Chapter 8. 8 Effects on the Individual and Democracy

Alienation through Propaganda

Because propaganda manipulates people to believe and act on behalf of someone else, it alienates them from themselves. Propaganda manipulates individuals to act for another, to obey impulses outside the self, and thus to lose their locus of control (Ellul, 1965, p. 169). Propaganda pushes individuals to identify with a higher cause, something bigger than themselves, to free their minds of doubts and tensions, and to devote themselves to a leader or cause. It limits critical faculties and reinforces social stereotypes, opinions, and beliefs. It channels the individual’s thoughts within the party line, with only slight variations tolerated. The individual loses the ability to exercise independent judgment. Ellul adds that “this leads to the atrophy of a faculty not comfortably exercised under any conditions” (1965, p. 170).

Once individuals lose themselves in propaganda, Ellul (1965) notes, their opinions and often their actions are not their own but those of the group. Moreover, propaganda requires that they be expressed “with firmness and conviction” (p. 171). Absorbing the collective vision, individuals make it their own, thus asserting themselves while denying their selves “without realizing it” (p. 171). Claiming that we are expressing our own judgment (or have done our own research), we parrot the propaganda lessons that have been stencilled onto our brains, a clear indication that we are no longer our own persons (p. 171).

Propaganda often pushes individuals to project themselves into a leader, a mass of followers, or both simultaneously. “When a Hitler Youth projected himself into his Führer, he entered by that very act into the mass integrated by propaganda” (Ellul, 1965, p. 171). When individuals participate in collective movements at the behest of propaganda, they participate in the psychology of crowds, and their personalities integrate with those of the masses; in this alienation, the individual often loses control of the self and participates in the actions of the mob.

Ellul (1965) states that such alienation is common, even in an acute state. Some people claim high truths that they read only an hour before, and their deeply held beliefs result from propaganda. Everywhere some people make heroes of strong leaders, a political party, a reality TV star, “or a cause, and [they] . . . will not tolerate the slightest challenge to that god” (pp. 173–174). He writes of the many people who will serve a cause at great personal sacrifice, even death, of those who violate their moral codes and ignore all reason regarding their manufactured visions. Ellul writes that alienated people are all around us, and we “are possibly already one ourselves” (p. 174).

Part of the alienating effects of propaganda and life in technological mass society is the disassociation between our minds and our actions. Whether blue or white collar, modern work often separates mind and body. We often do not have to think on the job; we execute the decisions that come down from the hierarchy, following the rules and procedures of the organizations that we serve. This general disassociation, Ellul asserts, is the fault of our education system, the press, and myriad other institutions. However, it is primarily the result of the “mechanization of work and propaganda” (1965, p. 180).

The mechanization of work, Ellul claims, is based entirely on disassociation, on removing the human element in the production process. One can maximize production by reducing human error to an absolute minimum. This reduction is made by simplifying tasks, promoting standardization, and creating norms of behaviour on the job. Ellul states that the disassociation that occurs eight hours a day at work affects the worker’s overall behaviour by separating mind and body. This separation might seem hyperbolic. However, the mechanization of production is an ongoing process, speeding up from the accumulation and interaction of techniques. Propaganda aids in this task, Ellul asserts, by promoting active commitment to and participation in work as well as adherence to the organization’s rules.

Propaganda also creates artificial problems and public opinions that demand solutions. It can stimulate prejudices, hatreds, beliefs, and actions wholly manufactured outside the individual. Internalized by the individual, these prefabricated feelings and beliefs become part of the individual’s very being, as fundamental and decisive as the imperatives from family, religion, and community in pre-industrial societies, which they have functionally replaced. Nevertheless, unlike such early imperatives, meanings, and prejudices, modern propaganda comes from organizations that rarely have the interests of the individual among their objectives.

According to Ellul, propaganda that promotes class consciousness among the proletariat adds resentment and tension to workers’ problems. It then proposes solutions to this increased tension: strikes, revolts, and socialism. He mentions propaganda of an “equality complex” as adding another tension to the “natural” demands for social justice of those in the lower and working classes (1965, p. 177). As Ellul states repeatedly, propaganda can lend itself to governments, organizations, and social movements that benefit people and those who would plunge us all into destruction. Regardless, propaganda functions to induce individuals to believe in and act on behalf of the collective (or what Harari, 2015, calls “fictions” or “large-scale flexible cooperation networks”), with as little thought by the individual as possible. Action must become a reflex; individual thought is not required or desired to engage in political and economic decisions (Ellul, 1965, p. 180). Thus, regardless of the causes that it serves, good or evil, propaganda has a corrosive effect on individuals’ ability to control their destinies and necessarily leads to the gradual diminution of freedom.

Ellul also briefly examines the situation in which oppositional parties in a democracy subject the individual to two different propagandas. Whereas some believe that the two would cancel each other out, Ellul writes that this might be so if propaganda were merely a debate of ideas, but it is not. It is psychological manipulation, and far from cancelling each other out they have a cumulative effect. Like a prize fighter stunned with a left hook, he does not return to normal if a right cross follows it up. He becomes even groggier. Individuals in a democracy with two opposed parties that constantly propagandize the population have only two options. They can either take refuge in rejecting politics altogether, thus among the many non-voters with little interest in political affairs, or they can commit to one party or the other, becoming hyper-partisan in the aggressive competition between parties. Thus, Ellul says, they can escape the clash and sign up for one side that is always right and true (1965, pp. 180–181). Once committed, they read, tune in to, and browse the propaganda media of their choice.

As Ellul (1965) details, the final effect of propaganda on the individual is the creation of a conditioned response to it. Individuals become so inured to the propaganda around them that they cease to recognize it consciously. He calls this process “mithridatization,” in which individuals have thoroughly integrated propaganda’s effects into their personalities and no longer need the reinforcement that propaganda supplies. Such conditioned individuals continue to obey the slogans and catchwords; the “reflexes still function,” and they continue to obey (p. 183). The other process by which propaganda becomes integral to the individual is what Ellul calls “sensibilization” (p. 183). This process makes the captured individual hyper-sensitive to propaganda. The slightest stimulus “awakens the myth” and produces the desired action (p. 184). Again, this leads to the disassociation of thought and action. Individuals become tools of the organization, their thoughts “crystallized” and closed to other propaganda.

When a group loses its propaganda, say through defeat or fashion, social disintegration occurs (the word in this context should be written dis-integration to capture that it is the opposite of integration, not a synonym for collapse). Once individuals are caught up in a propaganda bubble, they need constant repetition of it, reinforcement of their world views, and integration into the group. “Propaganda must therefore be unceasing,” Ellul claims (1965, p. 186). According to him, individuals within the group who have lost the propaganda will often withdraw from social or political life, becoming apathetic through uncertainty and fear (1965, p. 185). They become further alienated from society. Without the propaganda, individuals have the burden of making life choices and decisions independently. They no longer have the “director of conscience” (1965, p. 186) that propaganda supplies.

The Ambiguity of Psychological Effects

Ellul is aware that propaganda can produce contradictory results depending on the type of propaganda (agitative or integrative) and, of course, the psychology of the individual. Agitative propaganda seeks to move people to action, arousing anger, resentment, and aggression among them (1965, p. 188). Technicians employ integrative propaganda to assimilate individuals into a group. When used against an enemy population, propaganda can stimulate guilt and fear among them, the object being to destroy their confidence and will to resist. Propaganda can destroy a group by identifying and hammering wedge issues (those of fundamental disagreements) among its members. Alternatively, it can destroy the enemy’s confidence in its sources of information—repeatedly claiming fake news or lame-stream media (or faux news coming from the left). Another indication that propaganda has taken hold in US politics is that we habitually see the other party as the enemy, and any compromise with it is seen as an act of treason to our own party.

One significant prize for a propagandist, Ellul writes, is to sow doubt and suspicion in the mind of a follower in another group. Finding the previous certainties lacking, the person might go to the enemy group to escape the ambiguity, becoming tied to the new truth. “There is no greater enemy of Christianity or Communism than he who was once an absolute believer” (1965, p. 190).

There is a contradiction between politicization and privatization. Active political propaganda aims to move the masses to action, to convince them that their destiny lies in political participation. This need for politicization also requires them to sacrifice much of their private lives for the cause. Propaganda must constantly struggle against the tendency for one to drop out of the media circus and devote oneself to private pursuits, Ellul says (1965, p. 190). The modern state must rely on its citizens’ support to function, even if it must manufacture that support. Propaganda therefore must limit the tendency toward privatization, politicize everything, constantly arouse passions for political and social problems (and pretend problems), and convince the public “that activity in politics is their duty” (1965, p. 191).

Nevertheless, it is not always in the nation-state’s interest to suppress the urge for a quiet private life, and the nation-state might decide that the general passivity of the population is to its advantage. This can be especially true among authoritarian nation-states. Ellul posits that such nation-states can neutralize their citizens through privatization propaganda, giving a free hand to the already powerful. The authoritarian nation-state thus has a powerful tool to harvest citizens’ support needed for its legitimacy. “This method offers very great advantages for the State” (1965, p. 192). This is the case in Putin’s Russia, which encourages political passivity to give the dictator a free hand. When dealing with an enemy nation, propaganda also uses the privatization argument to provoke paralysis in a military crisis.

Social, Political, and Economic Effects

According to Ellul, the significant innovation of Lenin and Hitler was their understanding that the modern world involved the proliferation of means and that the important thing is to use every means available to achieve personal and organizational goals. Ideology becomes secondary or even non-existent; what matters is action for the sake of action. Propaganda only needs to parrot the essential content of ideology and call forth the terms and images, but the content is pliable and can be readily modified as circumstances dictate. It is less and less about ideology; propaganda is autonomous and serves only efficiency, productivity, and power (1965, p. 196).

The goal of propaganda is power, both a means and an end. It seeks to unite as many individuals under its banner as possible, mobilize them to action when called for, and transform them into militants in the service of the movement. The content of ideology is no longer a determinant of action; it merely supplies slogans, images, and symbols that can mobilize a sizable proportion of the masses. In a group in which modern propaganda is active, individuals act in accordance not with the ideology of that group but through the “impulses” coming from the propaganda. Ellul disparages those who believe that ideologies and beliefs alone can make people act; to move people, the activist must use “psycho-sociological methods” (1965, p. 201). Their action creates ideologies and material conditions that produce the truths upon which propaganda further builds. This ideological weakness is explicit in 20th-century movements, as Ellul demonstrates with Nazi and Communist Party propaganda, and it is even more apparent with the neo-fascist movements of recent times.

In a technological society rife with propaganda, certainties and truths are pronounced from on high and are not up for discussion or debate: “They are believed or not believed, and that is all. . . . There is action, but no interaction” (Ellul, 1965, pp. 202–203). Actual interpersonal communication ceases or becomes a parroting of propaganda’s talking points. The propagandee cannot honestly communicate with someone outside the milieu. The interaction between people who subscribe to different propaganda systems is polemic, stilted, restricted to non-political matters (business or family relationships), or avoided altogether. These interpretations of reality become rapidly crystallized and hardened through constant repetition, making them impervious to reason, facts, or contrary interpretations. It soon becomes apparent to all (except the rabid proselytizer) that communication outside the milieu becomes pointless. When acquaintances from different sides inadvertently stray into American society’s politics, most beat a hasty retreat.

Ellul asserts that, rather than public opinion forming spontaneously, it now forms around centralized media that disseminate propaganda in the form of news and opinion pieces (and today reinforced through social media). Individuals in vast numbers internalize this manufactured public opinion. This represents a significant structural change, especially in democratic societies. Public opinion no longer derives from individual debate, discussion, decision making, or crystallization of the group’s opinions (1965, p. 204). Instead, social organizations—such as governments and their agencies and bureaus, corporations, political parties, non-governmental organizations, media outlets, social movements, public health services, and service organizations—form opinions congruent with their interests. Moreover, their propagandists or spokespersons (from offices such as public relations, human relations, and marketing) communicate through media outlets to the public, members of which internalize the message and express the opinions as their own.

Once the manufactured opinion has crystallized among the public, it is often used to justify and promote the actions of those in power. Thus, organizations use propaganda to sell a product, policy, or candidate, whip up the public for war, or ban or legalize abortion. Organizations can convince someone to give money to a political candidate or take a vaccine. Some can recruit individuals, encourage them to put their money into social movements, believe in stolen elections, and even engage in armed insurrections.

Ellul (1965) writes that, because propaganda forms public opinion, the organization manufactures a simplified version of it; ambiguities, nuances, and shades of grey are all eliminated. Individuals have only two options, yes or no, black or white; anyone with a nuanced opinion is placed into one of the two categories (p. 205). This lack of nuance is especially true for the abortion debates since the Dobbs decision in the United States; it is all or nothing for the two sides. It is also true for prejudice, Ellul states. Prejudice arises spontaneously among the population (part of being born into a family and peer group). However, propaganda can take a prejudice and manufacture a simplified version of the other that is “unreal, rigid, and infantile” (p. 206).

Ellul says that over time private opinions will not be able to gain an audience since the centralization of mass media leaves few outlets for such opinions (1965, p. 206). However, technology has addressed that with the development of the internet and social media. Still, it must be admitted that most private opinions on social media mirror the manufactured public opinions expressed in the mass media, though often stated far more stridently.

From Opinion to Action

The most striking characteristic of propaganda is its ability to move people to action. The goal of all propaganda is to capture, at a minimum, the support of the individual. That support can be a vote, a donation of money, or a cheer for the Dear Leader. At its maximum, propaganda aims for the active participation of the individual. Ellul describes this process as artificially inducing “the progression from thought to action” (1965, p. 207). The urgency of a situation and the necessity of specific actions can be manufactured by propaganda and internalized by the individual. Propaganda can show images of people taking similar actions around the nation to reinforce the message.

All of this is true, Ellul writes, but there is one other crucial factor for the overall success of propaganda in pushing people into action: the group’s influence. Propaganda can strengthen the integration of the individual into the group, producing uniformity of opinion and solid identification with the group. In many cases, it forms not only a community among the group members but also “a communal truth” about their beliefs and actions (1965, p. 210). A reliable way of moving such groups to action is for propaganda to manufacture a threat to the group itself. The most significant threat attacks the group’s beliefs and questions its continued existence, and the group must respond through action. Under such conditions, the group cannot remain passive but is pushed into action. The supposed persecution of Christians in 21st-century America is a good illustration of the syndrome, exemplified by the annual “war on Christmas.”

Another way that propaganda can induce action stems from the great power that it has given to public opinion (which it manufactures). This public opinion is not tentative, nor does it rely on word of mouth for its spread. It is in the media, therefore, invested with the authority of the written word, newspapers, and television news. This reinforcement by powerful media gives manufactured public opinion the cloak of absolute truth. As revealed by propaganda, Ellul asserts, such public opinion can even substitute for a leader; the sociological and psychological effects are the same (1965, p. 211).

Ellul observes that people tend to gravitate toward the media that express their group views, thus constantly reinforcing their opinions and allegiance to the group. This bias toward outlets that mirror individual opinions is truer 60 years later in US society since the media have primarily enlarged and centralized. Many news outlets have a definite liberal or conservative cast in their selection of news, an emphasis on specific stories, and opinions on the stories that they report. Today this tendency of individuals to gravitate to such sources is called “confirmation bias”: that is, they search for articles and stories consistent with already held beliefs and values. Confirmation bias is greatly aided by social media algorithms, which feed us ever more extreme images, stories, and memes that have captured our attention in the past. Confirmation bias also operates on our interpretation of events and recall of information. It makes us constantly convinced of the rightness of our views (many of which are manufactured by the dominant organizations in the social structure) and feeds into the decline of communication between people in different propaganda bubbles.

Ellul remarks that propaganda exalts its home group, constantly building up its excellence and truth, and denigrates other groups as wrong or evil. This double whammy produces what he calls a “stringent partitioning” of society, today widely known as polarization. This polarization, Ellul asserts, occurs on distinct levels, for example union versus non-union, Catholic versus Protestant, and liberals versus conservatives. The other party becomes the enemy, and “a world of closed minds establishes itself,” people constantly reaffirming their own righteousness and the wrong-headedness of others (1965, pp. 213–214).

Nevertheless, Ellul writes, even with this partitioning of groups, propaganda can transcend the groups in which it operates to manufacture public opinion. National propaganda effectively manufactures public opinion inside a nation, whereas propaganda from other arenas (unions, religious institutions, political parties) is influential within them. For example, national propaganda might encourage a population to glory in the weapons display of the military; at the same time, a political party’s propaganda might damn the administration for profligate spending. Ellul writes that only a group on a superior level (e.g., the nation-state) can affect a group on a lower level (e.g., a political party) (1965, p. 214). He probably overstates the case, or his point is muddied by imprecise language, for revolutionary groups and opposition parties can seriously affect the public opinion of a nation-state.

Ellul also points to the channelling of different propaganda messages to different media. He notes that the mass media of the Soviet Union only contained positive messages about and praise for the regime designed for the masses. Such propaganda paints a picture of the stability and productivity of the nation-state. It makes the individual’s first-hand experiences seem like minor aberrations with no fundamental importance, without meaning or connection to the overall reality of Soviet society. “Such propaganda (directed to the masses), therefore, can only be positive” (1965, p. 215).

At the same time, criticism was allowed in specialized journals, which the public did not read. Allowing such criticism told the apparatchiks (Communist Party members), nomenklatura (leaders in government and industry), and other professionals that the party was ever vigilant, demanded perfection, was open to constructive criticism, and provided a safety valve for frustrations. Ellul states that these two brands of propaganda from the same Communist Party were possible because the journals were specialized and not read outside their professions. Thus, the party could make propaganda tailored to the intended audience.

The computer, combined with “big data,” has dramatically enhanced the tailoring of propaganda, which can sort populations by any number of factors. Social media sites have learning algorithms tailored to individuals, prioritized by the likelihood that they will want to see certain feeds, with provocative wording to encourage action (clickbait). Many observers posit that these algorithms are responsible for a good deal of polarization in many technological societies today.

Effects on Political Parties

Traditional political parties in the West have acted haphazardly when recruiting partisans, focusing their efforts and resources on elections. Ellul asks what happens to the parties when they engage in proper propaganda, trying to “mobilize public opinion in a more permanent fashion” (1965, p. 216). He posits that this transformation has been taking place in the United States since the early 1950s, though he asserts that the effects of propaganda on the political parties themselves were still unclear when he was writing in the mid-1960s. Yet Ellul has a few hypotheses on propaganda’s long-term effects on the structure of political parties.

Such a party must have the resources to express its propaganda strongly. To do so, it must have extensive resources for advertising budgets (and I would add sympathetic media outlets to stretch its reach). Mass media are a business. With the rise of cable TV and the internet, it makes good business sense for some media outlets to specialize in broadcasting news and opinions, catering to and expanding the audience for the propaganda of certain parties.

In addition to resources, Ellul writes, the party hierarchy must organize in a formal, ever more bureaucratic manner, with every officer having a well-defined function and the expressed goal of affecting public opinion and electing politicians to further the party’s interests. Party discipline must be strict, with propaganda (talking points) from party leaders and lesser politicians and followers taking up the messages verbatim. This unity is essential since the speed of action and reaction are vital to the success of propaganda.

Ellul predicts that, with extensive use of propaganda, there will be a tendency for the party hierarchy to view voters as objects to be manipulated and controlled. Gerrymandering in the United States, now with the help of computing power and big data, allows parties to select their voters to some extent. Negative campaigning to dissuade an opponent’s voters from going to the polls or outright voter intimidation becomes part of the political campaign. There is also a tendency, Ellul asserts, among followers to personalize the party’s power in one person. “The inclination of the masses to admire personal power cannot be shunned by good propaganda: it can only be followed and exploited” (1965, p. 216). For this reason, party propaganda tends to intensify this inclination, investing the leader with the attributes of a hero, including strength, likeability, and omniscience. (Trump depicted as a superhero and Dark Biden as a political mastermind come to mind.) Ellul claims, as a final attribute of the effects of propaganda on political parties, that the propagandists and their instruments take on a central position within the party. They become the heart of the party itself (1965, pp. 215–217).

Once a party adopts big propaganda, it influences other parties. If the opposition does not adapt and regroup because of a lack of funds or organization, then the party of big propaganda will crush it. Ellul cites this result with the fascists in Germany in 1932 and the Communist Parties in France and Italy in 1945. Another option that Ellul explores is for the opposition party to adopt the same techniques before it is obliterated or becomes a permanent minority. This defensive move, he says, was happening in the United States and France in the mid-1960s. However, because of the prohibitive cost of big propaganda and its dominance on the airwaves, Ellul believes that third parties and new parties are unlikely to gain many followers in a democracy. “One can say that propaganda almost inevitably leads to a two-party system” because of these costs (1965, p. 219). One can also say that it leads to a “stringent partitioning” of society, today known as extreme polarization (1965, p. 214).

A party that gains a ruling mandate does so through propaganda. However, the ruling party’s propaganda—aimed at integration, conformity, and the state—is limited in its goals. The minority party’s propaganda tends to be demagogic and “excessive in its ends and expression,” aimed at upsetting the status quo and the state as well as the norms and values of the social order (Ellul, 1965, p. 220).

Ellul mistakenly presumes that a majority party must then control the national legislature, which is invalid for the American Congress, where the 50-state electoral system, gerrymandered districts, and often abused filibuster give inordinate power to a minority. Ellul is also mistaken regarding contemporary American parties when he states that the minority party’s propaganda tends to be underfunded. However, he states that the excessive costs of propaganda might force the parties to look for aid from capitalists “and thus indenture themselves to a financial oligarchy” (1965, p. 220). The flood of money from these sources is precisely what happened to American political parties, now funded by individual and corporate contributions made possible by campaign finance laws that welcome money from almost all sources. There has also been a rise in small donations made possible by constant internet appeals (propaganda) for them. As a result, America’s two major political parties continue to inundate society with sophisticated and well-financed propaganda.

For the individual exposed to two contradictory propagandas, it is not simply a matter of rationally choosing between them. The individual is not a rational spectator in a position to make an informed decision between them. For most individuals, it is not a weighing of self-interest, campaign proposals, or the most capable candidates. Instead, they are attacked from each side, the two parties’ propaganda systems flooding the airwaves, email accounts, and social media; attacking each other; and trying to capture citizens’ attention, commitment, money, and votes. Adding to the party propaganda are news and opinion outlets amplifying the messages. “As a result, the individual suffers the most profound psychological influences and distortions” (Ellul, 1965, pp. 254–255).

Furthermore, Ellul writes, those exposed to this cacophony will seek simple solutions, certainty regarding right and wrong, good and evil. In response, they will join one party or the other and damn the opposing party as the enemy, claiming that their party is always right and good and the other wrong and evil (1965, p. 255). He finds it striking that there are signs in the United States that the population is taking on characteristics hitherto seen only in authoritarian regimes, and again this was in 1965. The citizens become either true believers in one party or the other or completely apathetic about their society. Both responses are antidemocratic, and both are predictable reactions to the democratic propaganda of the two parties (1965, p. 255).

Democracy and Propaganda

In a democracy, there is a need for both government and private organizations to make propaganda. According to Ellul, it is necessary because democracy is centred on the competition between ideas and political parties, and public opinion and periodic voting are the fruit of that competition. Whereas many believe that modern propaganda—or the use of psychological manipulation combined with advertising methods and mass media to influence public opinion—began with authoritarian regimes, Ellul asserts that it was an innovation of democracies during the First World War. The German propaganda effort was mediocre, but the Allied democracies successfully mobilized their citizens for war with “big propaganda” (1965, p. 232). Although the democracies might have been the initial developers, authoritarian regimes in the 1920s and 1930s refined propaganda and extended its reach considerably.

Moreover, Ellul writes, this previous statement should give us pause because there is a conflict between the processes of making propaganda and democratic ideals. The ideal is for people to live in freedom, guided in their public lives by enlightened self-interest and reason, independent of government or corporate control. The use of propaganda—psychological manipulations, appeals to emotions and myths, and biased presentations of facts—seems contradictory to these ideals (1965, p. 233).

Ellul also posits that democratic ideology has an irrational conviction, perhaps tied to the notion of progress, that truth will always win in the end. Alternatively, as Martin Luther King Jr. (1968) reminded us along similar lines, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” When democracies conflict with authoritarian regimes, this conviction leads democratic leaders to think that they only need to state the facts. The truth will inevitably be revealed (Ellul, 1965, p. 234). He clarifies that this belief, unfortunately, is irrational. History also reveals that many democratic regimes hid, suppressed, or eliminated truths. Even when the truth is triumphant, Ellul continues, it is not always the case that it wins because it is the truth; instead, it triumphs because of the support that it garners among the powerful or the masses.

The irrational faith in the power of facts initially constrained democracies in their use of propaganda. It is not meant just to inform but also to establish selective facts and interpretations of public opinion. Ellul goes further, maintaining that propaganda is needed to establish facts in public discourse and to create truth. The “truth is powerless without propaganda” in technological societies (1965, p. 235). Considering the challenges that democracies face with authoritarian regimes, he writes, they will necessarily abandon their faith in the truth consistently winning on its own and embrace propaganda methods in conducting their affairs. “Unless they do so, considering the present tendencies of civilization, the democratic nations will lose the war conducted in this area” (1965, p. 235).

Because of these democratic handicaps—growing polarization between political parties and an irrational belief in truth—democratic propaganda in Ellul’s time was relatively weak compared with that of authoritarian regimes. At the same time, totalitarian governments were expert at controlling their populations, enforcing conformity, and manipulating public opinion consistent with the government’s wishes—all of this, Ellul muses, while conducting highly effective Cold War propaganda at “enemy” nation-states (1965, p. 235). So, he asks, is it even possible for democratic nation-states to make effective propaganda?

Ellul maintains that the most important condition for propaganda to thrive is the centralization and control of media outlets. Totalitarian states have a monopoly on their media, but in a democracy the state does not control them. However, Ellul points out, there is a strengthening concentration of ownership of media outlets, particularly in the United States, where newspaper chains, television networks, and radio stations are increasingly becoming part of large conglomerates.

However, the state must make propaganda, guide public opinion, foster its legitimacy, win elections, and disseminate the news. As already discussed, information is necessary for a democracy, and the state must be credible in the news that it dispenses. However, suppose that there is a powerful and private news organization that “denies facts and falsifies information? Who can tell where the truth lies?” (Ellul, 1965, p. 237). The issue, then, Ellul says, is whether the state can tolerate such a private competitor for the hearts and minds of its citizens, especially if that competitor has the media tools and techniques to equal or exceed those of the state. Some might immediately answer that freedom of expression is paramount; it is the lifeblood of democracy. However, Ellul maintains that freedom of expression, as idealized in the 19th century, refers to individuals and small groups; it is different from freedom of speech for the individual who speaks to millions, especially when that individual has the science of propaganda to guide the messages.

Although democracies often permit a variety of opinions and types of propaganda on their airwaves, there must be some censorship of aberrant or immoral opinions and propaganda counter to democracy itself. As is often stated, “the Constitution is not a suicide pact,” meaning that the survival of democracy and its people should be upheld over constitutional restrictions on government powers. Everyone recognizes that the government must control news during a war, and propaganda against the state’s “interest must be prohibited.” However, Ellul adds, many people fail to realize that the Cold War tensions between authoritarian regimes and democracies are a “permanent and endemic” feature of technical civilization (1965, p. 238). One reason that Cold War–type tensions have become endemic, writes Ellul, is the development of propaganda itself. Propaganda directed at other countries is an effective weapon of war. He writes that the need to respond with unifying propaganda at home and propaganda against enemies will force democracies to employ the tool more aggressively (1965, pp. 238–239).

The problem, according to Ellul, is that democratic ideals fetter democratic propaganda and limit its effectiveness. Looking at American propaganda (of the 1950s and 1960s), he judges it truthful, probably, though, because of the American belief that truth is more effective than lies rather than because of democratic ideology. In his view, American propaganda has a certain respect for the individual. This respect is becoming “steadily weaker” over time, but it is still there and puts some limits on the propaganda of the democratic state (1965, p. 239). There is also a question of nuance in American propaganda, a willingness to attribute good faith to opponents; there are no absolutes, and there is a reluctance to define good and evil clearly, with no room for doubt. In addition, democratic regimes in the 1960s hesitated to use propaganda to further their ends, either domestically or internationally, since doing so seemed so antidemocratic (1965, pp. 239–240).

For all of these reasons, Ellul (1965) judges the democratic propaganda of nation-states in the mid-20th century as “ineffectual” (p. 240). He asks how a democracy can engage in effective propaganda if it is unwilling to provoke the individual to action without thought. How can it engage in effective propaganda if it constantly injects nuance into every assertion? How can propagandists be effective if they have a bad conscience about their actions? Effective propaganda techniques demand the cold manipulation of individuals. Like all techniques, propaganda “creates a schism” between the powerful who wield the techniques and the masses who are their objects. Ultimately, even if the propagandist takes steps to maintain a bond with the people, “all propaganda ends up as a means by which the prevailing powers manipulate the masses” (p. 241). Nevertheless, as antidemocratic as propaganda is, ultimately democratic regimes must thoroughly and efficiently employ it as a matter of survival. Moreover, doing so will affect democracy, for the means of power affect the ends; propaganda is totalitarian and will destroy all possibilities for “true democracy” (pp. 242–245).

The growth of information and the development of technology to dispense it inevitably lead to a need for propaganda. This need is as real for democratic systems as it is for authoritarian systems. Thus, the need must draw a democratic state into producing propaganda whether it wants to or not. Once it commits itself to this task, it must become the fount of truth, and it can no longer tolerate differences of opinion or competition from other sources of propaganda, “for the information it dispenses is believed only to the extent that its propaganda is believed” (Ellul, 1965, p. 251).

The development of communication technology fundamentally affects social and political structures. Ellul speculates about the effect of television propaganda on American democracy. For one thing, he predicts, it will bring people closer to direct democracy. Members of Congress and the cabinet will appear on TV, and many will become household names, informing the public daily on political issues rather than just at election time. Members of the public can track their representatives and know more about their stands on issues.

However, Ellul expects that, rather than being a mechanism of control over political elites, television will soon become a tool that those elites will learn to use to spread propaganda more efficiently. They will develop their technical skills once they have the money to do so. But television will cause a “profound modification of democracy’s ‘style’” (1965, p. 253). By “style,” Ellul is referring not just to the television-friendly style projected by candidates and political leaders. Former actors and television personalities know how to use the medium, although many career politicians are also mastering the technical skills. The criteria for voting for a person are increasingly based on likeability and televised presence rather than policies and track records.

More importantly, Ellul focuses on the governance processes rather than the trappings of elections. He asserts that democracy does not translate well into graphical representations—it “is not a visual form of government” (1965, p. 253). He insists that democracy is best adapted to the word and that speech is the highest form of communication and the most effective instrument for carrying democratic ideas. However, because TV reaches right into the home, has an almost hypnotic power over the public, requires little effort by the governed (especially with the advent of remote control), and commands the full attention of the viewer, it is an ideal instrument of mobilization for democratic propaganda. Therefore, political parties within a democracy and the state must adapt to employ television propaganda or be left behind.

Nevertheless, though modern media are ideal for the spread of propaganda, over time they destroy democratic ideas and behaviours—the very foundations of democracy. Propaganda, even democratic propaganda, destroys empathy for others, particularly minorities. It reinforces prejudices, prevents the re-examination of long-held opinions, and encourages dogmatic beliefs and the rejection of facts when they do not fit the narrative. Although propagandees have democratic “convictions,” they are merely empty words, incantations that have nothing to do with behaviour. For such individuals, “democracy has become a myth and a set of democratic imperatives, merely stimuli that activate conditioned reflexes. The word democracy, having become a simple incantation, no longer has anything to do with democratic behavior. The citizen can repeat indefinitely ‘the sacred formulas of democracy’ while acting like a storm trooper” (Ellul, 1965, p. 256).

Means without Ends

Ellul mentions two types of solutions proposed for the dilemma of technological society. The first solution, favoured by technicians, is that technical problems demand technical solutions. He asserts that more technology, such as computers (he refers to them as “so-called ‘thinking machines’”), certainly comprises an innovative category. However, the techniques are new means “designed to permit human mastery of what were means” but are now slipping beyond our control. They “are techniques of the second degree, and nothing more” (1964, pp. 429–430).

The second solution is an attempt to discover (or rediscover) a new end or purpose for technological society (Ellul, 1964, p. 430). Some people assert that a rediscovered humanism, perhaps through socialism, could provide such a goal to technical society. However, the further technology develops, the further removed any purpose to it all seems to be. Even the stalwarts of rising living standards and comforts seem to fade away; Ellul posits that this might be because constant adaptation to innovation can be tiresome.

However, the technician continues to struggle, believing that such ends must be “technically established and calculated” to match technical means. Technique needs precision, calculability, and certainty. “Everything in human life that does not lend itself to mathematical treatment must be excluded—because it is not a possible end for technique—and left to the sphere of dreams” (Ellul, 1964, p. 431). Thus, humanity becomes the object of technique, absolutely fitted for life within a technological society, “completely despoiled” of traditions, values, and natural emotions—the very attributes that make us human (Ellul, 1964, p. 432).

In 1960, L’Express of Paris published forecasts by reputable American and Soviet scientists for the year 2000. Ellul reports that, according to these worthies, there will be all sorts of technological marvels and wondrous social changes by that year. There will be regular voyages to the moon, the world population will stabilize, and we will have tapped into unlimited energy stores. They forecast that education will be transformed as electronic banks store information (one spot on) and download it directly to the human brain (not so prescient). New extraction techniques will provide all of the metal necessary to maintain production. Society will eliminate disease and famine. Genetics will gradually replace sexual reproduction of the species. The best genes will be selected to produce only the most exemplary human types. These genetic methods will become universal since any country that uses such technology will quickly dominate the world.

Ellul makes two points about these predictions. First, how will we ever get there morally, socially, or politically? Considering that we are still dealing with the problems of the initial wave of the Industrial Revolution, how will a technological society deal with the massive problems caused by hyper-technical change? The scientists who made the predictions never said how they will solve the future problems of automation, throwing millions out of work. They did not detail the more distant problem of people insisting on having children naturally or relocating people who make their living by farming when we produce synthetic foods in factories. Who will determine the judges for preserving the seed of outstanding men? Alas, Ellul writes, they meant that role for themselves. Considering that such scientists are mere mediocrities outside their specializations, “we can only shudder at the thought of what they will esteem most ‘favorable’” (1964, pp. 435–436). There is only one way that such techniques can be given their full scope and uniformly applied: that is, through a totalitarian dictatorship. It is easy to see why these technophiles ignored that necessity “and land squarely in the golden age” (1964, p. 434).

Second, Ellul says that these predictions are incredibly naive, sterile, and sometimes contradictory. They assume that science will be able to reshape human thoughts, emotions, and behaviours. Some of the scientists advocated the genetic manipulation of humans to produce homogeneous “social units” (soldiers, workers, or scientists) and would forbid natural human reproduction. Nevertheless, they also wrote about ensuring freedom and democracy. They were incapable of seeing the contradictions. They proposed the “harshest of dictatorships. In comparison, Hitler’s was a trifling affair. That it is to be a dictatorship of test tubes rather than of hobnailed boots will not make it any less a dictatorship” (1964, p. 434).

Ellul admits that it is unnerving to realize the gap between scientists’ critical abilities and their enormous power and authority in technological societies. To exercise power effectively, one must have some judgment, self-criticism, and empathy for others. Ellul has no confidence in scientists who lack such faculties. “Yet it is apparently our fate to be facing a ‘golden age’ in the power of sorcerers who are totally blind to the meaning of the human adventure” (1964, p. 435).

None of these worthies questioned the goals of their techniques or, if they had, thought beyond the meagre motive of promoting happiness. However, according to these specialists, pills will soon be able to produce happiness as well. So, Ellul asks, why all of the other technical goods and services when individuals can have happiness without them? Alas, he concludes, even happiness, this paltry motivation for our runaway technical adventure, is destroyed by technique. However, it was never a question of a practical motive. The attitude of scientists and technologists is apparent: “Technique exists because it is technique. The golden age will be because it will be. Any other answer is superfluous” (1964, p. 436).