Propaganda

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Propaganda refers to the use of communication techniques to affect people’s thinking and behavior. Any technique or action that attempts to influence the emotions, attitudes, values, beliefs, or actions of a group can be described as propaganda. Typically, propaganda benefits the sponsor and puts the interests of the sponsor above those of the recipient. As an instrument of persuasion and psychological coercion, it seeks to compel the recipient to submit to the will of the sponsor. Propaganda is thus different from education, which seeks to develop independent thinking, and from information, which is based on objective facts.

Many practitioners of propaganda have insisted that they merely transmit “education” and “information.” Other euphemisms they use to describe their trade include “public relations,” “public affairs,” “public communication,” “public information,” “public diplomacy,” “psychological warfare,” “psychological operations” (or “psyops”), and “communication.” At the end of the twentieth century the word spin became a popular and somewhat derogatory euphemism for propaganda.

Propaganda does not necessarily include lies, as many people believe. Often, propaganda involves truthful statements that are presented, or twisted, to serve the interests of the sponsor. In addition, propaganda is not always verbal: Although speeches, articles, leaflets, books, and rhetorical ploys are common forms of propaganda, so too are photographs, films, music, monuments, currency, flags, parades, and symbols. Propaganda also can include deeds—actions calculated to have an impact on the perceptions of others.

Today the word propaganda has a negative connotation, but originally it was a Latin term referring to the reproduction of plants and animals. It developed a positive religious association in the seventeenth century, when Pope Gregory XIII created a commission of cardinals (de propaganda fide ) to spread the Catholic faith in foreign lands. In the next century some English speakers began to use propaganda to refer to the spread of political ideals, though not necessarily in a negative way. Many people continue to use the word propaganda in a political context, but propaganda need not be a product of a government or political organization. The advertising and public relations industries, for example, conduct propaganda on behalf of businesses and other nongovernmental organizations.

As a technique of persuasion, propaganda has been a feature of human life since the first civilizations were founded. The scope and intensity of propaganda, however, increased dramatically in twentieth century. As the communication and information revolutions gathered steam, governments, businesses, interest groups, and revolutionaries turned increasingly to propaganda to advance their agendas in a crowded marketplace of ideas. At the turn of the twentieth century many elite observers expressly advocated the use of propaganda as an instrument of social control. Theorists such as Gustave LeBon (1841-1931) and Walter Lippmann (1889–1974) issued alarmist warnings of a coming age of “mass society.” Fearing that an uninformed public (which they called the “herd”) would undo the social fabric of society, they suggested that elites should manipulate images and symbols to control the masses.

World War I marked an especially notable turning point in the history of propaganda. It was widely perceived as a “total war”: an all-encompassing battle for national survival that demanded the mobilization of all the nation’s resources. All the major governments involved in the conflict developed propaganda bureaus to mobilize their publics for total war. The armies of the belligerents also developed sophisticated techniques of psychological warfare to demoralize enemy soldiers. Much of the war’s propaganda consisted of wild exaggerations, crude images, and stories of atrocities. Warring governments played up nationalistic and patriotic sentiments while at the same time demonizing their enemies as barbaric savages. One of the most famous propaganda episodes of the war was a fabricated story circulated by British agents claiming that Germans were using human corpses to make soap. When the United States joined the war on the side of the Allies in 1917, President Woodrow Wilson added a peculiarly idealistic character to the propaganda by selling the war as a fight for democracy that would end all wars.

In the aftermath of World War I popular suspicion of propaganda as a technique increased, and many ordinary people came to use the word propaganda as a synonym for lies. The negative connotation was furthered by the conspicuous use of propaganda by totalitarian and fascist regimes in the 1920s and 1930s. The communist government in the Soviet Union, the fascist government in Italy, and the National Socialist regime in Germany all relied on propaganda techniques to come to power, to legitimize their rule, and to facilitate expansionist ventures abroad.

World War I also helped to stimulate the professionalization of propaganda techniques in democracies. The public relations and advertising professions ballooned into massive independent industries in the 1920s and 1930s. Most of the leaders in these fields developed their expertise working for government propaganda bureaus during the war. Additionally, more and more academic researchers began conducting serious social science investigations into the management of public opinion. World War II and the Cold War accelerated this trend by funneling money into the scholarly field of communication which emerged, in large part, from government-sponsored research into public opinion management.

Perhaps the most famous propagandist in history was Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945), who disseminated Adolf Hitler’s doctrine of racial supremacy in Nazi Germany. But probably the most influential propagandist was an American: Edward Bernays (1891–1995), the so-called “father of public relations.” By his example and through his many writings—including the still-consulted Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923) and Propaganda (1928)—Bernays established the core principles that continue to be used in propaganda and public relations to this day.

Although the development of propaganda in the twentieth century was tied instrumentally to warfare and national security causes, propaganda techniques have become a reality of modern life. Few political leaders, celebrities, interest groups, businesses, and organizations go without an image advisor, public relations counselor, or spokesperson—all effectively “propagandists” working to advance the causes of their sponsors.

SEE ALSO Advertising; Persuasion; Persuasion, Message-based; Politics

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bernays, Edward. 1923. Crystallizing Public Opinion. New York: Boni and Liveright.

Bernays, Edward. 1928. Propaganda. New York: Horace Liveright.

Ewen, Stuart. 1996. PR!: A Social History of Spin. New York: Basic Books.

Taylor, Philip M. 1990. Munitions of the Mind: War Propaganda from the Ancient World to the Nuclear Age. Glasgow, Scotland, U.K.: William Collins Sons and Company.

Thomson, Oliver. 1999. Easily Led: A History of Propaganda. Thrupp, Stroud, U.K.: Sutton.

Kenneth Osgood