Propaganda
The Power of Logos in Mass Society
It is very much a truism to suggest that praxis or action is a force which can bring about societal change, but that change is at its most feasible and takes hold most effectively when society itself has received prior conditioning to the oncoming changes.
The most powerful form of conditioning is propaganda; it is so powerful in the mass age that the perception of society we are given represents almost nothing recognisable to those forced to exist within it. This is of course no accident, for as long as there has been any semblance of large-scale organisation amongst peoples, there has always been a minority within that performs the role of organising said people.
As organisations have grown larger and more complex there has been a need to better manage the perceptions of the organised. So, a scientific approach of perception management was developed to answer this need. The Birth of Public Relations, as envisioned by Edward Bernays in the early 20th century, is held up as the first attempt to consciously develop this science despite the dismissal from contemporary scholars as mere hokum. Hence for the majority of this talk I shall draw on a later work from Jacques Ellul, carrying the same name as Bernays–Propaganda. Within which he gives careful treatment to propaganda as the technical synthesis of psychological and organisational influence upon the masses. Similar to James Burnham, who Ellul was more than familiar with, he writes in a cold and very frank fashion one that at times could be confused for almost an admiration of the complexity and power of the subject they had chosen to study.
“Many observers look upon propaganda as a collection of ‘gimmicks’ and of more or less serious practices. And psychologists and sociologists very often reject the scientific character of these practices. For our part, we completely agree that propaganda is a technique rather than a science. But it is a modern technique–that is, it is based on one or more branches of science. Propaganda is the expression of these branches of science; it moves with them, shares in their successes, and bears witness to their failures.”
Jacques Ellul - Propaganda
Today we find no end to the list of institutions dedicated to public relations: nudge units, polling organisations, human resources, interest groups, and think tanks to name just a few. Not to mention a media network that gives free reign to each of these institutions. To expressly distribute and present their propaganda to the public en masse, to measure, manufacture, and manage the required perception.