propaganda Re: NP? a view from Europe

[Doug Millison]

"Propaganda is the more or less systematic effort to manipulate other
people's beliefs, attitudes, or actions by means of symbols (words,
gestures, banners, monuments, music, clothing, insignia, hairstyles,
designs on coins and postage stamps, and so forth). Deliberateness and a
relatively heavy emphasis on manipulation distinguish propaganda from
casual conversation or the free and easy exchange of ideas. The
propagandist has a specified goal or set of goals. To achieve these he
deliberately selects facts, arguments, and displays of symbols and presents
them in ways he thinks will have the most effect. To maximize effect, he
may omit pertinent facts or distort them, and he may try to divert the
attention of the reactors (the people whom he is trying to sway) from
everything but his own propaganda.

Comparatively deliberate selectivity and manipulation also distinguish
propaganda from education. The educator tries to present various sides of
an issue--the grounds for doubting as well as the grounds for believing the
statements he makes, and the disadvantages as well as the advantages of
every conceivable course of action. Education aims to induce the reactor to
collect and evaluate evidence for himself and assists him in learning the
techniques for doing so. It must be noted, however, that a given
propagandist may look upon himself as an educator, may believe that he is
uttering the purest truth, that he is emphasizing or distorting certain
aspects of the truth only to make a valid message more persuasive, and that
the courses of action that he recommends are in fact the best actions that
the reactor could take. By the same token, the reactor who regards the
propagandist's message as self-evident truth may think of it as
educational; this often seems to be the case with "true
believers"--dogmatic reactors to dogmatic religious or social propaganda.
"Education" for one person may be "propaganda" for another.

 [...]

To informed students of Communism, the term propaganda has yet another
connotation, associated with the term agitation. The two terms were first
used by the Marxist Georgy Plekhanov and later elaborated upon by Lenin in
a pamphlet What Is to Be Done? (1902), in which he defined "propaganda" as
the reasoned use of historical and scientific arguments to indoctrinate the
educated and enlightened (the attentive and informed publics, in the
language of today's social sciences); he defined "agitation" as the use of
slogans, parables, and half-truths to exploit the grievances of the
uneducated and the unreasonable. Since he regarded both strategies as
absolutely essential to political victory, he twinned them in the term
agitprop.

 [...]

Distinctions are sometimes made between overt propaganda, in which the
propagandist and perhaps his backers are made known to the reactor, and
covert propaganda, in which the source is secret or disguised. Covert
propaganda might include such things as unsigned political advertisements,
clandestine radio stations using false names, and statements by editors,
politicians, or others who have been secretly bribed by governments,
political backers, or business firms. Sophisticated diplomatic negotiation,
legal argument, collective bargaining, commercial advertising, and
political campaigns are of course quite likely to include considerable
amounts of both overt and covert propaganda, accompanied by propaganda of
the deed.

Another term related to propaganda is psychological warfare (sometimes
abbreviated to "psychwar"), which is the prewar or wartime use of
propaganda directed primarily at confusing or demoralizing enemy
populations or troops, putting them off guard in the face of coming
attacks, or inducing them to surrender.

Still another related concept is that of brainwashing. This term usually
means intensive political indoctrination. It may involve long political
lectures or discussions, long compulsory reading assignments, and so forth,
sometimes in conjunction with efforts to reduce the reactor's resistance by
exhausting him either physically through torture, overwork, or denial of
sleep or psychologically through solitary confinement, threats, emotionally
disturbing confrontations with interrogators or defected comrades,
humiliation in front of fellow citizens, and the like. The term
brainwashing has been widely used in sensational journalism to refer to
such activities (and to many other activities) when they have allegedly
been conducted by Maoists in China and elsewhere.

Another related word, advertising, has mainly commercial connotations,
though it need not be restricted to this; political candidates, party
programs, and positions on political issues may be "packaged" and
"marketed" by advertising firms. The words promotion and public relations
have wider, vaguer connotations and are often used to avoid the
implications of "advertising" or "propaganda." "Publicity" and "publicism"
often imply merely making a subject known to a public, without educational,
propagandistic, or commercial intent.

[...]
The 20th-century propagandist with money and imagination can use a very
wide range of signs, symbols, and media to convey his message. Signs are
simply stimuli--"information bits" capable of stimulating, in some way, the
human organism. These include sounds, such as words, music, or a 21-gun
salvo; gestures (a military salute, a thumbed nose); postures (a weary
slump, folded arms, a sit-down, an aristocratic bearing); structures (a
monument, a building); items of clothing (a uniform, a civilian suit);
visual signs (a poster, a flag, a picket sign, a badge, a printed page, a
commemorative postage stamp, a swastika scrawled on a wall); and so on and
on. (See semiotics.)

[...]
The contemporary propagandist can employ elaborate social-scientific
research facilities, unknown in previous epochs, to conduct opinion surveys
and psychological interviews in efforts to learn the symbolic meanings of
given signs for given reactors around the world and to discover what signs
leave given reactors indifferent because, to them, these signs are without
meaning.

Media are the means--the channels--used to convey signs and symbols to the
intended reactor or reactors. A comprehensive inventory of media used in
20th-century propaganda could cover many pages. Written media include
letters, handbills, posters, billboards, newspapers, magazines, books, and
handwriting on walls and streets. Among audiovisual media, television may
be the most powerful for many purposes. Television can convey a great many
types of signs simultaneously; it can gain heavy impact from mutually
reinforcing gestures, words, postures, and sounds and a background of
symbolically significant leaders, celebrities, historic settings,
architectures, flags, music, placards, maps, uniforms, insignia, cheering
or jeering mobs or studio audiences, and staged assemblies of prestigious
or powerful people. Other audiovisual media include public speakers, motion
pictures, theatres, marching bands, mass demonstrations, picketing,
face-to-face conversations between individuals, and "talking" exhibits at
fairs, expositions, and art shows. [...]


"propaganda" Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
<http://www.members.eb.com/bol/topic?artcl=109443&seq_nbr=1&page=n&isctn=2>
[Accessed 28 November 2001]




Doug Millison - Writer/Editor/Web Editorial Consultant
millison at online-journalist.com
www.Online-Journalist.com