Propaganda and Spin: The Manipulation of Mass Actions, Attitudes and Behaviors

"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ... We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly function society. ... In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons... who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the strings which control the public mind." (Edward Bernays).

With this view in mind, we look now at how it is broken down and how we are made to understand and see it as it effects and affects individuals. Ellul states: "Modern Propaganda reaches individuals enclosed in the mass and as participants in that mass, yet it also aims at a crowd, but only as a body composed of individuals. Propaganda must be total. The propagandist must utilize all the technical means at his disposal- the press, radio TV, movies, posters, meetings, door to door canvasing, {Internet, e-mail, cell phones, texting Tweeters, Youtube, Internet Radio, TV, Newspapers, Magazine and so forth}- my addition. Modern Propaganda must utilize all these media. There is no propaganda as long as one makes use, in sporadic fashion and at random, of a newspaper article here, a poster or radio program there, organizes a few meetings and lectures, writes a few slogans on the wall. That is not propaganda. Propaganda is a matter of reaching and encircling the whole man and all men. Propaganda tries to surround man by all possible routes, in the realm of feelings as well as ideas, by playing on his will or on his needs, through his conscious and his unconscious, assailing him in both his private and his public-life. It furnishes him with a complete system for explaining the world, and provides immediate incentives to action. We are in the presence of an organized myth that tries to take hold of the entire person. Through the myth it creates, propaganda imposes a complete range of intuitive knowledge, susceptible of only one interpretation, unique and one sided, and precluding any divergence. It stimulates in the individual a feeling of exclusiveness, and produces a biased attitude. Propaganda cannot be satisfied with partial success, for it does not tolerate discussion; by its very nature, it excludes contradiction and discussion.(Jacques Ellul)

I cited this long excerpt from Edward Bernays[in my opening] and Jacque Ellul to begin to flash-out and understand the going-ons in our society today. The use of media and the now miniaturized technological gadgets,are enabling those who are propagandists to have a field day. Like Ellul says, "propaganda, by its very nature excludes contradiction and discussion. Just by mulling over the issues read online or watched on TV, one feels inundated by a barrage of harangue, mass actions, attitudes, information, discourse bordering on racism and behaviors without a tinge of civility. What we are seeing is heightened and negative vitriol on both the net and TV. It is becoming belligerent and very negative, intolerant and very aggressive. Every night now, the same cast of players, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Lou Dobbs, Michelle Bachman, Congressman Joe wilson and other others, work the waves, the net and all other media outlets, like radio, twitter and the rest to misinform, lie and confuse willing adherents. As Pointed above, these people are playing on the 'needs and will,... and assail him in his private and public life'. It appears like we are now beginning to see what this brouhaha is about from reading Ellul's excerpt. The health care question, the Stimulus Package, and other proposals and efforts are being used to try and discredit the president and various other ways. There's an undercurrent feeling and bubbling race antagonisms about to percolate to the surface or society. The media, as we are using and consuming it, is propelling the negative discourses abound in its memes and within the media ecology, the data sphere and cyber world.

The Way of the Reich

One of the least talked about propagandist was Joseph Goebbels and in this part of the article, we will look at his modus operandi in short to get a sense of how he re-invented and applied the type of propaganda that used the emerging technologies of the day. They used radio, movies, organized rallies and speeches. They adapted their ideology to the Mass media to reach the entire German people. During the second World War the Nationalist Socialist went about their way to justify and explain the war to the German people. Joseph Goebbels was the architect of this propaganda machinery, and he put into play mass media of the press and especially of the radio on as a tool acting upon the morale of the population engaged in war(Henri Michel) Around 1944, the German propaganda apparatus and mass media were speaking as much to the Nazi elite as to the masses. It is amazing to note the the words of Hitler and Goebbels appealed to normal men and women as a 'trumpet blast of freedom', a 'beacon light of faith' in the words of some of the popular slogans. That Goebbels and his operatives had managed to hoodwink the Germans to accept a losing war, says something about his adherents. Goebbels new that he might get some modicum of acceptance if he deluged the German people with great mass media. He knew that there three type of people in Germany-The Nazis who accepted the message and made stronger form the Movies or rallies; then there were the average types , the non-party members or totally opportunistic" party comrades", those who grumbled about shortages, but did their war duty very well; the third type active and passive opponents of the Third Reich. These people worried Goebbels greatly, and his propaganda was not directed at winning them over to nazism, but prevent them from spreading what he called 'poisonous attitudes to the first and second groups mentioned above.

Goebbels went on and treated the jews like they were 'everywhere' and 'nowhere, and according to him, 'the jews were deadly and subversive, they are the tie which binds the demon like enemy coalition together. His war time phrase was: "The Jews are to blame for everything". Anti-Jewish feeling permeated every level of the Nazi propaganda apparatus and mass media, even after the Jews were taken to the east. Around 1943, he stated that the Jews were responsible for German misery and German defeats. Jews as scape-goats and used as excuses does ring familiar in talking about our present state of destabilization taking place today These Nazi architects had a combination of idealism and brutality, of optimism and pessimism, typified by a Nazi world view and propaganda. They used their own confused yet comprehensible alienation to appeal through Nazi symbols to millions, yet they could still talk to one another as normal, logical, objective men. Joseph Goebbels viewed himself as on of the great propagandists in history. After he became Minister of Propaganda he observed: "In itself propaganda does not possess any set of fundamental methods. It has but one goal, and in politics this goal always revolves around one point: the conquest of the masses". To him, as a Berlin propagandist, style was his substance: objectivity had nothing to with truth. Some of the objections that have been hurled around against the sitting President are not true, but are treated as true by those who trumpet them. The objective is not truth, but to conquer the masses and manipulate them to whatever end.

By exploring the propaganda principles as espoused by Goebels as described above, is not to make him a hero or good example as how to do propaganda of any kind. The ways and means he applied help us shed the light as to how the propagandist works today. His journalistic mouth-piece, Der Angriff, a short newspaper and an agitational pamphlet, in it we find out that Goebbels had a clear sense of the brilliance of placards and biting satirical cartoons, and he thought that the more outrageous, he thought, the better. The way they use of the radio, TV, Internet, (rallying the adherents), rallies and demonstration, shed a light on how these are organized and applied as we are witnessing them. The scare tactics, intimidation and rising pulse of race, making Hitler of Obama on Placards, Having Obama as a tribal African decked with feathers and so on, Le Bon, a German elistist during the WWII era after studying crowd motivation wrote: "The substitution of the unconscious action of the crowd for the conscious activity of individuals is one of the principal characteristics of the present age... Men are ruled by ideas, sentiments and customs... crowds display a singularity inferior mentality... The part played by the unconscious in all our acts is immense, and that played by reason very small." On the section which will the sub-heading called "Propaganda and Spin" will go much more deeper into the ideas of Le Bon, and how these helped Goebbels to become the Master of Propaganda and Spin. Goebbels was a dangerous and sick, but smart individual in terms of how to manipulate the masses and put them into action. It is this active manipulation that this article is interrogating in relation to mass media involved with mass action as we are witnessing today, that we are trying to understand and put into some perspective. Hopefully when we cover the section on Propaganda and spin below, we will enable the reader to get a much more deeper and serious understanding of how Spin and Propaganda evolved during the second World War, and how Goebbels the Spinner and Master Propagandist evolved and refined these ideas, mostly churned-out by Le Bon.

Mass Media, Mass target

The Media targets the individual and mass. The Technological gadgets today are for the masses and the individual in converging and connectivity. The memes runs viral in all technological machines and systems and in them, the propagandists morphs effortlessly and effectively. The packaged viral is coughed in terms that are easy and digestible to everyone. The breakdown of old ways of receiving and sending information have evolved to the point of us being the information conduit and preserver. The nature of the messages in the system are providing the propagandist with mass outreach and connection never seen before in our young techno-life. What this means is that propaganda thrives even more so in that it is not only local in its applications, but creates and duplicates itself in many context and denotation internationally. The information age has become the age of confusion and less information. Every bit of information has its counterpart, for or against it, or neither, which multiplies in even large scale information, that, in the end, the propagandist thrives amid an audience with limited , disjointed and sparse knowledge, talking points, that, whatever the propagandist says, becomes information, no matter how wrong, and incomplete or untrue. The way of processing and disseminating of information has affected a lot of people and children, and our processing and applying the information has changed with the manner and rate at which it's coming at us.

We can look at various examples in our mass media world today. The masses use the Internet and TV to communicate and get information. So that, what happens when the mass of people, the whole globe get connected on the web, we have a melding of ideas, cultures and big business collide. The availability of TV, Internet, Newspapers, Radio, movies, door to door campaigning, speeches, rallies, posters, TV talking heads, news documentaries, cell phones, texting , e-mails, twittering, reading,writing and responding to blogs on comments column, cyber surfing and chatting give the user and the masses an illusion of being technologically advanced, yet inundated with all types of information, that in the final analysis information looses its value, content and context; it becomes regular and tepid and confusing. The glut of memes choking the web now requires the consumer of that information to sort and ferret if not vet the content and context to simplify and analyze. Within the Technological Empire, the feed and the reception have become one. Those who receive the information become the information bearers and disseminators of material that they either believe or reject, do not know of its origin or they do, but become carriers and imbibe it nonetheless responding, in the process to other meme stimuli and prodding, etc.. This has resulted in a very interesting time in the politics and society. The mass media machinery has one interest, reaching the individual as an individual and part of the mass targeted, either manipulating or fleecing them. As Ellul says, it works on trying to reach each one of us in the 'realm of feeling and ideas'. The interest groups opportunistically push their agenda and disseminate their ideas, in the process excluding and contradiction(through abuse and other unseemly conduct and behavior[shouting at the tea parties], out-talking and out-shouting opposition on TV or radio news programs, discussion on talk shows while business business is cashing in. There are many other programs which promote domestic terrorism, racist blogs and video-sites, religious, music sites and so forth. Propagandist operate on many levels and in many guises and covertly and overtly. By doing this, some magnify our fears and unsettle our feelings. This is the climate within which media 'propaganda imposes a complete range of intuitive knowledge,susceptible of only one interpretation, unique and one sided, and precluding any divergence'. The Corporations pour in funds and support, promote,orchestrate and sow dissent and destabailization.

Jacques Ellul furthers this point above thus:

"We have just said that action exactly suited to its ends must be obtained.This leads us to state that if the classic but outmoded view of propaganda consists in defining it as an adherence of man to an orthodoxy , true modern propaganda seeks, on the contrary, to obtain orthopraxy- an action that in itself, and not because of the value judgements of the person, who is acting, leads directly to a goal, which for the individual is not a conscious and intentional objective to be attained, but which is considered such by the propagandist. The propagandist knows what objective should be sought and what action should be accomplished, and he maneuvers the instrument that will secure precisely this action".

Ellul further adds: "This is a particular example of a more general problem: the separation of thought and action in our society. We are living in a time when systematically- though without our wanting it so- action and thought are being separated. In our society, he who thinks can no longer act for himself.; he must act through the agency of others, and in many cases he cannot act at all. He who acts cannot first think out his action, either because of lack of time and the burden of his personal problems, or because society's plan demands that he translate others' thoughts into action". It is instructive what Jacques is saying and we live in a time when the minds has been completely severed from our actions. A lot of people are not thinking or researching issues for themselves; they thrive on hear-say, innuendo and misinformation. Their action of what they do with that information has noting to do with what they thought, themselves. They become a well orchestrated, controlled and contained mass. They belong to the second groups that Goebbels, the opportunistic comrades who complain, but deep on going on and fighting for the wrong reasons. Their behavior,actions and attitudes are based on the lies and confusion that they are sold to by the Multi-Corporations, special interest groups, and other agitators and persons and organizations, that, as said, the glut of information become lessened in its value, content and context, they believe what they have been instructed to 'protest and rally-against'. The propaganda is spun in way it puts people into action and motion. The truth is not an issue, it is the confusion sown to sway men into actions, charge-up and change their attitudes and let them loose on questionable behaviors and raving rants, that do not make any sense nor stand or hold up when facts or truth are presented. This is precisely what is happening today in the ether, net and tube.

Propaganda has created an atmosphere filled with putrid racist talk, signs that depict ugly images of Obama as Hitler; graffiti on the walls giving orders to kill Obama; illegal immigrants under incessant attack, both physically or otherwise. The men in Congress talk like normal people, reasonable, amicable, but they got the ball rolling for this year by being the party of 'no', they want to see the President fail; saying that he is putting us in danger; his health care is dangerous; he apologizes too much to other world leaders and bows down to the Saudi's, he's a commie; he is an Arab; he is an illegal alien and other choice words that need not be furthered in this article. Others proclaimed that Obama is showing us as weak and anyway, he is not an American, but Kenyan and so forth. Technology is used through applying and packaging their messages or memes into the bowels of the connected and converging technologies, which has has put us nearer to a culture and race war. The Empire in a piecemeal way showing the war reluctantly to the masses, and this too, is the one straw that is adding to breaking the camel's back. We need to look deeper into the effects and affects of current technological eco-systems and, their feed and feedback as they are utilized and arrayed against the masses who use them and imbibe their products,content and context, albeit confusing and inane. The spin that is being added to the cyber-tube-radio melange, is creating lies, confusion, agitation and uncertainty- this is not good for democracy, stability and progress. The aim, as Goebbels observed, is to conquer the masses using a deluge off mass media apparatuses and outlets, and in our case, objectivity, too, has nothing to do with the truth.

Propaganda and Democracy

From the moment that propaganda is used to promulgate democratic ideas,it is good.; if it is bad it is only because of its authoritarian content. Such a position is terribly idealistic and neglects the principal condition of the modern world; the primacy of means over ends. But one may say - and this is a matter worthy of reflection - that democracy itself is not a good "propaganda object." Practically all propaganda efforts to promulgate democracy have failed. In fact, one would have to modify the entire concept of democracy considerably to make it a good propaganda object, which at present it is not.

From the moment that democracy uses this instruments (propaganda), propaganda becomes democratic. This thought is not often expressed quite so simply and aggressively, but it is an implicit notion found in most American writers. Nothing can touch democracy; on the contrary, it impresses its character on everything it touches. This prejudice is important for understanding the American democratic mythology and the tentative adoption of this principle by the popular democracies. (Ellul)

Some will say: "Freedom of expression is democracy; to prevent propaganda is to violate democracy. Certainly, but it must be remembered that the freedom of expression of one or two powerful companies that do not express the thoughts of the individual or small groups, but of the capitalist interests or an entire public, does not exactly correspond to what was called freedom of expression a century ago. One must remember, further, that the freedom of expression of one who makes a speech to a limited audience is not the same as that of the speaker who has all the radio sets in the country at his disposal, all the more as the science of propaganda gives to these instruments a shock effect that the non-initiated cannot equal. Rivero demonstrates the immense difference between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in this respect:

"In the nineteenth century,the problem of opinion formation through the expression of thought was essentially a problem of contacts between the state and the individual, and a problem of acquisition of a freedom. But today, thanks to the mass media, the individual find himself outside the battle ... the debate is between the State and powerful groups. ... Freedom to express ideas is no longer at stake in this debate. ... What we have is a mastery and domination by the State or some powerful groups over the whole of the technical media of opinion formation... the individual has no access to them ... he is no longer a participant in this battle for the free expression of ideas: he is the stake. What matters for him is which voice will be permitted to hear and which words will have the power to obsess him..." One has to ask then what freedom of expression still means in a democracy. Even if the state held all the instruments of propaganda and spin, what characterizes democracy is that it permits the expression of different propagandas. The other effect of democratic propaganda is that it is subject to certain values. It is not unfettered but fettered, and it is an instrument not of passion but reason. Therefore, democratic propaganda must be essentially truthful. This can be observed in American propaganda: it is undeniable that American that American information and propaganda are truthful. But that does not seem to be necessarily characteristic of democracy in the American context of the word.

This becomes much more clearer when when briefly look into the propaganda modus operandi of Hitler and his Nazis: In a recent anthology on film and propaganda, Grehard Jagschitz noted: "The ultimate question about the effect of National Socialist propaganda cannot yet be definitely answered, since the relevant research has not yet been done.Important work remains to be done on the Nazi use of heroic myth, history, and language, particularly in the context of the regime's remarkably successful manipulation of people through symbolic images of German traditions and language." Here we are about to enter w world which demanded self-abnegating heroism, a world which the voices of men like Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels appealed to many normal men and women as a "trumpet blast of freedom, and a beacon light of faith," in the words of a popular slogan."

This was a world in which brutal determination appeared in the guise of martial music and pathos-laden salutes to the fallen heroes of both world wars. This was an epoch when music encouraged men to suffer and die, yet offered solace and made men tougher; there was music sand and heroic. "The Song of the Good Comrade," "raise the Banner," and famous old Prussian marches taken over by the Nazis because of their symbolic unity with an heroic past-the "Hohenfreidberger," the Petersburger," The March from the Time of Frederick the Great." Goebbels mobilized this spirit, and the German propaganda apparatus and mass media used it to receptive millions as the authentic voice of German greatness, a link with the pre-Nazi German past and culture.In 1934, at Nurnberg, Hitler declared that, "unlike for other Germans, for us mere proclamation of faith does not suffice, only the oath 'I fight!."(From the film Triumph of the Will", 1935.

The propaganda which addressed party members and cadres demanded that they fight as well as believe, for belief was assumed. In the instance of the general population, propagandists felt that a constantly repeated faith in Hitler and Nazi ideology would serve to buttress a German willingness to take orders and do one's duty. People would have to see their fate and that of the Nazis were on and the same, that they too must believe in order to contribute to final victory. The apparatus could speak to Nazis directly and in ideological terms. In addressing the nation, greater caution was in order, but faith and belief were part of the media message, often skillfully disguised or sublimated.

If the Nazi propagandists were successful in inducing the population to wage an increasingly hopeless struggle, what does this say about Goebbels' audience? The Nazis knew their own people and could assume at least a minimal acceptance of the ideological propaganda which inundated the great mass media. The population consisted of three types of people. One type were Nazis who accepted the message and felt stronger when they emerged from a theater after seeing Jud Suss or Ohm Kruger. These were men and women who were electrified when they heard Goebbels speak in 1943, or when they saw a poster a poster with an idealized portrait or Hitler over the caption"Adolf Hitler is Victory." There were the average types, the nonparty members or totally opportunistic "party comrades," the people who grumbled about shortages but did their duty in war, no matter who governed the nation. Keeping these people committed to victory was Goebbels' major task. The third group consisted of active and passive opponents of the Third Reich. These people concerned Goebbels greatly, but the abstraction, since his propaganda was not directed toward winning them over to Nazism, but rather at preventing the spread of their poisonous" attitudes to the first and second categories of citizens. Himmler, not Goebels, was in charge of dealing with dissidents: people in the Communist and Jewish underground, graffiti writers, composers of anonymous hate letters to Nazi leaders, and anti-regime activists.

The democratic propagandist or democratic State will often have a bad conscience about using propaganda. The old democratic conscience still gets in the way and burdens him; he has a vague feeling that he is engaged in something illegitimate. Thus, for the propagandist in a democracy to throw himself fully into his task it is necessary that he believes -i.e., that he formulates his own convictions when he makes propaganda. In terms of what has been said above about democratic propaganda, it all adds up to ineffectual propaganda. Precisely to the extent that the propagandist retains his respect for the individual, he denies himself the very penetration that is the ultimate aim of all propaganda: that of provoking action without prior thought. To the extent that he remains partial, he fails to use the mystique. But that mystique is indispensable for well-made propaganda. Ultimately, even if one tries to maintain confidence and communion between government and the governed, all propaganda and spin ends up as a means by which the prevailing powers manipulate the masses. This schism between the masses and the government is provoked and maintained by all techniques whose practitioners constitute a sort of aristocracy of technicians who make it their business to modify the structures of the state. What the developments over the past several decades show is that the democracies will abandon their precaution, if they have not yet already done so, and their nuances and throw themselves wholeheartedly into effective propaganda action. But such actions will no longer have a special democratic character, but will be in the service of both propaganda and spin as we are witnessing it in today's technological society.

At this point we should really be looking closely at Public Relations people and their shenanigans. The most successful public relations campaigns aim to change public perception with our our awareness of the campaign. They are regularly conducted by governments, institutions and countries that are endeavoring to hang their public image, restore their reputation or manipulate public opinion.When these firms have aided dictatorships, dishonest politicians and corrupt industries, the results have led to environmental catastrophes, human rights violations and war. Public Relations (PR) is a communications strategy aiming to influence specific publics using writing, marketing,advertising, publicity, promotions, an special events. some public relations specialists work as full-time employees of companies, politicians, nonprofit organizations or governments; while others work for PR agencies that contract their services to clients (usually corporations, wealthy individuals or other special interests) who pay for the expertise at keeping them in or our of the spotlight, whichever is necessary. Corporations are increasingly manipulative in the way that they present information via Front Groups and information media. PRs have often engaged in deliberate deception on their clients' behalf and have developed a deeply unhealthy relationship with the "free press. Furthermore, by giving vested interest the opportunity to deliberately obfuscate, deceive and derail public debate on key issues, the public relations industry reduces society's capacity to respond effectively to key social, environmental and political changes." They achieve all these means and efforts by utilizing i) focus groups; ii) Doublespeak; III)Front Groups; iV) Paid Experts; and, v) PR Consultants. In the final analysis they use 'memetics". To achieve all these feats, the use 'Memetics' , which is the study of how ideas pass from oe person to another across culture. This theory proposes that ideas were like viruses that can be transmitted from person to person and rapidly "infect" large populations. Memes can represent parts of ideas, languages, tunes, designs, moral and esthetic values, skills, and anything else that is commonly learned and passed on to others as a unit. The study of 'memes is called 'memetics'. (newdream.org)

Propagation of Propaganda

Funk and Wagnalls have sought to emphasize the neutrality of the term "propaganda by recalling its original meaning: "Propaganda" in its proper meaning is a perfectly wholesome word, of honest parentage, and with an honorable history. The fact that it should to-day be carrying a sinister meaning merely shows how much of the child remains in the average adult child. New activities call for a new nomenclature. The propagandist who specializes n interpreting enterprises and ideas to the public ... has come to be known by the name of 'public relations counsel'. The stage at which many suppose [the public relations counsel] starts his activities may actually be the stage at which he he ends them. In other words, public relations enables propaganda without actually engaging it. (Bernays)" Insofar as common parlance today tends to equate public relations with spin and propaganda with lies, Bernays can be said to have won the battle ovr nomencalture. But Bernay's tortured distancing of himself from the term. Woolf's insight to changing norms of persuasion, and Orwell's semse of moder state's dependence on propaganda begin to get at the more complex understanding that emerges in the following decades, particularly in the work of Jacques Ellul (Wollaeger)

The reality of they type of propaganda we face emanates and is distilled by theories of Jacque Ellul on propaganda. Wollanger writes: "Ellul's importance in propaganda studies derives from his focus on propaganda as a sociological phenomenon made necessary by the nature of modern society rather than a the political weapon of a particular regime or organization. He draws from Bernay's and his definition of propaganda of "social propaganda as the penetration of an ideology as a means of its sociological context, which echoes Bernay's account of "the new propaganda," which sees the individual not only as a cell in the social organism, but as a cell organized into the "social unit. The concept of sociological or "integration" propaganda permits Ellul to set aside extreme solutions to problems of definition, namely, the notion that everything is propaganda because ideology permeates all spheres of existence and the rejection of the term altogether in favor of a yet broader term , such as "persuasion." Slower and more diffuse than political, economic, and cultural structures, and produces "a progressive adaptation to a certain order of things, a certain concept of human relations, which unconsciously molds individuals and makes them conform to society(Ellul). Integration propaganda thus includes not just the usual state-sponsored suspects-political broadcasting, censorship,atrocity stories, and the manipulation of news- but also more diffusely constellated organizations and institutions, such as advertising, public relations, and popular films, whose interactions effectively reinforce official political propaganda without necessarily setting out to do so. Ellul is clearly open to the charge that insofar as nearly everything counts as propaganda, he empties the category of meaning. But it is equally clear that it makes sense to use "propaganda" as a covering term to articulate the notion that in highly rationalized societies, diverse forms of modern communication function together to ensure the reproduction of the system.(Mark Sollanger)

For Ellul, technique is at the heart of modern society. By "Technique" Ellul means any standardized ensemble of means used to attain a given end, and he understands propaganda a necessary corollary of a society dominated by technique, Ellul argues that while technique began with machine, the progressive extension of technique into all domains of existence produces a civilization committed only to efficiency as an end in itself."Propaganda is necessary in such a world, for "propaganda is called upon to solve problems created by technology, to play on maladjustments, and to integrate the individual into a technological world (Ellul). Ellul understands modern propaganda as a species of mythopoesis that papers over contradictions opened up by the homologous forces of rationalization, technique and enlightenment.(Wollanger) We will clear-up this excerpt further below.

Propaganda and Spin.

To understand the whole spin and the manipulation of the attitudes of men, one has to understand the nature of propaganda and how does it operate in achieving its ends. In this case then, we look into the mind of the Master propagandist, Joseph Goebbels's mind and how he formulated his ideas and applied propaganda. This will in fact give us a better picture of what Propaganda and spin is all about. Le Bon argued that successful politicians possess "an instinctive and often very sure knowledge of the character of the crows, and it is their accurate knowledge of this character that has enabled them so easily to establish their mastery." Crowds make "normal" people capable of savage actions: Goebbels exploited this insight of Le Bon to the full. Yet crowds are also conducive to great acts of heroism. Goebbels understood this better than Le Bon, and his idealistic appeals to sacrifice and struggle had a tremendous impact upon the German nation up to 1945. Le Bon Stated, "A crowd thinks in images, and the image itself immediately calls up a series of other images, having no connection with the first. ... A crowd scarcely distinguishes between the subjective and the objective. It accepts as real the images evoked in its mind, though they most often have only a very distant relation with the observed fact." Goebbels believed in these truths and acted upon them throughout his political carrer. The crowd or even the entire nation-which was just a vast crowd that could ow be reached through radio, the press, and film-would respond to symbols which evoked greatness of the past or hostile conspiracies in the preent. As Hitler wrote in the "Mein Kampf" "All propaganda must be popular and its intellectual level must be adjusted to the most limited intelligence among those it is addressed to. Consequently, the grater the mass it is intended to reach, the lower its purely intellectual level will have to be.... The people in their overwhelming majority are so feminine by nature and attitude that sober reasoning determines their thoughts and actions far less than emotion an feeling." (Adolf Hitler-Mein Kampf) Hitler's dictates were the commands to which Goebbels worked on very well in a myriad ways.

When Goebbels manipulated the symbols of the Germans past, he appreciated the truth of Le Bon's great dictum: "It is not even necessary that heroes should e separated from us by centuries for their legend to be transformed by the imagination of the crowd. The transformation occasionally takes place within a few years." Goebbels helped create the myth of the Nazi Era of Struggle within ten years of the end of that period in German history. The crowd was endlessly impressionable "like a woman," thought Le Bon, and he believed, "an orator wishing to move a crowd must make an abusive use of violent affirmation." Le Bon Brilliantly analyzed the conservatism of crowds, their fear of change. The uprooted disorientated German masses were putty in Goebbels hands. Crows could be best motivated by an appeal to their collective idealism. Le Bon Stated, "Personal interest is very rarely a powerful motive force with crowds, wile it is almost the exclusive motive of the conduct of the isolated individualGoebbels knew all this, but he possessed a quality which National Socialism rejected, at least in theory-the critical intellect. This made him a master manipulator of crowds, since, according to Le Bon, show a "complete lack of theortecal spirit." Here, Goebbels' oratorical techniques differed in their effect from the speeches of Adolf Hitler. Hitler left his audiences in a frenzy, but a reading of his speeches confirms Le Bon's comment, "Astonishment is felt at time on reaching certain speeches at their weakness, and yet they had an enormous influence on the crowds which listened to them." Many of the speeches of Goebbels can still be read today with interest because of their intellectual content.

This is What Le Bon had to say about the masses: "...they turn instinctively, as the insect seeks the light, to the rhetoricians who accord them what they want.... Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim." Le Bon's racialism appealed to Goebbels, and he agreed with the French man's argument that "Every race carries in its mental constitution the law of its destiny ... This was the reason why Goebbels used so many symbols, showing that he carried forth Le Bon's assumptions, of appealing to the German people's Era of Struggle myth during the last war years: honor, sacrifice , faith, readiness for combat, love of Faherland. Le Bon states: It is not by reason, but most often in spite of it, that are created those sentiments that are the mainspring of all civilization-sentiments such as honor, self-sacrifice, religious faith, patriotism, and the love of glory." . Le Bon also provided insights into the masters of crowds in the following manner: The leader has most often started as one of the led. He has himself been hypnotized by the idea whose apostle he has since become." The leaders "are especially recruited from the ranks of those morbidly nervous, excitable, half-deranged persons who are bordering on madness.... Contempt and persecution do not affect them, only serve to excite them more.... To endow a man with faith id to multiply his strength tenfold." When Goebbels read Le Bon, he saw Adolf Hitler, the Hitler who loved to state, "He who has faith in his heart, possess the greatest strength in the world." Goebbels felt justified by his faith in Hitler after 1926, and he preached this faith to the German people. He was thus the herald of redemption, and in the process he deified Hitler, all the while praising his "human qualities". As he had learned from Le Bon, "The gods and men who have kept their prestige for long have never tolerated discussion. for the crowd to admire, it must be kept at a distance."

In a speech delivered in 1928, titled "Knowledge and Propaganda" Goebbels said: "The aim of propaganda was political success, not intellectual depth. The role of the propagandist was to express express in words what his audience felt in their hearts. The propagandist must feel the totality of the National Socialist idea in every aspect of his perceptions. His desire is to transmit tis idea to his listeners. Party organization is necessary for the victory of an idea ...In politics power prevails, not moral claims of justice. Being in power give a party or an idea the right to use that power. Propaganda is a pragmatic art, the means to an end, the seizure of total power. Because methods and situations change, the propagandist must be an organizer and writer as well as a speaker. He must be able to appeal to the "broad masses of educated people, as well s to the little man. The propagandist of the totalitarian party bears an evangelical message to the masses. No one is willing to die for an eight hour day. But one can die so that Germany might belong to the German people. As long as propaganda did not lead to a Verbot by the jewish police presidium, it was false, becasue it was not dangerous. That [decree of dissolution] is the best proof that we are dangerous."

It is important to note that Goebbels learnt from Christ, Mohammed, Bhudda, Zarathustra, Robespierre, Danton, Mussolini, Lenin, Napoleon. Caesar and Alexander. They all had in common ability as speakers with a revolutionary idea and brilliant organizational talent. Goebbels was an organizer and speaker, but Hitler alone had created the Idea. He took it up on himself to advance Hitler's revolution, but he was unable to make one of is own. Albert Krebs, who knew Goebbels during the Weimar era, put it this way: "Goebbels possessed and ifinitely acute sense of these forces and an equally vast ability to appeal to them as conscious factors and set them in motion with words. But since he himself, in my estimation, was largely lacking in such vital elementary forces, he was not in a potion to establish courses and goals for himself. On the contrary, he needed the forces of others to be himself."(Krebs, page 205)

This is just a smattering of what Goebbels mind was like an all the forces that capitulated him to the highest echelons of Nazi Pecking order. We need to pay attention to how propaganda was used merging and melding the media and symbols to put the German into acton-which precipitated into the second world War. Goebbels was able to sin is way into his wildest fantasies about propagating a course that had paltry existence in the historiography of man. The masses gullibility became The hunting ground for vultures like Goebbels and Hitler to spin their propagandistic yarn.