> Most people are easy prey for propaganda, Ellul says, because of their firm but entirely erroneous conviction that it is composed only of lies and “tall stories” and that, conversely, what is true cannot be propaganda. But modern propaganda has long disdained the ridiculous lies of past and outmoded forms of #propaganda. It operates instead with many different kinds of truth—half truth, limited truth, truth out of context. Even Goebbels always insisted that Wehrmacht communiqués be as accurate as possible.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/jacques-ellul-propaganda
#JacquesElull
Propaganda

Jacques Ellul Propaganda The Formation of Men’s Attitudes

The Anarchist Library
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> A.. misconception that makes people vulnerable to propaganda is.. that it serves only to change opinions. That is one of its aims.. a limited, subordinate one. Much more importantly, it aims to intensify existing trends, to sharpen and focus them, and, above all, to lead men to action (or,... directed at immovable opponents, to non-action through terror or discouragement, to prevent them from interfering). Therefore Ellul distinguishes various forms of propaganda and calls his book #Propagandes—that plural is one of the keys to his concept.
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> ... modern propaganda cannot work without “education”; he thus reverses the widespread notion that education is the best prophylactic against propaganda. On the contrary he says, education, or what usually goes by that word in the modern world, is the absolute prerequisite for propaganda. In fact, education is largely identical with what Ellul calls “pre-propaganda”—the conditioning of minds with vast amounts of incoherent information, already dispensed for ulterior purposes and posing as “facts” and as “education.”
#PropagandaEducation
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> “... Ellul follows through by designating

intellectuals as.. most vulnerable of all to modern propaganda,

for three reasons:

(1) they absorb the largest amount of secondhand, unverifiable information;

(2) they feel a compelling need to have an opinion on every important question of our time, and thus easily succumb to opinions offered to them by propaganda on all such indigestible pieces of information;

(3) they consider themselves capable of “judging for themselves.”

They literally need propaganda” (vi).
#VulnerableIntellectuals
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> ... Cast out of the disintegrating microgroups of the past.. family, church, or village, the individual is plunged into mass society and thrown back upon his own inadequate resources, his isolation, his loneliness, his ineffectuality. Propaganda then hands him in veritable abundance what he needs... personal involvement and participation in important events.. outlet and excuse for some of his more doubtful impulses, righteousness.. Without this intense collaboration by the #propagandee the #propagandist would be helpless.
#KonradKellen
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> Jacques Driencourt has demonstrated that propaganda is totalitarian in its essence, not because it is the handmaiden of the totalitarian State, but because it has a tendency to absorb everything. This finding is the best part of his work... We must not retain the illusion that propaganda is merely a neutral instrument that one can use without being affected. It is comparable to radium, and what happens to the radiologists is well known.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/jacques-ellul-propaganda
#PropagandaAsRadium #JacquesDriencourt
Propaganda

Jacques Ellul Propaganda The Formation of Men’s Attitudes

The Anarchist Library
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> The effect of this double shock is so well known that it is utilized as a technique in a single propaganda by the use of either contradictory news or a tranquilizing propaganda designed to appease the public before launching a great shock that will be felt all the more violently: for example, making propaganda for peace before releasing a violent psychological offensive.
https://auticulture.com/jacques-elluls-propaganda/
#DoubleShockPR #ElullPropagandas 🧵
Jacques Ellul's Propaganda - AUTICULTURE

AUTICULTURE
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> The cult of the hero is the absolutely necessary complement of the classification of society. . . . This exaltation of the hero proves that one lives in a mass society. The individual who is prevented by circum­stances from becoming a real person, who can no longer express himself through personal thought or action, who finds his aspira­tions frustrated, projects onto the hero all he would wish to be. He lives vicariously and experiences the athletic or amorous or military exploits of the god with whom he lives in spiritual sym­biosis.
#HeroCult