Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes

Propaganda is a first time in 1962 published book of the French sociologist Jacques Ellul. In this work, Ellul analyzed in addition to the inner and outer manifestations and categories of propaganda their sociological conditions and requirements as well as their psychological and demokratiethereotischen effects. In 1965 the English translation of the book.

Content

Elluls basic assumption is that propaganda is a sociological phenomenon and not " that certain people do things, to accomplish a specific purpose. " Technological society is a condition for the existence of propaganda, and propaganda agency, in turn, the survival of this form of society safe. The political system that exists in the propaganda Elull rejects in his preface to the first edition of 1962 from as irrelevant measure of its moral evaluation.

Ellul distinguish between propaganda and agitation Integrationsproganda. The education he declares to be a basic condition for propaganda. Intellectuals were also those social group that is most susceptible to propaganda because they wanted to make to all the "important questions of the day " a definitive opinion.

Reception

Robert R. Kirsch, a journalist for the Los Angeles Times, called propaganda as "a much more frightening than any work of fiction nightmare of George Orwell. With the logic that is a great instrument of French thought, Ellul tries to prove his point that propaganda regardless of positive or negative intentions not only has a destructive impact on democracy, but perhaps the biggest threat to humanity in the modern world. "

Marshall McLuhan wrote in the Book Week that Ellul had proved that " if our new technology of any culture or society have taken possession, the result is propaganda. "