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Propaganda as Psychical Coercion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

John W. Meaney
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Extract

Aristotle mentions coercion first in his description of the elements of involuntariness: “What sort of acts, then, should be called compulsory? We answer that without qualification actions are so when the cause is in the external circumstances and the agent contributes nothing.” This statement clearly marks the essence of coercion as exteriority, as opposition not only to the higher degree of interiority, of “from-withinness,” which distinguishes voluntary actions, but also to the spontaneity common to all natural processes. Aristotle gives some instances of physical coercion: a man blown from his path by the wind, and a man carried away by kidnappers.

But we know that psychical forces can also bring about coercion. For example, the movements commanded of a person in deep hypnosis have their origin externally to him in the will of the hypnotist; the hypnotized person contributes nothing by way of voluntary decision to those movements. He is an instrument moved by the external, psychical force of the hypnotist's will; that is, he is subject to psychical coercion.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , January 1951 , pp. 64 - 87
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1951

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References

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“The creation of consent is not a new art. It is a very old one which was supposed to have died out with the appearance of democracy. But it has not died out. It has, in fact, improved enormously in technics because it is now based on analysis rather than on rule of thumb. And so, as a result of psychological research, coupled with the modern means of communication, the practice of democracy has turned a corner. A revolution is taking place, infinitely more significant than any shifting of economic power.”

“Within the life of the generation now in control of affairs, persuasion has become a self-conscious art and a regular organ of popular government. None of us begins to understand the consequences, but it is no daring prophecy to say that the knowledge of how to create consent will alter every political calculation and modify every political premise. Under the impact of propaganda, not necessarily in the sinister meaning of the word alone, the old constants of our thinking have become variables. It is no longer possible, for example, to believe in the original dogma of democracy; that the knowledge needed for the management of human affairs comes up spontaneously from the human heart. Where we act on that theory we expose ourselves to self-deception. …”

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“Qu'on analyse les procédés qu'emploient, de plus en plus fréquemtnent, des journaux de plus en plus nombreux, et l'on devra convenir que la liberté dont ils usent n'a que peu de rapports avec ce qu'on honorait, jadis, sous le notn de liberté de penser, car ce n'est guère à la pensée qu'ile s'addressent. On dirait qu'ile n'essaient plus de convaincre leur lecteurs par des procédés logiques, mais bien plutôt, afin de les mieux lancer sur l'ennemi, de les hypnotiser par des procédés mécaniques—en répétant chaque jour, sans prendre la peine de las démontrer, les même affirmations.”

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“What would one say about a poster, for instance, which was to advertise a new soap, and which nevertheless describes other soaps as also being ‘good’?

“At this one would certainly shake one's head.

“Exactly the same is the case with political advertising.

“Propaganda's task is, for instance, not to evaluate the various rights, but fat more to stress exclusively the one that is to be represented by it. It has not to search into truth as far as this is favorable to others, in order to present it then to the masses with doctrinary honesty, but it has rather to serve its own truth uninterruptedly.

It was fundamentally wrong to discuss the war guilt from the point of view that not Germany alone could be made responsible for the outbreak of this catastrophe.”

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