Exactly WHEN is propaganda?

"[W]e can be sure that the global battlefield of the 21st century will be over information --the dissemination or withholding of facts, the interpretation of events, the presentation or distortion of ideas and ideologies, and the communication of messages and symbols carefully prepared to provoke a particular reaction, either conscious or unconscious, from a target audience. ...By using communications as a tool of control, wealthy nations will be able re-establish their colonial empires (as has already been done in some places) through the "invisible dominance" of the media, the manipulation of economies, and intrusions into social policies."--from the Reporter's Collective on Propaganda & Psychological Warfare Studies Here is a rather long definition for propaganda that resonates with me. It comes from the preface and the introduction to Jacques Ellul's book 'Propaganda: The Formation of Mens' Attitudes'. I have slightly edited it for clarity and ease of reading. Perhaps someone can come up with a more succinct definition? "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. (...) "A second misconception that makes people vulnerable to propaganda is the notion that it serves only to change opinions. That is one of its aims, but 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, when it is 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--the plural is one of the keys to his concept. The most trenchant distinction made by Ellul is between agitation propaganda and integration propaganda. The former leads men from mere resentment to rebellion; the latter aims at making them adjust themselves to desired patterns. "A related point, central in Ellul's thesis, is that modern propaganda cannot work without "education"; he thus reversed 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." Ellul follows through by designating intellectuals as virtually the 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 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." The literally need propaganda. "In fact, the need for propaganda on the part of the "propagandee" is one of the most powerful elements of Ellul's thesis. Cast out of the disintegrating microgroups of the past, such as [extended] 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: a raison d'etre, personal involvement and participation important events, an outlet and excuse for some of his more doubtful impulses, righteousness--all fictitious, to be sure, all more or less spurious; but he drinks it all in and asks for more. Without this intense collaboration by the propagandee the propagandist would be helpless. (...) "Can wholesome propaganda be made for a wholesome cause? Can Democracy, Christianity, Humanism be propagated by modern propaganda techniques? Ellul traces the similarities among all propaganda efforts--Communist, Nazi, Democratic. He thinks that no one can use this intrinsically undemocratic weapon--or, rather, abandon himself to it--unscathed or without undergoing deep transformations in the process. He shows the inevitable, unwilled propaganda effects of which the "good" propagandist is unaware, the "fallout" from any major propaganda activity and all its pernicious consequences. Most pernicious of all: the process, once fully launched, tends to become irreversible. (...) "...At the end of this book, Ellul...states that, in his view, propaganda is today a greater danger to mankind than any of the other more grandly advertised threats hanging over the human race. His super-analysis ends with a warning, not a prophesy." --Konrad Kellen (from the introduction) And from the preface: (...) "it is still very difficult to determine what constitutes propaganda in our world and what the nature of propaganda is. This is because it is a secret action. The tempation is then twofold: to agree with Jacques Driencourt that "everything is propaganda" [(today's popular conception--ed)] because everything in the political or economic spheres seems to be penetrated and molded by this force; or, as certain modern American social scientists have done, to abandon the term propaganda altogether because it cannot be defined with any degree of precision. Either course is inadmissable intellectual surrender. To adopt either attitude would leade us to abandon the study of a phenomenon that exists and needs to be defined. "We then came up against the extreme difficulty of definition. We can immediately discard such simplistic definitions as Marbury B. Ogle's: "Propaganda is any effort to change opinions or attitudes...The propagandist is anyone who communicates his ideas with the intent of influencing his listener." Such a definition would include the teacher, the priest, indeed any person conversing with another on any topic. [(No wonder, then, that today's thought control pushes this in the popular mind. How convenient to broadly wipe away illegitimate authority's complicity in one broad stroke!--ed)] Such a broad definition clearly does not help us to understand the specific character of propaganda. "As far as definitions are concerned, there has been a characteristic evolution in the United States. From 1920 to about 1933 the main emphasis was on the psychological: Propaganda is a manipulation of psychological symbols having goals of which the listener is not conscious. (3)" (...) "[T]he premise of this book is that propaganda, no matter who makes it--be he the most upright and best-intentioned of men--has certain identical results in Communism or Hitlerism or Western democracy, inevitable results on the individual or groups, and different from the doctrine promulgated, or the regime supported, by that propaganda. In other words, Hitlerism as a regime had certain effects, and the propaganda used by the Nazis undeniably had certain specific characteristics. "But whereas most analysts stop at this specificity, I have tried to eliminate it in order to look only at the most general characteristics, the effects common to all cases, to all methods of propaganda. Therefore I have adopted the same perspective and the same method in studying propaganda as in studying any other technique. "In this connection I have come upon a source of much misunderstanding. Modern man worships "facts"--that is, he accepts "facts" as the ultimate reality. He is convinced that what is, is good. He believes that facts in themselves provide evidence and proof, and he willingly subordinates values to them; he obeys what he believes to be necessity, which he somehow connects with the idea of progress. This stereotyped ideological attitude inevitably results in a confusion between judgments of probability and judgments of value. Because fact is the sole criterion, it must be good. "As we proceed to analyze the development of propaganda, to consider its inescapable influence in the modern world and its connection with all structures of our society, the reader will be tempted to see an approval of propaganda. Because propaganda is presented as a necessity, such a work would therefore force the author to make propaganda, to foster it, to intensify it. I want to emphasize that nothing is further from my mind; such an assumption is possible only by those who worship facts and power. In my opinion, necessity never establishes legitimacy; the world of necessity is a world of weakness, a world that denies [the best of humanity]. "To say that a phenomenon is necessary means, for me, that it denies man... "I insist that to give such warning is an act in the defense of man, that I am not judging propaganda with Olympian detachment, and that having suffered, felt, and analyzed the impact of the power of propaganda on myself, having been time and again, and still being, the object of propaganda, I want to speak of it as a menace..." "The force of propaganda is a direct attack against man. The question is to determine how great is the danger. Most replies are based on unconscious a priori dogmas. "Thus the Communists, who do not believe in human nature but only in the human condition, believe that propaganda is all-powerful, legitimate (whenever they employ it), and instrumental in creating a new type of man. "American sociologists scientifically try to play down the effectiveness of propaganda because they cannot accept the idea that the individual--the cornerstone of democracy--can be so fragile; and because they retain their ultimate trust in man. Personally, I too, tend to believe in the pre-eminence of man and, consequently, in his invincibility. Nevertheless, as I observe the facts, I realize man is terribly malleable, uncertain of himself, ready to accept and to follow many suggestions, and is tossed about by all the winds of doctrine. "But when, in the course of these pages, I shall reveal the full power of propaganda against man, when I advance to the very threshold of showing the most profound changes in his personality, it does not mean I am anti-democratic. "The strength of propaganda reveals, of course, one of the most dangerous flaws of democracy. But this has nothing to do with my own opinions. If I am in favor of democracy, I can only regret that propaganda renders the true exercise of it almost impossible. But I think it would be even worse to entertain any illusions about a co-existence of true democracy and propaganda. Nothing is worse in times of danger than to live in a dream world. To warn a political system of the menace hanging over it does not imply an attack against it, but is the greatest service one can render the system. The same goes for man: to warn him of his weakness is not to attempt to destroy him, but rather to encourage him to strengthen himself." (...) I would also add that for propaganda to be successful, it HAS TO HAVE HUGE RESOURCES BEHIND IT, IN ORDER TO REPEAT THE SAME MESSAGE OVER AND OVER. Which is the difference between "effective" and "ineffective" in terms of getting ideas across to masses. "Alien values are implanted into the lives of the people, precisely through the children; alien, not merely in the sense of foreign or exotic, but alien to humanity: a commerciogenic identity is formed. At first it was partly resisted, but with time, it became more and more acceptable, until it has now become a major determinant on the lives of the young, displacing all earlier forms of acculturation, other ways of answering need, other ways of being in the world. This process of forgetting, beyond recall, but perhaps not quite beyond reclamation, is a form of colonialism far more effective than that which held so much of the world in thrall in an earlier empire." ----Jeremy Seabrook in 'The Metamorphoses of Colonialsm'