Propaganda

Robert Jackall has edited a superb collection of eighteen essays on Propaganda that cover its history and use in democratic and totalitarian regimes and its ubiquitous presence in all aspects of modern bureaucratic societies. Propaganda as a tool to influence public opinion is the subject of numerous essays within this collection. The essays also include insightful reviews on the limits of public opinion in the democratic process, including an excellent essay by C. Wright Mills titled "Mass Society." Mills grandly states "The issues that shape man's fate are neither raised nor decided by the public at large." Mills argues that the notion of public opinion as the voice of the people is an obsolete 19th century idea that has been replaced by the role of experts in the decision making process  -  and the realization of the irrationality of the man in the street and his social conditioning  -  which betrays his autonomous powers of reasoning.  Mills claims that the old dictum that "In the long run, public opinion will not only be right,  but public opinion will prevail" has been replaced by decisions made by power cliques with the public unaware of the decisions that they have made. Public opinion presumes that there are specific publics that have influence over the democratic process. In Mills' view these disparate groups of publics have been replaced by a mass society where the tools of public relations and propaganda have gained full sway over the thought processes of the average man. Mills' essay is certainly one of the best in this collection.

The collection's first essay titled "Propaganda" by Harold Laswell sets an important framework for understanding its role versus that of education. Laswell contends that "the inculcation of traditional value attitudes is generally called education, while the term propaganda is reserved for the spreading of subversive, debatable or merely novel attitudes."  While Laswell's working definition might have made sense in 1934 when he published his views, Jackall's collection makes it clear that the tools of propaganda have spread way beyond Laswell's neat distinction.

Included in the essays are also three articles on the role of propaganda in World War I and II including Cate Haste's "The Machinery of Propaganda" that reveals how the British manipulated public opinion in the First World War to keep patriotic fervor at a high pitch. Jackall and Janice Hirota's article, "America's First Propaganda Ministry" accomplishes a similar analysis of American propaganda in World War I as that presented by Haste.

While this collection contains numerous essays on the use of propaganda in wartime, thankfully, it also reveals how the skills developed during the two World Wars were put to use in modern society. Jackall's article, "The Magic Lantern: The World of Public Relations" does a masterful job of revealing the psychological consequences of propaganda on the work ethic of public relations and advertising professionals in the United States. Jackall points to the moral relativism created in a world where ideas and so called "truth" are manipulated to fit the objectives of major corporations. Indeed, Jackall contends that truth is irrelevant to the PR men. As one told Jackall, "Truth? What is truth? I don't know anyone in this business who talks about 'truth'.'

The collection ends with George Orwell's classic essay "The Politics of the English Language." Orwell brilliantly explains how our English language has been corrupted by modern corporations, governments and muddled thinkers who have lost touch with real experiences.  Words can reveal or they can hide the state of our world. Orwell, to his credit, shows how much of what we read today is intended to hide rather than reveal the real state of affairs.

Published in 1995, under the the guidance of Arthur Vidich and Robert Jackall who served as the general editors, this collection predates the enormous growth of new techniques for disseminating propaganda that has emerged in the last twenty years.  For example, the Internet, snapchat, facebook, twitter, google and hundreds of thousands of applications (now called Apps) have been developed for smart phones and tablets to make it even easier for corporations, governments and vested interest groups to influence and manipulate the general public.  Today, propaganda has become so commonplace that Laswell's distinction between it and education is nothing less than trying to separate the wave from the water.

Despite the collection not fully covering the electronic age, it provides an exceptional
analysis of the challenges we each face in sorting out right from wrong, truth from falsehood and right action from manipulated decision making.