Propaganda

Even without knowing this, all people have to deal with propaganda in ordinary life: it happens through advertising, propaganda occurs in political speeches, in TV shows, even in the news… With the development of means of communication and especially of mass media, propaganda has become inseparable from the contemporary mass culture. Some sociologists state that the tendencies of propagating particular lifestyles and models of behaviour have a negative impact on the society; on the other hand, propaganda can be used for positive purposes: for example, for spreading healthy lifestyle, anti-smoking campaigns, anti-discrimination ideas etc.

There are different forms and methods of propaganda, which are discussed in this essay. One of the most powerful and universal methods of spreading ideas is visual propaganda. In my opinion, it is more effective than other forms of propaganda; evidence and illustrations for this statement as well as examples of propaganda will be given below.

Almost everyone has heard the word “propaganda” and a lot of people claim that know the meaning of this word. But the term “propaganda” in common understanding is somewhat different from its meaning accepted in sociology.

Propaganda is defined as a certain type of messaging that serves a particular purpose of spreading or implanting a particular culture, philosophy, point of view or even a particular slogan. Public opinion often identifies the meaning of the term “propaganda” with the negative applications of propaganda, especially the issues connected with war time and discrimination. It is not surprising because propaganda is one of the most powerful instruments in politics, and is often used to form public opinion; taking into account the frequent applications of propaganda during wartime, it is easy to understand why the common understanding of this word is linked with negative phenomena (Ellul, 1973).

One more common mistake about propaganda is that it is considered to provide false information. This is the wrong understanding of the meaning of propaganda; in reality the information, which is propagated, does not necessarily contain false facts; existing facts may be interpreted in a special way to illustrate a point of view or an idea, as well as only part of the truth can be shown in the propagandists’ speeches and slogans. What is common about propaganda information, it is that it seldom shows the situation from different points of view and seldom gives the full picture in details; this information would rather contain. A propagandist is expected to be aimed at changing people’s opinion, belief and understanding the situation in order to influence their future actions and decisions so that these actions would coincide with the interests of the propagated group, or person.

The main idea of propaganda is to actively influence people’s opinion and social mood; therefore it uses various means of spreading ideas; and the first feature of propaganda is the tendency to utilize as many means of spreading information as possible: telecommunications, radio, banners, internet means, different billboards, leaflets and advertisements, and even road signs containing special information can be used as the sources of influencing public opinion. Secondly, propaganda is meant to influence people’s emotions first of all, for the messages that involve emotional side will be remembered first. Usually the propagated messages are meant to underline, romanticize some idea or phenomenon, or vise versa, are directed to show some idea or person from the negative side. In any case strong emotional involvedness of the audience is used in propagating to replace missing facts with the people’s attitude to the propagated phenomenon.

One more feature of propaganda is that it implies stereotypes; in fact our contemporary mass culture and telecommunications are very closely linked to the stereotypes created by these media; during war time the technique of creating stereotypes concerning groups of people (for example, Nazi propaganda of anti-Semitism), belief into some ideas; it can be directed towards (or against different points of view).

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Another peculiarity of propaganda is that it does not tend to give information freely and explain the situation as it is; the propagators would rather sue the misleading information, hide something and create the desired picture through confusion and misinformation of people. The difference between propaganda and advertising, which specify another peculiarity of propaganda, is that advertising is aimed to have fast effect and is not meant to be long lasting; on the contrary, to reach the desired effect, propaganda has to be continuous and needs to have impact no only on the people who do not support the propagated idea, but also has to consolidate those who already support the idea, but have doubts, and eliminate these doubts.

Various implications of propaganda appear in religious issues; the means of visual propaganda are used almost in every known religion; propaganda is actively utilized by various cults and their cult leaders to convince people of the holiness of these leaders and holy destination of the religion itself (Ellul, 1973). Such new religious movements as well as the adversaries of these movements use the means of propaganda to create the necessary impression on people. As it has been mentioned before, propaganda can be used as an effective weapon during wartime. There are various examples of war propaganda that can be found in world history. Vivid examples of propaganda have been witnessed during the socialist revolution in Russia: big portraits of Lenin, slogans with communist ideas and massive ideologizing of young people were very popular techniques; the division of the society into classes was highly propagated, and while the working class was claimed as the leading one, the class of intelligentsia, as well as merchants were considered to be the “drones” of the nation; and as a result, there have been massive campaigns against the representatives of these classes. Visual propaganda of that time has influenced almost all spheres of human life; the clothes of Bolsheviks, their lifestyle, the supremacy of the working class – all this was depicted in paintings, literature, sculpture; special subjects spreading the ideas were introduced in schools.

It is important to note that to have a lasting effect, propaganda needs in this or that way to have an influence on the system of education. One of the most effective means of propaganda is misinformation in historical context: people do not have a lot of possibilities to check the accuracy of the information, historical events etc.; in addition to that, historians often analyze the events including (or even using) their point of view; this also gives various space for propaganda. As usual, facts provided at school are not checked by people when they grow older; this is why different facts or opinions that never existed start becoming “common knowledge” (Howe, 1982).

There are many methods of propaganda that are implicit; the propagators may be simply avoiding particular words when describing the situation to create the necessary impression. For example, there was a scene of war propaganda when a hawk and a dove argue about the consequences of war: the hawk states that war is necessary; the dove speaks about the failures of war… but the necessity and the reasons of war are never mentioned; therefore such information creates the impression that war is inevitable.

The Nazi were using propaganda as one of their main weapons: the picture of Hitler standing with the German flag could be easily paralleled with likely picture of Christ – and created the image of a powerful and all-knowing leader. The anti-Semite propaganda of the Nazi included picturing the Jews like the rats; in such way the separation and dehumanizing Jews has taken place. These means of propaganda were aimed to create disgust and hatred towards the Jewish nation among the German population.

Together with this, before the Stalingrad battle, the Nazi were describing German soldiers as very humane and heroic ones, in contrast with the description of American and British armies, the soldiers of which were described as cruel and inhumane (Howe, 1982).

One more important tactics of the Nazi propagators during World War II is that they were separating the visions of British, American and Russian army in the social opinion; they have been creating hatred for these armies and nations by different means: they have been using the tactics of “divide and dominate”.

The Nazi have even used propaganda pictures on their paper money; they propagated the domination of the Aryans and the submission of other nations. It is interesting to note that Germany at that time even had the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda; the likely institution existed in the Soviet Union.

Using the above-mentioned information, one more peculiar feature of propaganda can be outlined: though propaganda is an inalienable constituent of any political regime, it is utterly important for the authoritarian regime; in fact, this regime cannot exist without powerful means of propaganda. To illustrate his example the situation in China can be analyzed. The means of propaganda are widely used in China to support the belief of the citizens into the power of the existing leaders; the means of propaganda are also used to single out the almost-communist regime in this country in comparison to the democracies in other countries. In my opinion, the propaganda in China is used mostly to unite and organize the nation, and therefore it doesn’t have such a negative and misleading effect as it had in other countries. Methods of propaganda were used during the Cold War between the Soviet Union and United States; the arms race between these countries was heated up by different pictures of the war threat, both nations were representing the political leaders of other country as the cruel and anti-humane ones. In my opinion, without the means of propaganda the process of arms race would not have taken place for such a long time.

The examples of war propaganda can also be taken from the contemporary situations. For example, during the war in Afghanistan different leaflets forecasting the fall of Afghanistan leaders were spread in the country; the struggle with the Taliban movement involved the so-called psychological operations; the representatives of the US were trying to win the sympathies of the population and to undermine the popularity of Taliban and its members.

The so-called “Orange revolution” that recently took place in Ukraine and resulted in the radical change of the political regime also involved various means or propaganda: the orange color, that is believed to stimulate activity and even aggression, was used as the color of the opposition, the candidate of which has finally won the elections; the special symbolic, specially created songs and slogans were only a small part of the propaganda during these political events. There were created different small reels, representing the other candidate in awkward and negative situations. I have to note that the tactic of representing the opposite person or regime in funny, awkward and grotesque way is a powerful instrument of propaganda in any country.

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