Mind-Munitions

Introduction 5
power. In the struggle for power, propaganda is an instrument to
be used by those who want to secure or retain power just as much
as it is by those wanting to displace them. For the smoke to rise,
there must first be a spark which lights the flame. Propaganda is
that spark.
This perhaps explains why propaganda and war have always
been inextricably connected. Once war has broken out, propaganda
has proved to be a weapon of no less significance than swords or
guns or bombs. But it cannot normally be divorced from military
realities. ‘Victory generates its own support.’ But propaganda does
not itself kill people. Indeed, it can be an alternative to killing, the
triumph of communication over violence. It can, however, create
myths – not just about why wars begin, are won or are lost, but
even on rare occasions transform defeats into victories (Dunkirk,
1940, immediately springs to mind). But words alone rarely win
wars. The munitions of the mind, like other conventional weapons,
have admittedly become more sophisticated with advances in
technology, but yesterday’s epic poem or painting is really no more
than the equivalent of today’s propaganda film or television
broadcast. It is when propaganda is employed in the service of
violence, however, that we begin to mistrust it, because it encourages
people to kill people, or to acquiesce in that slaughter. Today
it assumes the appearance of a devious weapon that once seduced
the souls and the minds of men, exploiting their natural aggression
to drive them periodically on to the battlefield.
To understand what drives people to violence would require at
least another book. Here we can only begin to tackle the methods
of persuasion which have been used throughout history to persuade
people that violence is an acceptable course for them to pursue. We
must thus beware the dangers of extrapolating twentieth-century
perceptions on to our understanding of earlier periods. The same
might equally be said for the notion of propaganda as we currently
(mis)understand it – but only if we fail to regard it as a neutral process
of persuasion. If we do this, we fall into the trap of labelling
something ‘good propaganda’ or ‘bad propaganda’, as a persuasive
process which we judge from the standpoint of our own core
values. Thus the process earns approval because we agree with it,
and disapproval because we disagree with it. Propaganda becomes
something which is done by others we differ from who are selling a
cause which we repudiate; hence they are telling lies or, at best, not