Propaganda: Its Types and Classifications
What are the different types of and kinds of propaganda and how do we identify them and how do the various types work on us in their own way?
After introducing propaganda to us, Ellul spends the rest of the opening section walking us through a series of paired, and, in some ways, contrasting forms of propaganda.
Political Propaganda and Sociological Propaganda
Ellul does not spend a great amount of time talking about political propaganda at this point as it can be broken down into several paired binaries that he will go through in more detail later. Political propaganda is made up of the forms used by the political parties, the government and increasingly these days, the so-called “news” media. It is strategic or tactical meant to activate people in line with actions deemed necessary by the government or to rally the party faithful. Again we will talk more about the different ways that the government and party do this shortly. For now, though, Ellul wants us to think about sociological propaganda.
The sociological form of propaganda is primarily concerned with social integration and is far more prevalent than specifically political propaganda. It can be used politically, but more often that not, it creates the context wherein political propaganda can easily activate people. It is lifestyle propaganda. It is not meant to direct you to a specific political action like voting, or protesting, or volunteering to fight in wars, but rather in a suite of behaviours that integrate you into the kind of society where political propaganda can be easily and powerfully effective. It can include everything from public relations to product advertising to the shows you watch on television. It is much more difficult for people to see and grasp how it working.
“It is the penetration of an ideology by means of its sociological context.”
It is propaganda that works from the bottom up, through the stuff of daily living. The goal is to make you participate in the broader social context of society. You are trained by the mass messaging to be a good citizen, a well adjusted member of society. You return your shopping cart and know that you are doing your duty to keep society a well functioning machine. Sociological propaganda is about the climate within which we live, the atmosphere of society. It is about feelings. It attacks you through your unconscious habits. Because it works slowly and subtly, you think that you came to all these habits of mind and action on your own, but you have been conformed to the manufactured collective. The function of a real, organic community, broken down by mass society, is replaced with propaganda. You are socialized into the mass by means of constant propaganda. After enough exposure you will yourself reinforce the propaganda as your own, like you came to these beliefs on your own. For example, films that show the American way of life as being a certain way become for you what America is and what it means and what it should be.
Because of the omnipresent nature of product advertising, television, films and movies and now social media, without ever realizing it, Americans subjected themselves to a totalizing and totalitarian integration of the person into the mass collective, leading the society to a suite of what ends up becoming involuntary behaviours. Again, it is the combined effect of product advertising, movies, television, music, social media, technology itself creating its own necessity, education, books, and even the government’s public service advertisements all together create a context which allows the social and the political to act together. This produces a general conception of a way of life that you then adopt as completely normal. It is just the way things are. But this is completely fabricated, a reality into which you have been integrated. What you think of as the “American Way of Life” is largely the creation of propaganda. When an American thinks of himself and his way of life, it is not necessary for him to actually be living an objectively better life than in some other place. It is merely necessary for him to believe that it is better and it becomes fact for him. Everything that reinforces this perception is then selected, elevated and fixated upon and framed as “good.” Everything which challenges this perception is memory holed or framed in a way that makes it suspect or “bad.”
Sociological propaganda is slower because it aims at long term penetration and slow, progressive adaptation. One grows up receiving through an variety of outlets the content of what it means to be an American — what Carl Schmitt would call the “educational dictatorship.” Once one has interiorized this content and a person-in-crowd, the mass-man believes that something is “pro-American” and thus “good,” or “un-American” and thus “evil,” he can now use this for political purposes.
Ellul argues that the extent to which propaganda is used to shape the overall consciousness of the people is a characteristic of America in part because of the weakness of any natural, organic American identity, especially as a result of the first great wave of immigration.
“Sociological propaganda in the United States is a natural result of the fundamental elements of American life. In the beginning, the United States had to unify a disparate population that came from all the countries of Europe and had diverse traditions and tendencies. A way of rapid assimilation had to be found; that was the great political problem of the United States at the end of the nineteenth century. The solution was psychological standardization — that is, simply to a way of life as the basis of unification and as an instrument of propaganda.”
What Ellul is arguing is that “America is an idea” is a response to the great wave of immigration and settlement that occurred just as the technological society was gaining real momentum. Because of the lack of a mature, distinctive, singular American ethnicity, combined with the demands of an industrial society and the problem of integrating new immigrants into American society, the shift to “America is an idea” was a necessity. Commerce, industry and technology worked as an acid to undermine what organic community did exist, substituting propaganda centred the emerging industrial society and its demands.
“Mass production requires mass consumption. But there cannot be mass consumption without widespread identical views as to what the necessities of life are.”
Wide spread views that are unified across a large mass of people are created by means of propaganda.
“One therefore needs fundamental psychological unity on which advertising can play with certainty when manipulating public opinion. In order for public opinion to respond, it must be convinced of the excellence of all things “American.” Thus conformity of life and of thought are indissolubly linked.”
This propaganda, argues Ellul, built around America as an idea and America as an industrial nation of consumers was made easy in part because of the weakness of the American social fabric. The industrial society did not have to push against or undermine a thousand plus years of culture. The difficulty in answering the question, “What is an American?” made Americans uniquely vulnerable to the kinds of propaganda necessary to both integrate millions of immigrants and produce the technological society, making America a commercial and technological powerhouse. One of the trade offs for this is that the American people grow up in a near totalizing environment of integration propaganda. This reality makes Americans particularly vulnerable as a society to propaganda that touches the subject of American identity. Ellul was saying this, not in 2024, but in the 1960’s.
Much of the apparatus and architecture of political lobbying and political action groups serves a two-fold function. One is to influence the government and its policies. But perhaps more important function of the parties, political action groups and lobbying groups, is to integrate the population into the political life of the nation. They thus mediate regime propaganda and messaging to the general population, keeping them in line and integrated into the state. This is a hard thing for many to grasp, but much of what happens politically in modern democratic societies is not about changing and shaping the government; but rather, their purpose is to control you and to keep you focused on the government, the state, as the source of solutions for all your problems. Democracy is a form of social control. By participating in the political life of the nation, you are not participating in activities which undermine the power and control that the state has over your life.
Again, the point of sociological propaganda is not so much to induce you to political action, but to integrate you into society in a way that operates beneath the surface of your awareness. The goal is to make you an American, an American who lives a certain way and expects a certain way of life.
“All forms of sociological propaganda are obviously very diffuse, and aimed much more at the promulgation of ideas and prejudices, of a style of life, than of a doctrine, or at inciting action or calling for formal adherence.”
Propaganda of Agitation and Propaganda of Integration
Propaganda of agitation is always directed at action, specifically that of rebellion or war. It is concerned with attacking and defeating enemies. Most of the propaganda used during Nazi Germany was propaganda of agitation, or agitprop. China’s “Great Leap Forward” was also a propaganda of agitation. Agitprop looks to excite and to agitate the person to act, hence the name. Because of this bias to action, it is often revolutionary in nature. It demands that the current order be brought down. It identifies the enemy and excites the person-in-crowd to attack and destroy the enemy.
“Propaganda of agitation thus unleashes an explosive movement; it operates inside a crisis or actually provokes the crisis itself.”
The problem with propaganda of agitation is that it really should only be used in short bursts at key points to elicit an intensity of action for a short time. As we all know, it is very hard to sustain heightened emotions or operate in a state where you are constantly jacked up all the time. Too much and eventually the person crashes, giving way to disillusionment and discouragement. If using agitprop, you want to do so in short bursts.
This said, it is the flashiest and easiest of all the propaganda to produce and the most tempting to use repeatedly.
“Hate is generally its most profitable resource.”
Agitprop works by attributing one’s problems and misfortunes to the “other,” who must now be killed, or at the very least punished for being the cause of all that is wrong. This is the propaganda that looks for a scapegoat upon which to pin the problems the masses face, then amplifies emotions against the hated cause of one’s misery, and unleashes that anger in actions designed to make the cause of misfortune disappear.
It is easier to use propaganda of agitation because it is not as dependent upon mass media for its success. Once the spark is lit, it will feed upon itself until the anger and hate burns itself out. You can see this at work in the Black Lives Matter riots. Propaganda laid the groundwork. Once the specific event happened, a police shooting or some such, and the tinder was lit, it would continue on its own, uncontrollable, until the fire of rage burned itself out. Once seized by rage, each person in the unleashed crowd becomes a propagandist, spreading and keeping the fire burning.
Ellul argues that this propaganda is most effective among the lower classes and the uneducated. This does make some sense as lower IQ does seem to correlate with impulse control. Perhaps it is best to let Ellul speak in his own words here:
“The less educated and informed the people to whom propaganda of agitation is addressed, the easier it is to make such propaganda. That is why it is suited for use with the so-called lower class (the proletariat) and among African peoples.”
Today we are not allowed to say these things out loud, but Ellul does offer an explanation as to why revolutionary Marxism swept Africa as the European colonial influence was undermined.
“Black peoples generally have not developed to the point at which they can live in political independence in the Western manner; that the economy of their countries permits them merely to change masters.”
In contrast, the propaganda of integration is the form of propaganda that makes “developed” nations work the way they do. It is a foundational and necessary ingredient of our civilization. It is the propaganda of conformity. In order to create the conditions necessary for a mass market economy and democratic institutions in a large mass society to function properly, you must create a uniform society with a uniform set of desires and aspirations. You have to have total adherence to society’s core truths and behaviours. Fulfillment comes through participation in the market economy and the political institutions of democracy. This group identity is shaped by propaganda. You are required to participate in society in every way. If you are not plugged into social media by means of a smart phone, then you are the odd one out. You don’t make Christmas your primary shopping season, then you are the weirdo out of touch with the main thrust of society. We could go through example after example, but the point of the propaganda of integration is to make you a good American who participates fully in the political and economic life of the nation. Its point is to stabilize, unify and reinforce the social body. This is the propaganda of the government and the ruling elite and the participating businesses, non-profits and non-governmental organizations that are all more or less aligned with the core ideology of the governing class. The idea is to mold you at depth, shaping you from top to bottom, inside out, completely and fully. This is the most important form of propaganda.
Unlike the propaganda of agitation, intellectuals and the educated are much more susceptible to the propaganda of integration than are the common man. This largely explains much of the rise of populism and the leadership class’s dogged persistence in their adherence to “the narrative” of the regime. This is because they have more fully embraced at depth the propaganda of the regime in which they participate actively. This is in part because they are comfortable, cultivated and informed. It is precisely because they believe that they can grasp and understand any issue, that they become vulnerable to accepting the opinion of what other thoughtful intelligent people say. Mimetically, they imitate the opinions of other smart people. No one wants to disagree for fear of sounding “stupid.” And so once messaging takes hold among the educated class, it quickly spreads, with each person believing they have arrived at the smart opinion on their own together with their peers who have also all arrived at the smart opinion all on their own. They believe that because of their education that it must be this way because they believe they are smart enough to make up their own minds on every issue.
Ellul argues that revolutions use agitation propaganda but if they are to succeed over the long term, they must shift to integration propaganda. The problem of managing the shift is that agitprop is easy and produces quick, striking results, integration propaganda is more subtle and slow moving. Sometimes it is impossible to regain control of the masses once agitation propaganda has been employed. Generally, once the revolution has been ignited, it often takes the strong hand of a dictator to prevent the revolution from consuming society. He argued that Hitler used a combination of agitprop to keep the people at a fever pitch but kept it from consuming the society through strict dictatorial control. Mao was also good at this as well. The twist that Mao employed was to lean on the Chinese cultural desire for order. Ellul asserted that the changes Mao brought to China are now irreversible and that the Chinese will now require totalitarianism to function as a society.
Vertical and Horizontal Propaganda
Classical propaganda is generally vertical, made by the leader or the party or some such and imposed down onto a people. It comes from above and uses the means of mass communication. Vertical propaganda requires the “person-in-crowd” that we have talked about throughout. He thinks of himself as connected to something larger than himself, but he is always isolated and alone.
“One trait of vertical propaganda is that the propagandee remains alone even though he is part of the crowd. His shouts of enthusiasm or hatred, though part of the crowd, do not put him in communication with others; his shouts are only a response to the leader.”
The person in the crowd ceases to be fully human. He is an object to be manipulated. Whether one is reading the newspaper, listening to the radio, watching television, listening to a podcast or part of a political rally — yes, including Trump rallies — you are an object to be reached, shaped, and molded. It is never a purely organic relationship. The speaker is active and you are largely passive, a receptor of the messaging of others.
“This kind of propaganda requires a passive attitude from those subjected to it. They are seized, they are manipulated; they experience what they are asked to experience; they are transformed into objects.”
Even though the propagandee is passive, he believes that he is active. Today, with social media and more interactive forms of YouTube presentations that allows the audience a “voice” the primary interaction is always vertical and always in the direction from the propagandist to the propagandee whom he is hoping to shape. The propagandee maintains the illusion that he acts independently by his own free will with vigor and energy, that his actions are his own, but they are not. He is still a “person-in-crowd” being manipulated by the propagandist. Vertical propaganda is the primary mechanism of the propaganda of agitation.
Horizontal propaganda, on the other hand, as we hinted above, is more used for integration propaganda. It is made inside a group where all the participants are equal and there is no leader. The perception of manipulation is removed. The veneer of independent thought is maintained but ideas spread mimetically. The participants are conscious and often voluntary members of the group. They can all articulate all of the arguments. It gives them the feeling of being involved and independent. Its risky because it cedes some control over the messaging to the people themselves. It often works slowly and voluntarily. This is one of the primary mechanisms of propaganda for the distributed network that is the administrative state. Thousands of people all in their own committees, having their own discussions, all coming up with the same solution believing that they have come up with the solution on their own.
Vertical propaganda requires a huge mass media apparatus. Horizontal propaganda requires a huge organization of people. This is why Ellul talks about the necessity of “the party” for horizontal propaganda to work. Today, those organizations are more dispersed and horizontal in nature. The university faculty room. The administrative state. The Fortune 500 company. They all provide the boundaries within which people can work on each other, influencing one another to all dutifully align with the propaganda.
But for this to work, you cannot be part of other groups which countermand the main efforts of the regime aligned groups. Groups like families and the churches must be undermined and broken up because they represent a threat to the homogeneous nature of regime organizations. Public schools are a prime vehicle for inculcating children in the regime, combining elements of the horizontal and the vertical, working to undermine the influence of the family and the church on the child. “The organization man” is the quintessential person who is well integrated into the group and is a carrier of propaganda to the rest of of those within the organization. One of the primary mechanisms of schooling is not even the content of the curriculum, but rather its structure as a mass organization. The school itself, by its structure and organization, prepares children from a young age to adapt themselves to organizational life. “Socialization” into the life of the organizations is the goal. The goal of the organization, imposed on them from a young life, is to encircle the citizenry, giving them the feeling that they are living in a horizontal democratized environment, making this control over them all the more totalitarian. They have been completely integrated while believing all along that they are free independent thinkers, participating fully in the democratic life of the people.
Here is is useful to examine the phenomenon of social media, especially a medium like Twitter which is highly interactive. Twitter combines both vertical and horizontal elements together. The media assumes the place of the organization, enframing the person. Twitter plays the role of the “organization.” Once people are organized by means of the app, the nature of the medium allows for the rapid spread of ideas and information virally. This is largely a mimetic function. At the same time, the structure is not entirely horizontal. Larger accounts and influencers can take on the vertical role of the propagandist influencing his followers as objects to be manipulated for political ends. Participants take on variously the role of propagandist and propagandee in a struggle over regime propaganda and opposition counter-propaganda. Real arguments and conversations do not generally occur over the medium. Nothing about Twitter is organic and none of the interactions are organic. You should assume at all times that you are either in the roll of the propagandist or the propagandee, you are the manipulator or the manipulated. It is a mass media format and thus assumes all the characteristics of mass media.
Rational and Irrational Propaganda
We close this out looking at an interesting pairing of propaganda’s characteristics. It is at once both rational and irrational. Because propaganda is addressed to feelings and the passions, it has an irrational character. But, at the same time, propaganda is always based on the news, on facts, statistics, on information and uses rational arguments to make its appeals. American propaganda in particular, because of the democratic culture of the people, there is the expectation that people will be swayed with rational arguments which are based on knowledge and information. When people participate in the political, they want to believe that their actions are rational and they can be justified by appeals to thinking and thought. Thus propaganda’s content is always packed with information.
But can all that information be remembered and processed? The details of much of the content that passes in front of us these days often disappears. What is left is the general impression. This general impression is often little more than a feeling. What remains is the mythic content. What makes you act is not the details or the arguments. Remember that the purpose of propaganda is not first of all to change your mind with carefully reasoned arguments. Rather, the propagandist is concerned with your actions. What will cause you to act? Emotion. Fear. Hate. It is not the facts and figures that drive action, but the emotional pressure that the propaganda creates within you. The facts must create within you an irrational, frenzied response.
In a sense, the propagandist does not have to lie to you if he can, through his facts and figures, transform you emotionally. In fact, unless you are a specialist who focuses on one particular set of information, one set of data almost exclusively, becoming the true expert, what the constant flood of information, whether true or false, leaves you with only a broad impression of the world. It is this impression that the propagandist wants you to have. All the stories of police violence, all the facts and details, what is reported and what is left out, the statistics and other information, all the granular detail is meant to recede into the background. All that is supposed to remain is the feeling that a wrong is being done, an injustice is being committed and you have the feeling that you must act, you must speak out, organize, do something. In truth, the deluge of information constantly being disseminated actually undermines your ability to exercise you own judgement or even to form your own opinion. All of the data does not really inform you, although you believe that it does. You drown in information. You cannot take it all in and process it. All that you are left with is a general impression of things. This general impression is mostly emotional. The details of the avalanche of information fades, but the emotional impression remains. The result of all of the data, very rational, is that it shuts down your capacity for reason, leaving you to react irrationally and emotionally to the material facts. Rational propaganda actively, and intentionally, creates an irrational situation within the propagandee. This irrational, emotional state leaves him ready to be manipulated and induced to act upon the emotional pressure so as to give it release.
Next: we dive more deeply into the conditions necessary for the existence and efficacy of propaganda.