Mind-Munitions

6
Introduction
telling us ‘the truth’ – and we are back to where we started from.
When one person’s beliefs become another’s propaganda, we have
already begun to take sides in a subjective manner. Propaganda
analysis demands objectivity if it is to be undertaken effectively.
Although the scale on which propaganda has been practised has
increased out of all recognition in the twentieth century, it is in fact
an activity that does date back to the time when human beings first
began to communicate with one another. Essentially, propaganda
is really no more than the communication of ideas designed to
persuade people to think and behave in a desired way. It differs – or
should do – from education in that the imparting of information
and ideas for educational purposes is to enable the recipient to
make up his or her own mind on any given issue. Propaganda is
about persuading people to do things which benefit those doing the
persuading, either directly or indirectly. In wartime that usually
means getting them to fight or to support the fight. I do not mean
to imply by this that getting people to fight wars is right, merely
that propaganda serves an essential role in persuading people to
risk their lives for whatever the reasons or the cause. It is those
reasons and causes which should be the legitimate objects of moral
and critical analysis and judgement, not the propaganda itself. As
such, propaganda can be used for ‘good purposes’, just as it can be
abused. If the history of propaganda in the twentieth century
appears to be largely a history of abuse, it does not follow that this
has always been, and always will be, the case.
By propaganda, then, I mean the deliberate attempt to persuade
people to think and behave in a desired way. Although I recognize
that much propaganda is accidental or unconscious, here I am
discussing the conscious, methodical and planned decisions to
employ techniques of persuasion designed to achieve specific goals
that are intended to benefit those organizing the process. In this
definition, advertising thus becomes economic propaganda since
the marketing of a product is designed to advance the manufacturer’s
profits. It may well be that those at the receiving end of
the process also benefit, but in that case the word ‘publicity’ would
be a more appropriate label. Public relations is a related communicative
process designed to enhance the relationship between
an organization and the public and, as such, is a branch of
propaganda, albeit a nicer way of labelling it.
Similar euphemisms abound: ‘public information policy’, ‘press/