Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes

by Jacques Ellul (1965) *

The Individual and the Masses

Any modern propaganda will, first of all, address itself at one and
the same time to the individual and to the masses. It cannot separate
the two elements. For propaganda to address itself to the individual,
in his isolation, apart from the crowd, is impossible. The individual
is of no interest to the propagandist; as an isolated unit he presents
much too much resistance to external action. To be effective,
propaganda cannot be concerned with detail, not only because to win
men over one by one takes much too long, but also because to create
certain convictions in an isolated individual is much too difficult.
Propaganda ceases where simple dialogue begins. And that is why, in
particular, experiments undertaken in the United States to gauge the
effectiveness of certain propaganda methods or arguments on isolated
individuals are not conclusive: they do not reproduce the real propa-
ganda situation. Conversely, propaganda does not aim simply at the
mass, the crowd. A propaganda that functioned only where individuals
are gathered together would be incomplete and insufficient. Also,
any propaganda aimed only at groups as such -- as if a mass were a
specific body having a soul and reactions and feelings entirely
different from individuals' souls, reactions, and feelings -- would
be an abstract propaganda that likewise would have no effectiveness.
Modern propaganda reaches individuals enclosed in the mass and as
participants in that mass, yet it also aims at a crowd, but only as
a body composed of individuals.

What does this mean? First of all, that the individual never is
considered as an individual, but always in terms of what he has
in common with others, such as his motivations, his feelings, or
his myths. He is reduced to an average; and, except for a small
percentage, action based on averages will be effectual. Moreover,
the individual is considered part of the mass and included in it
(and so far as possible systematically integrated into it), because
in that way his psychic defenses are weakened, his reactions are
easier to provoke, and the propagandist profits from the process
of diffusion of emotions through the mass, and, at the same time,
from the pressures felt by an individual when in a group. Emotional-
ism, impulsiveness, excess, etc. -- all these characteristics of
the individual caught up in a mass are well known and very helpful
to propaganda. Therefore, the individual must never be considered
as being alone; the listener to a radio broadcast, though actually
alone, is nevertheless put of a large group, and he is aware of it.
Radio listeners have been found to exhibit a mass mentality. All
are tied together and constitute a sort of society in which all
individuals are accomplices and influence each other without
knowing it. The same holds true for propaganda that is carried on
by door-to-door visits (direct contacts, petitions for signatures);
although apparently one deals here with a single individual, one
deals in reality with a unit submerged into an invisible crowd
composed of all those who have been interviewed, who are being
interviewed, and who will be interviewed, because they hold similar
ideas and live by the same myths, and especially because they are
targets of the same organism. Being the target of a party or an
administration is enough to immerse the individual in that sector
of the population which the propagandist has in his sights; this
simple fact makes the individual part of the mass. He is no longer
Mr. X, but part of a current flowing in a particular direction.
The current flows through the canvasser (who is not a person
speaking in his own name with his own arguments, but one segment
of an administration, an organization, a collective movement);
when he enters a room to canvass a person, the mass, and moreover
the organized, leveled mass, enters with him. No relationship
exists here between man and man; the organization is what exerts
its attraction on an individual already part of a mass because he
is in the same sights as all the others being canvassed.

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, and
is in fact nothing but assembled individuals. Actually, just
because men are in a group, and therefore weakened, receptive,
and in a state of psychological regression, they pretend all
the more to be "strong individuals." The mass man is clearly sub-
human, but pretends to be superman. He is more suggestible, but
insists he is more forceful; he is more unstable, but thinks he
is firm in his convictions. If one openly treats the mass as a
mass, the individuals who form it will feel themselves belittled
and will refuse to participate. If one treats these individuals
as children (and they are children because they are in a group),
they will not accept their leader's projections or identify with
him. They will withdraw and we will not be qble to get anything
out of them. On the contrary, each one must feel individualized,
each must have the impression that he is being looked at, that
he is being addressed personally. Only then will he respond and
cease to be anonymous (although in reality remaining anonymous).

Thus all modern propaganda profits from the structure of the
mass, but exploits the individual's need for self-affirmation;
and the two actions must be conducted jointly, simultaneously.
Of course this operation is greatly facilitated by the existence
of the modern mass media of communication, which have precisely
this remarkable effect of reaching the whole crowd all at once,
and yet reaching each one in that crowd. Readers of the evening
paper, radio listeners, movie or TV viewers certainly constitute
a mass that has an organic existence, although it is diffused
and not assembled at one point. These individuals are moved by
the same motives, receive the same impulses and impressions,
find themselves focused on the same centers of interest,
experience the same feelings, have generally the same order
of reactions and ideas, participate in the same myths -- and
all this at the same time: what we have here is really a
psychological, if not a biological mass. And the individuals
in it are modified by this existence, even if they do not know
it. Yet each one is alone -- the newspaper reader, the radio
listener. He therefore feels himself individually concerned as
a person, as a participant. The movie spectator also is alone;
though elbow to elbow with his neighbors, he still is, because
of the darkness and the hypnotic attraction of the screen,
perfectly alone. This is the situation of the "lonely crowd," or
of isolation in the mass, which is a natural product of present-
day society and which is both used and deepened by the mass
media. The most favorable moment to seize a man and influence
him is when he is alone in the mass: it is at this point that
propaganda can be most effective.

We must emphasize this circle which we shall meet again and
again: the structure of present-day society places the individual
where he is most easily reached by propaganda. The media of mass
communication, which are part of the technical evolution of this
society, deepen this situation while making it possible to reach
the individual man, integrated in the mass; and what these media
do is exactly what propaganda must do in order to attain its
objectives. In reality propaganda cannot exist without using
these mass media. If, by chance, propaganda is addressed to an
organized group, it can have practically no effect on individuals
before that group has been fragmented. Such fragmentation can be
achieved through action, but it is equally possible to fragment
a group by psychological means. The transformation of very small
groups by purely psychological means is one of the most important
techniques of propaganda. Only when very small groups are thus
annihilated, when the individual finds no more defenses, no
equilibrium, no resistance exercised by the group to which he
belongs, does total action by propaganda become possible.

Orthopraxy

We now come to an absolutely decisive fact. Propaganda is very
frequently described as a manipulation for the purpose of changing
ideas or opinions, of making individuals "believe" some idea or
fact, and finally of making them adhere to some doctrineall matters
of mind. Or, to put it differently, propaganda is described as
dealing with beliefs or ideas. If the individual is a Marxist, it
tries to destroy his conviction and turn him into an anti-Marxist,
and so on. It calls on all the psychological mechanisms, but appeals
to reason as well. It tries to convince, to bring about a decision,
to create a firm adherence to some truth. Then, obviously, if the
conviction is sufficiently strong, after some soul searching, the
individual is ready for action.

This line of reasoning is completely wrong. To view propaganda as
still being what it was in 1850 is to cling to an obsolete concept
of man and of the means to influence him; it is to condemn oneself
to understand nothing about modern propaganda. The aim of modern
propaganda is no longer to modify ideas, but to provoke action. It
is no longer to change adherence to a doctrine, but to make the
individual cling irrationally to a process of action. It is no
longer to lead to a choice, but to loosen the reflexes. It is no
longer to transform an opinion, but to arouse an active and
mythical belief.

Let us note here in passing how badly equipped opinion surveys
are to gauge propaganda. We will have to come back to this point
in the study of propaganda effects. Simply to ask an individual
if he believes this or that, or if he has this or that idea,
gives absolutely no indication of what behavior he will adopt or
what action he will take; only action is of concern to modern
propaganda, for its aim is to precipitate an individual's action,
with maximum effectiveness and economy. The propagandist therefore
does not normally address himself to the individual's intelligence,
for the process of intellectual persuasion is long and uncertain,
and the road from such intellectual conviction to action even more
so. The individual rarely acts purely on the basis of an idea.
Moreover, to place propaganda efforts on the intellectual level
would require that me propagandist engage in individual debate
with each person-an unthinkable method. It is necessary to obtain
at least a minimum of participation from everybody. It can be
active or passive, but in any case it is not simply a matter of
public opinion. To see propaganda only as something related to
public opinion implies a great intellectual independence on the
part of the propagandee, who is, after all, only a third party
in any political action, and who is asked only one opinion. This
obviously coincides with a conception of liberal democracy, which
assumes that the most one can do with a citizen is to change his
opinion in such fashion as to win his vote at election time. The
concept of a close relationship between public opinion and
propaganda rests on the presumption of an independent popular
will. If this concept were right, the role of propaganda would be
to modify that popular will which, of course, expresses itself in
votes. But what this concept does not take into consideration is
that the injection of propaganda into the mechanism of popular
action actually suppresses liberal democracy, after which we are
no longer dealing with votes or the people's sovereignty; propaganda
therefore aims solely at participation. The participation may be
active or passive: active, if propaganda has been able to mobilize
the individual for action; passive, if the individual does not act
directly but psychologically supports that action.

But one may ask, does this not bring us right back to public
opinion? Certainly not, for opinion leaves the individual a mere
spectator who may eventually, but not necessarily, resort to
action. Therefore, the idea of participation is much stronger. The
supporter of a football team, though not physically in the game,
makes his presence felt psychologically by rooting for the players,
exciting them, and pushing them to outdo themselves. Similarly the
faithful who attend Mass do not interfere physically, but their
communicant participation is positive and changes the nature of the
phenomenon. These two examples illustrate what we mean by passive
participation obtained through propaganda.

Such an action cannot be obtained by the process of choice and
deliberation. To be effective, propaganda must constantly short-
circuit all thought and decision. It must operate on the individual
at the level of the unconscious. He must not know that he is being
shaped by outside forces (this is one of the conditions for the
success of propaganda), but some central core in him must be
reached in order to release the mechanism in the unconscious which
will provide the appropriate -- and expected -- action.

We have just said that action exactly suited to its ends must be
obtained. This leads us to state that if the classic but outmoded
view of propaganda consists in defining it as an adherence of man
to an orthodoxy, true modern propaganda seeks, on the contrary, to
obtain an orthopraxy -- an action that in itself, and not because
of the value judgments of the person who is acting, leads directly
to a goal, which for the individual is not a conscious and
intentional objective to be attained, but which is considered such
by the propagandist. The propagandist knows what objective should
be sought and what action should be accomplished, and he maneuvers
the instrument that will secure precisely this action.

This is a particular example of a more general problem: the
separation of thought and action in our society. We are living in
a time when systematically -- though without our wanting it so --
action and thought are being separated. In our society, he who
thinks can no longer act for himself; he must act through the
agency of others, and in many cases he cannot act at all. He who
acts cannot first think out his action, either because of lack of
time and the burden of his personal problems, or became society's
plan demands that he translate others' thoughts into action. And
we see the same division within the individual himself. For he
can use his mind only outside the area of his job -- in order to
find himself, to use his leisure to better himself, to discover
what best suits him, and thus to individualize himself; whereas
in the context of his work he yields to the common necessity,
the common method, the need to incorporate his own work into the
overall plan. Escape into dreams is suggested to him while he
performs wholly mechanized actions.

Propaganda creates the same division. Of course it does not cancel
out personality; it leaves man complete freedom of thought, except
in his political or social action where we find him channeled and
engaged in actions that do not necessarily conform to his private
beliefs. He even can have political convictions, and still be led
to act in a manner apparently contradictory to them. Thus the
twists and turns of skillful propaganda do not present insurmount-
able difficulties. The propagandist can mobilize man for action
that is not in accord with his previous convictions. Modern
psychologists are well aware that there is not necessarily any
continuity between conviction and action -- and no intrinsic
rationality in opinions or acts. Into these gaps in continuity
propaganda inserts its lever. It does not seek to create wise or
reasonable men, but proselytes and militants.

This brings us back to the question of organization. For the
proselyte incited to action by propaganda cannot be left alone,
cannot be entrusted to himself. If the action obtained by
propaganda is to be appropriate, it cannot be individual; it
must be collective. Propaganda has meaning only when it obtains
convergence, coexistence of a multiplicity of individual action-
reflexes whose coordination can be achieved only through the
intermediary of an organization.

Moreover, the action-reflex obtained by propaganda is only a
beginning, a point of departure; it will develop harmoniously
only if there is an organization in which (and thanks to which)
the proselyte becomes militant. Without organization, psycho-
logical incitement leads to excesses and deviation of action in
the very course of its development. Through organization, the
proselyte receives an overwhelming impulse that makes him act
with the whole of his being. He is actually transformed into
a religious man in the psycho-sociological sense of the term;
justice enters into the action he performs because of the
organization of which he is a part. Thus his action is
integrated into a group of conforming actions. Not only does
such integration seem to be the principal aim of all propaganda
today; it is also what makes the effect of propaganda endure.

For action makes propaganda's effect irreversible. He who acts
in obedience to propaganda can never go back. He is now obliged
to believe in that propaganda because of his past action. He is
obliged to receive from it his justification and authority,
without which his action will seem to him absurd or unjust,
which would be intolerable. He is obliged to continue to
advance in the direction indicated by propaganda, for action
demands more action. He is what one calls committed -- which
is certainly what the Communist party anticipates, for example,
and what the Nazis accomplished. The man who has acted in
accordance with the existing propaganda has taken his place in
society. From then on he has enemies. Often he has broken with
his milieu or his family; he may be compromised. He is forced
to accept the new milieu and the new friends that propaganda
makes for him. Often be has committed an act reprehensible by
traditional moral standards and has disturbed a certain order;
he needs a justification for this -- and he gets more deeply
involved by repeating the act in order to prove that it was
just. Thus he is caught up in a movement that develops until
it totally occupies the breadth of his conscience. Propaganda
now masters him completely -- and we must bear in mind that
any propaganda that does not lead to this kind of participation
is mere child's play.

But we may properly ask how propaganda can achieve such a result,
a type of reflex action, by short-circuiting the intellectual
process. The claim that such results are indeed obtained by
propaganda beget skepticism from the average observer, strenuous
denial from the psychologist, and the accusation that this is
mere fantasy contradicted by experience. Later, we shall examine
the validity of experiments made by psychologists in these fields,
and their adequacy in regard to the subject. For the moment we
shall confine ourselves to stating that observation of men who
were subjected to a real propaganda, Nazi or Communist, confirms
the accuracy of the schema we have just drawn.

We must, however, qualify our statement. We do not say that
any man can be made to obey any incitement to action in any way
whatever from one day to the next. We do not say that in each
individual prior elementary mechanisms exist on which it is easy
to play and which will unfailingly produce a certain effect. We
do not hold with a mechanistic view of man. But we must divide
propaganda into two phases. There is pre-propaganda (or sub-
propaganda) and there is active propaganda. This follows from
what we have said earlier about the continuous and permanent
nature of propaganda. Obviously, what must be continuous is not
the active, intense propaganda of crisis but the sub-propaganda
that aims at mobilizing individuals, or, in the etymological
sense, to make them mobile and mobilizable in order to thrust
them into action at the appropriate moment. It is obvious that
we cannot simply throw a man into action without any preparation,
without having mobilized him psychologically and made him
responsive, not to mention physically ready.

The essential objective of pre-propaganda is to prepare man for
a particular action, to make him sensitive to some influence, to
get him into condition for the time when he will effectively, and
without delay or hesitation, participate in an action. Seen from
this angle, pre-propaganda does not have a precise ideological
objective; it has nothing to do with an opinion, an idea, a
doctrine. It proceeds by psychological manipulations, by character
modifications, by the creation of feelings or stereotypes useful
when the time comes. It must be continuous, slow, imperceptible.
Man must be penetrated in order to shape such tendencies. He must
be made to live in a certain psychological climate.

The two great routes that this sub-propaganda takes are the
conditioned reflex and the myth. Propaganda tries first of all to
create conditioned reflexes in the individual by training him so
that certain words, signs, or symbols, even certain persons or
facts, provoke unfailing reactions. Despite many protests from
psychologists, creating such conditioned reflexes, collectively
as well as individually, is definitely possible. But of course
in order for such a procedure to succeed, a certain amount of
time must elapse, a period of training and repetition. One
cannot hope to obtain automatic reactions after only a few weeks'
repetition of the same formulas. A real psychic re-formation must
be undertaken, so that after months of patient work a crowd will
react automatically in the hoped-for direction to some image. But
this preparatory work is not yet propaganda, for it is not yet
immediately applicable to a concrete case. What is visible in
propaganda, what is spectacular and seems to us often incompre-
hensible or unbelievable, is possible only because of such slow
and not very explicit preparation; without it nothing would be
possible.

On the other hand, the propagandist tries to create myths by
which man will live, which respond to his sense of the sacred.
By "myth" we mean an all-encompassing, activating image: a sort
of vision of desirable objectives that have lost their material,
practical character and have become strongly colored, overwhelming,
all-encompassing, and which displace from the conscious all that
is not related to it. Such an image pushes man to action precisely
because it includes all that he feels is good, just, and true.
Without giving a metaphysical analysis of the myth, we will mention
the great myths that have been created by various propagandas: the
myth of race, of the protelariat, of the Fuhrer, of Communist
society, of productivity. Eventually the myth takes possession of
a man's mind so completely that his life is consecrated to it. But
that effect can be created only by slow, patient work by all the
methods of propaganda, not by any immediate propaganda operation.
Only when conditioned reflexes have been created in a man and he
lives in a collective myth can he be readily mobilized.

Although the two methods of myth and conditioned reflex can be
used in combination, each has separate advantages. The United
States prefers to utilize the myth; the Soviet Union has for a
long time preferred the reflex. The important thing is that when
the time is ripe, the individual can be thrown into action by
active propaganda, by the utilization of the psychological levers
that have been set up, and by the evocation of the myth. No
connection necessarily exists between his action and me reflex or
the content of the myth. The action is not necessarily psycho-
logically conditioned by some aspect of the myth. For the most
surprising thing is that the preparatory work leads only to man's
readiness. Once he is ready, he can be mobilized effectively in
very different directions -- but of course the myth and the
reflex must be continually rejuvenated and revived or they will
atrophy. That is why pre-propaganda must be constant, whereas
active propaganda can be sporadic when the goal is a particular
action or involvement.

Fundamental Currents in Society

Propaganda must not only attach itself to what already exists in
the individual, but also express the fundamental currents of the
society it seeks to influence. Propaganda must be familiar with
collective sociological presuppositions, spontaneous myths, and
broad ideologies. By this we do not mean political currents or
temporary opinions that will change in a few months, but the
fundamental psycho-sociological bases on which a whole society
rests, the presuppositions and myths not just of individuals or
of particular groups but those shared by all individuals in a
society, including men of opposite political inclinations and
class loyalties.

A propaganda pitting itself against this fundamental and accepted
structure would have no chance of success. Rather, all effective
propaganda is based on these fundamental currents and expresses
them. Only if it rests on the proper collective beliefs will it be
understood and accepted. It is part of a complex of civilization,
consisting of material elements, beliefs, ideas, and institutions,
and it cannot be separated from them. No propaganda could succeed
by going against these structural elements of society. But
propaganda's main task clearly is the psychological reflection of
these structures.

It seems to us that this reflection is found in two essential
forms: the collective sociological presuppositions and the social
myths. By presuppositions we mean a collection of feelings,
beliefs, and images by which one unconsciously judges events and
things without questioning them, or even noticing them. This
collection is shared by all who belong to the same society or
group. It draws As strength from the fact that it rests on general
tacit agreement. Whatever the differences of opinion are among
people, one can discover beneath the differences the same beliefs
-- in Americans and in Russians, in Communists and in Christians.
These presuppositions are sociological in that they are provided
for us by the surrounding milieu and carry us along in the
sociological current. They are what keeps us in harmony with our
environment.

It seems to us that there are four great collective sociological
presuppositions in the modern world. By this we mean not only the
Western world, but all the world that shares a modern technology
and is structured into nations, including the Communist world,
though not yet the African or Asian worlds. These common
presuppositions of bourgeois and proletarian are that man's aim
in life is happiness, that man is naturally good, that history
develops in endless progress, and that everything is matter.

The other great psychological reflection of social reality is
the myth. The myth expresses the deep inclinations of a society.
Without it, the masses would not cling to a certain civilization
or its process of development and crisis. It is a vigorous impulse,
strongly colored, irrational, and charged with all of man's power
to believe. It contains a religious element. In our society the
two great fundamental myths on which all other myths rest are
Science and History. And based on them are the collective myths
that are man's principal orientations: the myth of Work, the myth
of Happiness (which is not the same thing as the presupposition
of happiness), the myth of the Nation, the myth of Youth, the
myth of the Hero.

Propaganda is forced to build on these presuppositions and to
express these myths, for without them nobody would listen to it.
And in so building it must always go in the same direction as
society; it can only reinforce society. A propaganda that
stresses virtue over happiness and presents man's future as one
dominated by austerity and contemplation would have no audience
at all. A propaganda that questions progress or work would arouse
disdain and reach nobody; it would immediately be branded as an
ideology of the intellectuals, since most people feel that the
serious things are material things because they are related to
labor, and so on.

It is remarkable how the various presuppositions and aspects of
myths complement each other, support each other, mutually defend
each other: If the propagandist attacks the network at one point,
all myths react to the attack. Propaganda must be based on
current beliefs and symbols to reach man and win him over. On the
other hand, propaganda must also follow the general direction of
evolution, which includes the belief in progress. A normal,
spontaneous evolution is more or less expected, even if man is
completely unaware of it, and in order to succeed, propaganda
must move in the direction of that evolution.

The progress of technology is continuous; propaganda must voice
this reality, which is one of man's convictions. All propaganda
must play on the fact that the nation will be industrialized,
more will be produced, greater progress is imminent, and so on.
No propaganda can succeed if it defends outdated production
methods or obsolete social or administrative institutions.
Though occasionally advertising may profitably evoke the good
old days, political propaganda may not. Rather, it must evoke
the future, the tomorrows that beckon, precisely because such
visions impel the individual to act. Propaganda is carried along
on this current and cannot oppose it; it must confirm it and
reinforce it. Thus, propaganda will turn a normal feeling of
patriotism into a raging nationalism. It not only reflects myths
and presuppositions, it hardens them, sharpens them, invests
them with the power of shock and action.

It is virtually impossible to reverse this trend. In a country
in which administrative centralization does not yet exist, one
can propagandize for centralization because modern man firmly
believes in the strength of a centrally administered State.
But where centralization does exist, no propaganda can be made
against it. Federalist propaganda (true federalism, which is
opposed to national centralism; not such supernationalism as
the so-called Soviet or European federalism) can never succeed
because it is a challenge to both the national myth and the
myth of progress; every reduction, whether to a work unit or
an administrative unit, is seen as regression.

Of course, when we analyze this necessary subordination of
propaganda to presuppositions and myths, we do not mean that
propaganda must express them clearly all the time; it need not
speak constantly of progress and happiness (although these are
always profitable themes), but in its general line and its
infrastructure it must allow for the same presuppositions and
follow the same myths as those prevalent in its audience.
There is some tacit agreement: for example, a speaker does
not have to say that he believes "man is good": this is clear
from his behavior, language, and attitudes, and each man
unconsciously feels that the others share the same
presuppositions and myths. It is the same with propaganda: a
person listens to a particular propaganda because it reflects
his deepest unconscious convictions without expressing them
directly. Similarly, because of the myth of progress, it is
much easier to sell a man an electric razor than a straight
edged one.

Finally, alongside the fundamental currents reflected in
presuppositions and myths, we must consider two other elements.
Obviously the material character of a society and its evolution,
its fundamental sociological currents, are linked to its very
structure. Propaganda must operate in line with those material
currents and at the level of material progress. It must be
associated with all economic, administrative, political, and
educational development, otherwise it is nothing. It must also
reflect local and national idiosyncrasies. Thus, in France, the
general trend toward socialization can be neither overridden nor
questioned. The political Left is respectable; the Right has to
justify itself before the ideology of the Left (in which even
Rightists participate). All propaganda in France must contain
-- and evoke -- the principal elements of the ideology of the
Left in order to be accepted.

But a conflict is possible between a local milieu and the
national society. The tendencies of the group may be contrary
to those of the broader society; in that case one cannot lay
down general rules. Sometimes the tendencies of the local group
win out because of the group's solidarity; sometimes the general
society wins out because it represents the mass and, therefore,
unanimity. In any case, propaganda must always choose the trend
that normally will triumph because it agrees with the great
myths of the time, common to all men. The Negro problem in the
American South is typical of this sort of conflict. The local
Southern milieu is hostile to Negroes and favorable to
discrimination, whereas American society as a whole is hostile
to racism. It is almost certain, therefore, despite the deep-
rooted prejudices and the local solidarities, that racism will
be overcome. The Southerners are on the defensive; they have no
springboard for external propaganda -- for example, toward the
European nations. Propaganda can go only in the direction of
world opinion -- that of Asia, Africa, almost all of Europe.
Above all, when it is anti-racist, it is helped along by the
myth of progress.

It follows that propaganda cannot be applied everywhere alike,
and that -- at least up to now -- propaganda in both Africa and
Asia must be essentially different from propaganda in the rest
of the world. We stress "at least up to now" because those
countries are being progressively won over by Western myths and
are developing national and technological forms of society. But
for the moment these myths are not yet everyday reality, flesh
and blood, spiritual bread, sacred inheritance, as they are
with us. To sum up, propaganda must express the fundamental
currents of society.

Timeliness

Propaganda in its explicit form must relate solely to what
is timely. Man can be captured and mobilized only if there
is consonance between his own deep social beliefs and those
underlying the propaganda directed at him, and he will be
aroused and moved to action only if the propaganda pushes him
toward a timely action. These two elements are not contradictory
but complementary, for the only interesting and enticing news is
that which presents a timely, spectacular aspect of society's
profound reality. A man will become excited over a new automobile
because it is immediate evidence of his deep belief in progress
and technology. Between news that can be utilized by propaganda
and fundamental currents of society the same relationship exists
as between waves and the sea. The waves exist only because the
underlying mass supports them; without it there would be nothing.
But man sees only the waves; they are what attracts, entices, and
fascinates him. Through them he grasps the grandeur and majesty
of the sea, though this grandeur exists only in the immense mass
of water. Similarly, propaganda can have solid reality and power
over man only because of its rapport with fundamental currents,
but it has seductive excitement and a capacity to move him only
by its ties to the most volatile immediacy. And the timely event
that man considers worth retaining, preserving, and disseminating
is always an event related to the expression of the myths and
presuppositions of a given time and place.

Besides, the public is sensitive only to contemporary events.
They alone concern and challenge it. Obviously, propaganda can
succeed only when man feels challenged. It can have no influence
when the individual is stabilized, relaxing in his slippers in
the midst of total security. Neither past events nor great
metaphysical problems challenge the average individual, the
ordinary man of our times. He is not sensitive to what is tragic
in life; he is not anguished by a question that God might put to
him; he does not feel challenged except by current events,
political or economic. Therefore, propaganda must start with
current events; it would not reach anybody if it were to base
itself on historical facts. We have seen Vichy propaganda fail
when it tried to evoke the images of Napoleon and Joan of Arc
in hopes of arousing the French to turn against England. Even
facts so basic and deeply rooted in the French consciousness are
not a good springboard for propaganda; they pass quickly into
the realm of history, and consequently into neutrality and
indifference: A survey made in May 1959 showed that among French
boys of fourteen and fifteen, 70 percent had no idea who Hitler
and Mussolini were, 80 percent had forgotten the Russians in the
list of victors of 1945, and not a single one recognized the
words Danzig or Munich as having figured in relatively recent
events.

We must also bear in mind that the individual is at the mercy
of events. Hardly has an event taken place before it is outdated;
even if its significance is still considerable, it is no longer
of interest and if man experiences the feeling of having escaped
it, he is no longer concerned. In addition, he obviously has a
very limited capacity for attention and awareness; one event
pushes the preceding one into oblivion. And as man's memory is
short, the event that has been supplanted by another is forgotten;
it no longer exists; nobody is interested in it any more. In
November 1957, a Bordeaux association organized a lecture on the
atomic bomb by a well-known specialist; the lecture would surely
have been of great interest (and not for propaganda purposes).
A wide distribution of leaflets had announced it to the student
public, but not a single student came. Why? Because this happened
at exactly the same time as Sputnik's success, and the public was
concerned only with this single piece of news; its sole interest
was in Sputnik, and the permanent problem was forgotten.

Actually, the public is prodigiously sensitive to current news.
Its attention is focused immediately on any spectacular event
that fits in with its myths. At the same time, the public will
fix its interest and its passion on one point, to the exclusion
of all the rest. Besides, people have already become accustomed
to, and have accommodated themselves to "the rest" (yesterday's
news or that of the day before yesterday). We are dealing here
not just with forgetfulness, but also with plain loss of interest.

A good example is Khrushchev's ultimatum at the beginning of
1959, when he set a time limit of three months to solve the
Berlin problem. Two weeks passed; no war broke out. Even though
the same problem remained, public opinion grew accustomed to it
and lost interest -- so much so, that on the expiration date of
Khrushchev's ultimatum (27 May 1959), people were surprised
when they were reminded of it. Khrushchev himself said nothing
on May 27; not having obtained anything, he simply counted on the
fact that everyone had "forgotten" his ultimatum -- which shows
what a subtle propagandist he is. It is impossible to base a
propaganda campaign on an event that no longer worries the
public; it is forgotten and the public has grown accustomed to
it. On November 30, 1957, the Communist states met and signed
an agreement concerning several political problems and the
problem of peace; its text was truly remarkable, one of the best
that has been drawn up. But nobody discussed this important
matter. The progressives were not troubled by it; the partisans
of peace did not say one word -- though in itself, objectively,
the text was excellent. But everything it contained was "old hat"
to the public; and the public could not get interested all over
again in an outdated theme when it was not uneasy over a specific
threat of war.

It would appear that propaganda for peace can bear fruit only
when there is fear of war. The particular skill of Communist
propaganda in this area is that it creates a threat of war while
conducting peace propaganda. The constant threat of war, arising
from Stalin's posture, made the propaganda of the partisans for
peace effective and led non-Communists to attach themselves to
the fringe of the party via that propaganda. But in 1957, when
the threat of war seemed much less real, because Khrushchev had
succeeded Stalin, such propaganda had no hold at all on the
public. The news about Hungary seemed far more important to the
Western world than the general problem of world peace. These
various elements explain why the well-written text on the
problem of peace fell flat, though it would have aroused
considerable attention at some other time. Once again we note
that propaganda should be continuous, should never relax, and
must vary its themes with the tide of events.

The terms, the words, the subjects that propaganda utilizes
must have in themselves the power to break the barrier of the
individual's indifference. They must penetrate like bullets;
they must spontaneously evoke a set of images and have a
certain grandeur of their own. To circulate outdated words or
pick new ones that can penetrate only by force is unavailing,
for timeliness furnishes the "operational words" with their
explosive and affective power. Part of the power of propaganda
is due to its use of the mass media, but this power will be
dissipated if propaganda relies on operational words that have
lost their force. In Western Europe, the word Bolshevik in
1925, the word Fascist in 1936, the word Collaborator in 1944,
the word Peace in 1948, the word Integration in 1958, were all
strong operational terms; they lost their shock value when
their immediacy passed.

To the extent that propaganda is based on current news, it
cannot permit time for thought or reflection. A man caught
up in the news must remain on the surface of the event; be
is carried along in the current, and can at no time take a
respite to judge and appreciate; he can never stop to reflect.
There is never any awareness -- of himself, of his condition,
of his society -- for the man who lives by current events.

Such a man never stops to investigate any one point, any more
than he will tie together a series of news events. We already
have mentioned man's inability to consider several facts or
events simultaneously and to make a synthesis of them in order
to face or to oppose them. One thought drives away another;
old facts are chased by new ones. Under these conditions there
can be no thought. And, in fact, modern man does not think
about current problems; he feels them. He reacts, but be does
not understand them any more than he takes responsibility for
them. He is even less capable of spotting any inconsistency
between successive facts; man's capacity to forget is
unlimited. This is one of the most important and useful points
for the propagandist, who can always be sure that a particular
propaganda theme, statement, or event will be forgotten within
a few weeks. Moreover, there is a spontaneous defensive
reaction in the individual against an excess of information
and -- to the extent that he clings (unconsciously) to the
unity of his own person -- against inconsistencies. The best
defense here is to forget the preceding event. In so doing,
man denies his own continuity; to the same extent that he
lives on the surface of events and makes today's events his
life by obliterating yesterday's news, he refuses to see the
contradictions in his own life and condemns himself to a life
of successive moments, discontinuous and fragmented.

This situation makes the "current-events man" a ready target
for propaganda. Indeed, such a man is highly sensitive to the
influence of present-day currents; lacking landmarks, he
follows all currents. He is unstable because he runs after
what happened today; he relates to the event, and therefore
cannot resist any impulse coming from that event. Because he
is immersed in current affairs, this man has a psychological
weakness that puts him at the mercy of the propagandist. No
confrontation ever occurs between the event and the truth;
no relationship ever exists between the event and the person.
Real information never concerns such a person. What could be
more striking, more distressing, more decisive than the
splitting of the atom, apart from the bomb itself? And yet
this great development is kept in the background, behind the
fleeting and spectacular result of some catastrophe or sports
event because that is the superficial news the average man
wants. Propaganda addresses itself to that man; like him, it
can relate only to the most superficial aspect of a spectacular
event, which alone can interest man and lead him to make a
certain decision or adopt a certain attitude.

But here we must make an important qualification. The news
event may be a real fact, existing objectively, or it may be
only an item of information, the dissemination of a supposed
fact. What makes it news is its dissemination, not its
objective reality. The problem of Berlin is a constant one,
and for that reason it does not interest the public; it is
not news. But when Khrushchev decrees that the problem is
dramatic, that it merits the risk of war, that it must be
solved immediately, and when he demands that the West yield,
then (though there is objectively nothing new in Berlin),
the question becomes news -- only to disappear as soon as
Khrushchev stops waving the threat. Remember that when this
happened in 1961, it was for the fourth time.

The same thing occurred with Soviet agitation about supposed
Turkish aggression plans in November 1957. An editorial in Le
Monde on this subject contained a remark essentially as
follows: "If the events of recent days can teach us a lesson,
it is that we must not attach too much importance to the
anxieties created by the proclamations of the Soviets. The
supposed bacteriological warfare, among other examples, has
shown that they are capable of carrying on a full campaign
of agitation, of accusing others of the worst intentions and
crimes, and of decreeing one fine day that the danger has
passed, only to revive it several days or months later.

We shall examine elsewhere the problem of "fact" in the
context of propaganda. But here we must emphasize that the
current news to which a man is sensitive, in which he places
himself, need have no objective or effective origins; in one
way this greatly facilitates the work of propaganda. For
propaganda can suggest, in the context of news, a group of
" facts" which becomes actuality for a man who feels personally
concerned. Propaganda can then exploit his concern for its
own purposes.

Psychological Crystallization

Under the influence of propaganda certain latent drives that
are vague, unclear, and often without any particular objective
suddenly become powerful, direct, and precise. Propaganda
furnishes objectives, organizes the traits of an individual's
personality into a system, and freezes them into a mold. For
example, prejudices that exist about any event become greatly
reinforced and hardened by propaganda; the individual is told
that he is right in harboring them; he discovers reasons and
justifications for a prejudice when it is clearly shared by
many and proclaimed openly. Moreover, the stronger the
conflicts in a society, the stronger the prejudices, and
propaganda that intensifies conflicts simultaneously
intensifies prejudices in this very fashion.

Once propaganda begins to utilize and direct an individual's
hatreds, he no longer has any chance to retreat, to reduce
his animosities, or to seek reconciliations with his opponents.
Moreover, he now has a supply of ready-made judgments where he
had only some vague notions before the propaganda set in; and
those judgments permit him to face any situation. He will never
again have reason to change judgments that he will thereafter
consider the one and only truth.

In this fashion, propaganda standardizes current ideas, hardens
prevailing stereotypes, and furnishes thought patterns in all
areas. Thus it codifies social, political, and moral standards.
Of course, man needs to establish such standards and categories.
The difference is that propaganda gives an overwhelming force to
the process: man can no longer modify his judgments and thought
patterns. This force springs, on the one band, from the
character of the media employed, which give the appearance of
objectivity to subjective impulses, and, on the other, from
everybody's adherence to the same standards and prejudices.

At the same time, these collective beliefs, which the individual
assumes to be his own, these scales of values and stereotypes,
which play only a small part in the psychological life of a
person unaffected by propaganda, become big and important; by
the process of crystallization, these images begin to occupy a
person's entire consciousness, and to push out other feelings
and judgments. All truly personal activity on the part of the
individual is diminished, and man finally is filled with nothing
but these prejudices and beliefs around which all else revolves.
In his personal life, man will eventually judge everything by
such crystallized standards. To return to Stoetzel, public
opinion within an individual grows as it becomes crystallized
through the effects of propaganda while his private opinion
decreases.

Another aspect of crystallization pertains to self-justification
for which man has great need, as we have seen in the preceding
chapter. To the extent that man needs justifications, propaganda
provides them. But whereas his ordinary justifications are
fragile and may always be open to doubts, those furnished by
propaganda are irrefutable and solid. The individual believes
them and considers them to be eternal truths. He can throw off
all sense of guilt; he [loses] all feeling for the harm he might
do, all sense of responsibility other than the responsibility
propaganda instills in him. Thus he becomes perfectly adapted to
objective situations and nothing can create a split within him.

Through such a process of intense rationalization, propaganda
builds monolithic individuals. It eliminates inner conflicts,
tensions, self-criticism, self-doubt. And in this fashion it
also builds a one-dimensional being without depth or range of
possibilities. Such an individual will have rationalizations
not only for past actions, but for the future as well. He
marches forward with full assurance of his righteousness. He
is formidable in his equilibrium, all the more so because it
is very difficult to break his harness of justifications.
Experiments made with Nazi prisoners proved this point.

Tensions are always a threat to the individual, who tries
everything to escape them because of his instinct of self-
preservation. Ordinarily the individual will try to reduce
his own tensions in his own way, but in our present society
many of these tensions are produced by the general situation,
and such tensions are less easily reduced. One might almost
say that for collective problems only collective remedies
suffice. Here propaganda renders spectacular service: by
making man live in a familiar climate of opinion and by
manipulating his symbols, it reduces tensions. Propaganda
eliminates one of the causes of tension by driving man
straight into such a climate of opinion. This greatly
simplifies his life and gives him stability, much security,
and a certain satisfaction.

At the same time, this crystallization closes his mind to
all new ideas. The individual now has a set of prejudices
and beliefs, as well as objective justifications. His entire
personality now revolves around those elements. Every new
idea will therefore be troublesome to his entire being. He
will defend himself against it because it threatens to destroy
his certainties. He thus actually comes to hate everything
opposed to what propaganda has made him acquire. Propaganda
has created in him a system of opinions and tendencies which
may not be subjected to criticism. That system leaves no
room for ambiguity or mitigation of feelings; the individual
has received irrational certainties from propaganda, and
precisely because they are irrational, they seem to him part
of his personality. He feels personally attacked when these
certainties are attacked. There is a feeling here akin to
that of something sacred. And a genuine taboo prevents the
individual from entertaining any new ideas that might create
ambiguity within him.

Incidentally, this refusal to listen to new ideas usually
takes on an ironic aspect: the man who has been successfully
subjected to a vigorous propaganda will declare that all new
ideas are propaganda. To the degree that all his stereotypes,
prejudices, and justifications are the fruit of propaganda,
man will be ready to consider all other ideas as being
propaganda and to assert his distrust in propaganda. One can
almost postulate that those who call every idea they do not
share "propaganda" are themselves almost completely products
of propaganda. Their refusal to examine and question ideas
other than their own is characteristic of their condition.

One might go further and say that propaganda tends to give
a person a religious personality: his psychological life is
organized around an irrational, external, and collective tenet
that provides a scale of values, rules of behavior, and a
principle of social integration. In a society in the process
of secularization, propaganda responds to the religious need,
but lends much more vigor and intransigence to the resulting
religious personality, in the pejorative sense of that term
(as liberals employed it in the nineteenth century): a
limited and rigid personality that mechanically applies divine
commandments, is incapable of engaging in human dialogue, and
will never question values that it has placed above the
individual. All this is produced by propaganda, which pretends
to have lost none of its humanity, to act for the good of
mankind, and to represent the highest type of human being. In
this respect, strict orthodoxies always have been the same.

We may now ask: If propaganda modifies psychological life in
this fashion, will it not eventually lead to neurosis? Karen
Horney deserves the credit for having shown that the neurotic
personality is tied to a social structure and a culture (in
the American sense of that term), and that certain neuroses
share certain essential characteristics springing directly
from the problems found in our society. In the face of
problems produced by society, propaganda seems a means of
remedying personal deficiencies; at the same time it plunges
the individual into a neurotic state. This is apparent from
the rigid responses of the propagandee, his unimaginative
and stereotyped attitude, his sterility with regard to the
socio-political process, his inability to adjust to
situations other than those created by propaganda, his need
for strict opposites -- black and white, good and bad --
his involvement in unreal conflicts created and blown up by
propaganda. To mistake an artificial conflict for a real one
is a characteristic of neurosis. So is the tendency of me
propagandee to give everything his own narrow interpretation,
to deprive facts of their real meaning in order to integrate
them into his system and give them an emotional coloration,
which the non-neurotic would not attribute to them.

Similarly, the neurotic anxiously seeks the esteem and
affection of the largest number of people, just as the
propagandee can live only in accord with his comrades,
sharing the same reflexes and judgments with those of his
group (subjected to the identical propaganda). He does
not deviate by one iota, for to remove himself from the
affection of the milieu means profound suffering; and that
affection is tied to a particular external behavior and
an identical response to propaganda. Naturally, what
corresponds to this is the neurotic's hostility toward
those who refuse his friendship and those who remain
outside his group; the same holds true for the propagandee.

In the neurotic, the extraordinary need for self-justification
(which resides in everyone and leads him to insincerity)
expresses itself in the projection of hostile motives to the
outside world; he feels that destructive impulses do not
emanate from him, but from someone or something outside. He
does not want to fool or exploit others -- others want to do
that to him; and this mechanism is reproduced by propaganda
with great precision. He who wants to make war projects this
intention onto his enemy; then the projected intention
spreads to the propagandee who is then being mobilized and
prepared for war, whose hostilities are aroused at the same
time as he is made to project his own aggression onto the
enemy. As with the neurotic, the "victim-enemy-scapegoat"
cycle assumes enormous proportions in the mind of the
propagandee, even if we admit that in addition to this
process some legitimate reasons always exist for such
reactions.

To sum up: When reading Karen Horney's description of the
neurotic cycle stemming from the neurotic's environment,
one might almost be reading about the cycle typical for the
propagandee:

Anxiety, hostility, reduction of self-respect ... striving
for power ... reinforcement of hostility and anxiety ... a
tendency to withdraw in the face of competition, accompanied
by tendencies to self-depreciation ... failures and
disproportion between capabilities and accomplishments ...
reinforcement of feelings of superiority ... reinforcement
of grandiose ideas ... increase of sensitivity with an
inclination to withdraw ... increase of hostility and
anxiety ...

These responses of the neurotic are identical with those of
the propagandee, even if we take into account that propaganda
ultimately eliminates conscious anxiety and tranquilizes the
propagandee.

Alienation through Propaganda

To be alienated means to be someone other (alienus) than
oneself; it also can mean to belong to someone else. In a more
profound sense, it means to be deprived of one's self, to be
subjected to, or even identified with, someone else. That is
definitely the effect of propaganda. Propaganda strips the
individual, robs him of part of himself, and makes him live an
alien and artificial life, to such an extent that he becomes
another person and obeys impulses foreign to him. He obeys
someone else.

Once again, to produce this effect, propaganda restricts
itself to utilizing, increasing, and reinforcing the
individual's inclination to lose himself in something bigger
than be is, to dissipate his individuality, to free his ego
of all doubt, conflict, and suffering -- through fusion with
others; to devote himself to a great leader and a great
cause. In large groups, man feels united with others, and he
therefore tries to free himself of himself by blending with
a large group. Indeed, propaganda offers him that possibility
in an exceptionally easy and satisfying fashion. But it
pushes the individual into the mass until he disappears
entirely.

To begin with, what is it that propaganda makes disappear?
Everything in the nature of critical and personal judgment.
Obviously, propaganda limits the application of thought. It
limits the propagandee's field of thought to the extent that
it provides him with ready-made (and, moreover, unreal)
thoughts and stereotypes. It orients him toward very limited
ends and prevents him from using his mind or experimenting
on his own. It determines the core from which all his
thoughts must derive and draws from the beginning a sort of
guideline that permits neither criticism nor imagination.
More precisely, his imagination will lead only to small
digressions from the fixed line and to only slightly
deviant, preliminary responses within the framework. In
this fashion we see the progressives make some "variations"
around the basic propaganda tenets of the Communist par, But
the field of such variations is strictly limited.

The acceptance of this line, of such ends and limitations,
presupposes the suppression of all critical judgment, which
in turn is a result of the crystallization of thoughts and
attitudes and the creation of taboos. As Jules Monnerot has
accurately said: All individual passion leads to the
suppression of all critical judgment with regard to the
object of that passion. Beyond that, in the collective
passion created by propaganda, critical judgment disappears
altogether, for in no way can there ever be collective
critical judgment. Man becomes incapable of "separation,"
of discernment (the word critical is derived from the Greek
krino, separate). The individual can no longer judge for
himself because he inescapably relates his thoughts to the
entire complex of values and prejudices established by
propaganda. With regard to political situations, he is given
ready-made value judgments invested with the power of truth
by the number of supporters and the word of experts. The
individual has no chance to exercise his judgment either on
principal questions or on their implication; this leads to
the atrophy of a faculty not comfortably exercised under any
conditions.

What the individual loses is never easy to revive. Once
personal judgment and critical faculties have disappeared
or have been atrophied, they will not simply reappear when
propaganda has been suppressed. In fact, we are dealing here
with one of propaganda's most durable effects: years of
intellectual and spiritual education would be needed to
restore such faculties. The propagandee, if deprived of one
propaganda, will immediately adopt another; this will spare
him the agony of finding himself vis-a-vis some event without
a ready-made opinion, and obliged to judge it for himself.
At the same time, propaganda presents facts, judgments, and
values in such confusion and with so many methods that it
is literally impossible for the average man to proceed with
discernment. He has neither the intellectual capacity nor
the sources of information. He is therefore forced either
to accept, or reject, everything in toto.

We thus reach the same point via different routes: on the
one hand, propaganda destroys the critical faculty; on the
other, it presents objectives on which that faculty could
not be exercised, and thus renders it useless.

All this obviously leads to the elimination of personal
judgment, which takes place as soon as the individual accepts
public opinion as his own. When he expresses public opinion
in his words and gestures, he no longer expresses himself,
but his society, his group. To be sure, the individual always
will express the group, more or less. But in this case he
will express it totally and in response to a systematic
operation.

Moreover, this impersonal public opinion, when produced
by propaganda, is artificial. It corresponds to nothing
authentic; yet it is precisely this artificial opinion that
the individual absorbs. He is filled with it; be no longer
expresses his ideas, but those of his group, and with great
fervor at that -- it is a propaganda prerequisite that he
should assert them with firmness and conviction. He absorbs
the collective judgments, the creatures of propaganda; he
absorbs them like the nourishment which they have, in fact,
become. He expounds them as his own. He takes a vigorous
stand, begins to oppose others. He asserts himself at the
very moment that he denies his own self without realizing
it. When he recites his propaganda lesson and says that he
is thinking for himself, when his eyes see nothing and his
mouth only produces sounds previously stenciled into his
brain, when he says that he is indeed expressing his
judgment -- then he really demonstrates that he no longer
thinks at all, ever, and that he does not exist as a person.
When the propagandee tries to assert himself as a living
reality, he demonstrates his total alienation most clearly;
for he shows mat he can no longer even distinguish between
himself and society. He is then perfectly integrated, he is
the social group, there is nothing in him not of the group,
there is no opinion in him that is not the group's opinion.
He is nothing except what propaganda has taught him. He is
merely a channel that ingests the truths of propaganda and
dispenses them with the conviction that is the result of
his absence as a person. He cannot take a single step back
to look at events -- under such conditions; there can be
no distance of any kind between him and propaganda.

This mechanism of alienation generally corresponds either
to projection into, and identification with, a hero and
leader, or to a fusion with the mass. These two mechanisms
are not mutually exclusive: When a Hitler Youth projected
himself into his Fuhrer, he entered by that very act into
the mass integrated by propaganda. When the young Komsomol
surrendered himself to the cult of Stalin's personality, he
became, at that very moment, altogether part of the mass.
It is important to note that when the propagandee believes
to be expressing the highest ideal of personality, he is at
the lowest point of alienation. Did we not bear often enough
Fascism's claim that it restored personality to its place of
honor? But through one channel or another, the same alienation
is produced by any propaganda, for the creation of a hero is
just as much the result of propaganda as is the integration
of an individual in an activated mass. When propaganda makes
the individual participate in a collective movement, it not
only makes him share in an artificial activity, but also
evokes in him a psychology of participation, a "crowd
psychology." This psychic modification, which automatically
takes place in the presence of other participants, is
systematically produced by propaganda. It is the creation of
mass psychology, with man's individual psychology integrated
into the crowd.

In this process of alienation, the individual loses control
and submits to external impulses; his personal inclinations
and tastes give way to participation in the collective. But
that collective will always be best idealized, patterned,
and represented by the hero. The cult of the hero is the
absolutely necessary complement of the massification of
society. We see the automatic creation of this cult in
connection with champion athletes, movie stars, and even
such abstractions as Davy Crockett in the United States and
Canada in 1955. This exaltation of the hero proves that one
lives in a mass society. The individual who is prevented by
circumstances from becoming a real person, who can no longer
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 be lives in spiritual symbiosis. The well-known
mechanism of identifying with movie stars is almost
impossible to avoid for the member of modern society who
comes to admire himself in the person of the hero. There he
reveals the powers of which he unconsciously dreams, projects
his desires, identifies himself with this success and that
adventure. The hero becomes model and father, power and
mythical realization of all that the individual cannot be.

Propaganda uses all these mechanisms, but actually does even
more to reinforce, stabilize, and spread them. The propagandee
is alienated and transposed into the person promoted by
propaganda (publicity campaigns for movie stars and propaganda
campaigns are almost identical). For this, incidentally, no
totalitarian organization is needed -- such alienation does
not take place merely in the event of a Hitler or a Stalin,
but also in that of a Khrushchev, a Clemenceau, a Coolidge,
or a Churchill (the myth surrounding Coolidge is very
remarkable in this respect).

The propagandee finds himself in a psychological situation
composed of the following elements: he lives vicariously,
through an intermediary. He feels, thinks, and acts through
the hero. He is under the guardianship and protection of his
living god; he accepts being a child; he ceases to defend
his own interests, for be knows his hero loves him and
everything his hero decides is for the propagandee's own
good; he thus compensates for the rigor of the sacrifices
imposed on him. For this reason every regime that demands
a certain amount of heroism must develop this propaganda of
projection onto the hero (leader).

In this connection one can really speak of alienation, and
of regression to an infantile state caused by propaganda.
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 to the free development of the personality.

Such extensive alienation is by no means exceptional.
The reader may think we have described an extreme, almost
pathological case. Unfortunately, he is a common type, even
in his acute state. Everywhere we find men who pronounce as
highly personal truths what they have read in the papers only
an hour before, and whose beliefs are merely the result of a
powerful propaganda. Everywhere we find people who have blind
confidence in a political party, a general, a movie star, a
country, or a cause, and who will not tolerate the slightest
challenge to that god. Everywhere we meet people who, because
they are filled with the consciousness of Higher Interests
they must serve unto death, are no longer capable of making
the simplest moral or intellectual distinctions or of
engaging in the most elementary reasoning. Yet all this is
acquired without effort, experience, reflection, or criticism
-- by the destructive shock effect of well-made propaganda.
We meet this alienated man at every turn, and are possibly
already one ourselves.

Aside from the alienation that takes place when the rational
individual retreats into the irrational collective, there
are other forms of alienation -- for example, through the
artificial satisfaction of real needs, or the real
satisfaction of artificial needs (publicity and advertising).

The first case is the one we have already discussed, in which
propaganda develops from the contemporary sociological situation
in order to give man artificial satisfaction for real needs.
Because man is restless and frustrated, because he understands
nothing of the world in which he lives and acts, because he
still is asked to make very great sacrifices and efforts --
because of all that, propaganda develops. It satisfies man,
but with false and illusory satisfactions. It gives him
explanations of the world in which he lives, but explanations
that are mendacious and irrational. It reassures or excites
him, but always at the wrong moment. It makes him tremble
with fear of some biological warfare that never did exist,
and makes him believe in the peaceful intentions of countries
that have no desire for peace. It gives him reasons for the
sacrifices demanded of him, but not the real reasons. Thus,
in 1914, it called on him to lay down his life for his
country, but remained silent on the war's economic causes,
for which he certainly would not have fought.

Propaganda satisfies man's need for release and certainty,
it eases his tensions and compensates for his frustrations,
but with purely artificial means. If, for example, the worker
has reasons -- given his actual economic situation -- to feel
frustrated, alienated, or exploited, propaganda, which can
really "solve" the worker's problems, as it has already done
in the U.S.S.R., alienates him even more by making him
oblivious of his frustration and alienation, and by calming
and satisfying him. When man is subjected to the abnormal
conditions of a big city or a battlefield and has good
reason to feel tense, fearful, and out of step, propaganda
that adjusts him to such conditions and resolves his conflicts
artificially, without changing his situation in the least, is
particularly pernicious. Of course, it seems like a cure. But
it is like the cure that would heal the liver of an alcoholic
in such a way that he could continue to get drunk without
feeling pain in his liver. Propaganda's artificial and
unreal answers for modern man's psychological suffering are
precisely of that kind: they allow him to continue living
abnormally under the conditions in which society places him.
Propaganda suppresses the warning signals that his anxieties,
maladjustments, rebellions, and demands once supplied.

All this is also at work when propaganda liberates our deepest
impulses and tendencies, such as our erotic drives, guilt
feelings, and desire for power. But such liberation does not
provide true and genuine satisfaction for such drives, any more
than it justifies our demands and aggressions by permitting us
to feel righteous in spite of them. Man can no more pick the
object of his aggression than he can give free reign to his
erotic drive. The satisfactions and liberations offered by
propaganda are ersatz. Their aim is to provide a certain
decompression or to use the shock effect of these tremendous
forces somewhere else, to use them in support of actions that
would otherwise lack impetus. This shows bow the propaganda
process deprives the individual of his true personality.

Modern man deeply craves friendship, confidence, close personal
relationships. But be is plunged into a world of competition,
hostility, and anonymity. He needs to meet someone whom he can
trust completely, for whom he can feel pure friendship, and to
whom he can mean something in return. That is hard to find in
his daily life, but apparently confidence in a leader, a hero,
a movie star, or a TV personality is much more satisfying. TV,
for example, creates feelings of friendship, a new intimacy,
and thus fully satisfies those needs. But such satisfactions
are purely illusory and fallacious because there is no true
friendship of any kind between the TV personality and the
viewer who feels that personality to be his friend. Here is
a typical mendacious satisfaction of a genuine need. And what
TV spontaneously produces is systematically exploited by
propaganda: the "Little Father" is always present.

Another example: In 1958 Khrushchev promised the transition to
integrated Communism in the U.S.S.R.; later he declared that it
would be realized very soon. Based on this theme was an entire
irrational propaganda campaign whose principal argument was that
Communism would soon be fully attained because by 1975 the
U.S.S.R. would have reached the production level of the United
States -- which would mean that the United States would then be
ready to achieve Communism. Incidentally, the year given by
Khrushchev in 1958 for thme occurrence of this phenomenon was
1975, but in April 1960, he year he gave was 1980. This campaign
was designed to satisfy the needs of the Soviet masses, to regain
their confidence and appease their demands. What we see here is a
purely theoretical answer, but it satisfies because it is believed
by the masses and thus made true and real by the mechanism of
propaganda.

Let us now look at the other side of the coin. Propaganda creates
artificial needs. just as propaganda creates political problems
that would never arise by themselves, but for which public opinion
will then demand a solution, it arouses in us an increase of certain
desires, prejudices, and needs which were by no means imperative to
begin with. They become so only as a result of propaganda, which
here plays the same role as advertising. Besides, propaganda is
helped by advertising, which gives certain twists and orientations
to individual drives, while propaganda extends the effects of
advertising by promising psychological relief of tensions in
general. Under the impact of propaganda, certain prejudices (racial
or economic), certain needs (for equality or success), become all-
devouring, destructive passions, occupying me entire range of a
person's consciousness, superseding all other aspects of life,
and demanding answers.

As a result of propaganda, these superficial tendencies end up by
becoming identified with our deepest needs and become confused with
what is most personal and profound within us. Precisely in this
fashion me genuine need for freedom has been diluted and adulterated
into an abominable mixture of liberalism under the impact of various
forms of propaganda of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In
this psychic confusion, created by propaganda, propaganda alone then
imposes order. Just as it is a fact that mass communication media
create new needs (for example, the existence of TV creates the need
to buy a set and turn it on), it is even more the case when these
means are used by propaganda.

And just as propaganda acts to create new needs, it also creates
the demand for their solutions. We have shown how propaganda can
relieve and resolve tensions. These tensions are purposely provoked
by the propagandist, who holds out their remedy at the same time.
He is master of both excitation and satisfaction. One may even say
that if he has provoked a particular tension, it was in order to
lead me individual to accept a particular remedy, to demand some
suitable action (suitable from the propagandist's viewpoint), and
to submit to a system that will alleviate that tension. He thus
places the individual in a universe of artificially created
political needs, needs that are artificial even if their roots
were once completely genuine.

For example, by creating class-consciousness in the proletariat,
propaganda adds a corresponding tension to the worker's misery.
Similarly, by creating an equality complex, it adds another
tension to all the natural demands of the "have-nots." But
propaganda simultaneously offers the means to reduce these
tensions. It opens a door to the individual, and we have seen
that that is one of the most effective propaganda devices. The
only trouble is that all it really offers is a profound
alienation: when an individual reacts to these artificially
provoked tensions, when he responds to these artificially
created stimuli, or when he submits to the manipulations that
make him repress certain personal impulses to make room for
abstract drives and reduction of these tensions, he is no more
himself than he is when he reacts biologically to a tranquilizer.
This will appear to be a true remedy, which in fact it is -- but
for a sickness deliberately provoked to fit the remedy.

As we have frequently noted, these artificial needs assume
considerable importance because of their universal nature and the
means (the mass media) by which they are propagated. They become
more demanding and imperative for the individual than his own
private needs and lead him to sacrifice his private satisfactions.
In politics as in economics, the development of artificial needs
progressively eliminates personal needs and inclinations. Thus,
what takes place is truly an expulsion of the individual outside
of himself, designed to deliver him to the abstract forces of
technically oriented mechanisms.

On this level, too, the more the individual is convinced that he
thinks, feels, and acts on his own, the greater the alienation will
be. The psychologist Biddle has demonstrated in detail that an
individual subjected to propaganda behaves as though his reactions
depended on his own decisions. He obeys, he trembles with fear and
expands or contracts on command, but nothing in this obedience is
passive or automatic; even when yielding to suggestion, he decides
" for himself" and thinks himself free -- in fact the more he is
subjected to propaganda, the freer he thinks he is. He is energetic
and chooses his own action. In fact, propaganda, to reduce the
tension it has created in the first place, offers him one, two,
even three possible courses of action, and the propagandee considers
himself a well-organized, fully aware individual when be chooses one
of them. Of course, this takes little effort on his part. The
propagandee does not need much energy to make his decision, for that
decision corresponds with his group, with suggestion, and with the
sociological forces. Under the influence of propaganda he always
takesthe easy way, the path of least resistance, even if it costs
him his life. But even while coasting downhill, he claims he is
climbing uphill and performing a personal, heroic act. For
propaganda has aroused his energy, personality, and sense of
responsibility -- or rather their verbal images, because the
forces themselves were long ago destroyed by propaganda.

Excerpts from Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes, by
Jacques Ellul, Alfred A. Knopf, (1965) pp. 6-9, 25-32, 38-48,
163-178. Translated from the French by Konrad Kellen and Jean
Lerner. Footnotes omitted.