussein and actually liked him at the time (SecDef Donald Rummsfeld for instance)(21) . The President’s opinion of Saddam Hussein is that he is clearly a monster that needs to be dealt with. Contrary to whatever the people believed about Hussein before the crisis started, the President was set on convincing the American population about Hussein’s evilness from the start.

And so who did the man turn to? Of course, he stated his case on network television, which was of course carried world wide via news sources such as CNN and etc. The corporate media, some very clearly for a war against Iraq (Fox News for instance) then speculated for days about when it would start and etc. But the American people had already started taking an interest in this issue and forced Bush to make a concession: Get UN Approval. The President went to the United Nations to seek approval for a war against Iraq after Iraq posed a “material breech” of the terms of a resolution. The language was intentionally left vague, because the reality of the matter is that the Bush Administration had no idea if Iraq had what it was claiming it did. Meanwhile, the government set about at home to psychologically prepare the people of this country for the war when it finally came. Public support for the war rose steadily from the people who only condoned it on the basis of UN sanction to people who were convinced that war was necessary even without UN sanction. Therefore we see the months between the passage of UN resolution 1441 and the actual beginning of the war were not to actually give Hussein an opportunity to disarm, but to prepare the American people through the use of propaganda via commercial media to accept the desires of the President without any concern. Here we see the President “directing opinion.” And the people of the United States were not, and still are not conscious of what was done to them, even as the nation polarizes as a result of the government’s action.

Finally, we see the government of our nation employing the tactics of commerce in their “selling” of the war to the American population. They make use of both the techniques described above. First, the government uses continuous interpretation, where they manipulate ALL corporate media channels with their message by utilizing a carrot-and-stick technique of threatening to cut the corporate media off from their source of information (the government, of course) if the corporate media does not present exactly the message the government wants them to. This technique is exemplified by the government ordering the corporate media outlets during the Afghanistan war to not play messages from anyone the government did not approve of, claiming that the terrorists (the vague, amorphous group of demons known as terrorists) could be undermining the American war effort, and then blasting CBS for playing an interview from Saddam Hussein because they didn’t get ample opportunity to respond to the interview before it was aired. In both cases the corporate media quickly jumped back in line and we shall never see another interview from an Iraqi leader that we did not pick ourselves on TV ever again.

The second technique they used, the technique of “high-spotting” is even more pervasive than continuous interpretation. For a year now, the Government has been pointing out all sorts of examples of how the government of Iraq is evil and needs to be removed by force. From the claims that Iraq helped destroy the World Trade Center and kill people, of which there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever, to the claims that Hussein has weapons of mass destruction, of which no evidence has ever been discovered, to the claim that Hussein is evil, which can never be proven one way or another, as it is not an empirical term, the government of our nation has kept people fixated on just one aspect of this war. Every once in a while, the media mentions what the government is up to behind this smoke and mirrors game: the passage or Patriot II (The Homeland Security Act), the fact that the stock market lost a bunch or percentage points today, the fact that unemployment is on the rise, the fact that few even remember who Enron is much less that Enron is operating once again and in the process of liquidating its assets for the profit of those who own them, the fact that after the war is over, Haliburton will be responsible for the rebuilding (and subsequent owning) of the Iraqi infrastructure or as in today’s news that the continued conduct of this war is the biggest single threat to the American economy.(22) All these topics are ignored by our fixation on terrorist connections, weapons of mass destruction, and evilness, which may or may not exist with equal odds. And the entire time that corporate media continues to play the government’s line on their programming, they also continue to play commercials regularly, 10 minutes of every hour. It can easily be suggested that these companies are the sponsors of the war, but the American taxpayer, who is going to have to pay the bill for the war, is the consumer, whether we want to be or not.

Ellul was astute enough to describe the current state of our national political scene while our current president was still in high school and cable television was still a distant dream. His discussion on propaganda, adding to the discussion of propaganda before him, was clear and concise, and anticipated the marriage between government and commerce through propaganda and the mass media. Josef Goebbels would be proud.

Notes:
1 The Institute for Propaganda Analysis. The Fine Art of Propaganda: A Study of Father Coughlin’s Speeches. Ed by Alfred McClung Lee and Elizabeth Briant Lee. (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co. 1939), 15.

2 Webster’s New International Dictionary, 2d ed, 1934 quoted in Lee, Alfred McClung. How to Understand Propaganda. (New York: Reinhart & Company, Inc, 1952.) 7.

3 Ellul, Jacques. Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes. Trans. by Konrad Kellen and Jean Lerner. (New York: Vintage Books, 1965). X.

4 Ibid. xiii.

5 Ellul, 89.

6 Reigel, O.W. Mobilizing for Chaos: The Story of the New Propaganda. (New Haven CT: Yale Press, 1934.) 85.

7 Ibid., 89.

8 Ellul, 90-91.

9 Bernays, Edward L. Propaganda. (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1928), 47.

10 Ellul, 6.

11 Ibid., 7-8.

12 Ibid., 105

13 Ibid., 108

14 McChesney, Robert W and John Nichols. Our Media, Not Theirs. (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2002), 31.

15 Ellul, 121.

16 Ibid. 126.

17 Ibid., 127.

18 Westerford, Bradford. “Opinion ad Parties in American Foreign Policy” 1954 in Ellul, 128.

19 Bernays, 64.

20 Ibid., 69.

21 CNN.com. “Regime Change” . March 27, 2003.

22 Yahoo News. “War biggest threat to the Economy- Economists” < http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20030324/bs_nm/economy_war_survey_dc_8 >, March 27, 2003.