Propaganda

Rating:
Summary: Deep...
Review: A very carefully put idea about the concept of propaganda, and what it means to live in a society.

His idea has special signifigance within today's western world where communication (in one form or another) is always hapening; mostly with conviction and purpose to stimulate or manipulate the communicatee.

That said, this book is not a conspiracy novel, but rather a theory exemplified by one of the great western minds of this type of philosophical genre.

Rodin's "Thinker" is really a guy who sat down to read this book, the dude is still sitting there pondering ....

Hopefully it will keep you thinking too

Rating:
Summary: Great social critique
Review: Ellul has a real talent for compartmentalizing his work. His Christian writings deal with Christianity, his social critiques do not mention Christ. Whether these critiques are motivated by his religion is doubtful.

Ellul's greatest gift is separating his emotions from his analysis. He treats advertisers, communists, and Goebles the same. They are merely trying to persuade unsuspecting consumers of media.

This is an important work that will be forgotten. Ellul's name usually pops up when people discuss paranoia as a side effect of technological progress, but this is an extremely narrow critique of his works. What he has given here, is a perfect example of HOW to write a book on media. His observations are well footnoted, half the book is footnotes, and his analysis is straightforward. Obviously, this book has to be updated, but it won't be by Jacques. He's gone.

Unfortunately, the Unabomber's association, and highway robbery of his ideas, will further margenalize him.

I'm sure that he is required reading, along with Lippman and Goebels, for Georgetown's political graduate students. If not, he should be.

Rating:
Summary: Great social critique
Review: Ellul has a real talent for compartmentalizing his work. His Christian writings deal with Christianity, his social critiques do not mention Christ. Whether these critiques are motivated by his religion is doubtful.

Ellul's greatest gift is separating his emotions from his analysis. He treats advertisers, communists, and Goebles the same. They are merely trying to persuade unsuspecting consumers of media.

This is an important work that will be forgotten. Ellul's name usually pops up when people discuss paranoia as a side effect of technological progress, but this is an extremely narrow critique of his works. What he has given here, is a perfect example of HOW to write a book on media. His observations are well footnoted, half the book is footnotes, and his analysis is straightforward. Obviously, this book has to be updated, but it won't be by Jacques. He's gone.

Unfortunately, the Unabomber's association, and highway robbery of his ideas, will further margenalize him.

I'm sure that he is required reading, along with Lippman and Goebels, for Georgetown's political graduate students. If not, he should be.

Rating:
Summary: An Important Book
Review: Ellul takes a look at propaganda in its fullest and widest sense. Instead of trying to tinker with interesting but narrow experiments in mind manipulation, Ellul takes a view of propaganda from where it actually exists and springs forth in society and in history. He has a holistic theory of the workings and effects of the phenomenon.

And this is as it should be. After all, the propagandist is operating in full force right now, as he was in the 1960's when the book was written, and he is not using controlled labs to do it. He is doing it on a mass scale in real society and achieving results. Therefore a serious attempt to understand propaganda "in its actual place" and "as it is used" is valuable and enlightening. Ellul is not interested in "building" a technique for propaganda from the ground up, or in "proving" that it is possible. This much has already been done as evidenced by plain facts!! He is acknowledging what has already been achieved and is looking at these systems from many angles to determine their nature and tease out an understanding so we can know more what we are facing.

You will find many less than intuitive but fascinating notions in the book.

For instance: Education increases the ingestion of propaganda. In fact it is a prerequisite. It is no wonder Saddam Hussein worked to increase literacy in Iraq -- all the better to try to propagandize the people with words and mold them into a cohesive whole. Another idea: Democracies like the U.S. are very vulnerable to propaganda. In fact, this form of government makes propaganda all the more necessary, since you must work on people's minds more than their bodies (it is not a dictatorship.) People in democracies should expect to be heavily and relentlessly propagandized.

These are just a few samples of the many fascinating (and horrifying) ideas and insights in this volume.

One thing to note: Jacques Ellul is also a theologian and Christian, and he doesn't make much of a secret of that in his book or his other writings. I am not a Christian myself (I'm an atheist), but I frankly think Ellul's Christianity not only DOESN'T cloud Ellul's sharp powers of logic and observation, but it does him a bit of service in his examination of propaganda and its harmful effects on the human being. He makes few bones about the idea that propaganda has a tendency to separate man from himself and his true spirituality and/or personality. This he relates among the other harmful effects on the world at large in the form of exploitation and war.

All I can say is read this book: You'll never look at things the same way afterwards.

Rating:
Summary: An Important Book
Review: Ellul takes a look at propaganda in its fullest and widest sense. Instead of trying to tinker with interesting but narrow experiments in mind manipulation, Ellul takes a view of propaganda from where it actually exists and springs forth in society and in history. He has a holistic theory of the workings and effects of the phenomenon.

And this is as it should be. After all, the propagandist is operating in full force right now, as he was in the 1960's when the book was written, and he is not using controlled labs to do it. He is doing it on a mass scale in real society and achieving results. Therefore a serious attempt to understand propaganda "in its actual place" and "as it is used" is valuable and enlightening. Ellul is not interested in "building" a technique for propaganda from the ground up, or in "proving" that it is possible. This much has already been done as evidenced by plain facts!! He is acknowledging what has already been achieved and is looking at these systems from many angles to determine their nature and tease out an understanding so we can know more what we are facing.

You will find many less than intuitive but fascinating notions in the book.

For instance: Education increases the ingestion of propaganda. In fact it is a prerequisite. It is no wonder Saddam Hussein worked to increase literacy in Iraq -- all the better to try to propagandize the people with words and mold them into a cohesive whole. Another idea: Democracies like the U.S. are very vulnerable to propaganda. In fact, this form of government makes propaganda all the more necessary, since you must work on people's minds more than their bodies (it is not a dictatorship.) People in democracies should expect to be heavily and relentlessly propagandized.

These are just a few samples of the many fascinating (and horrifying) ideas and insights in this volume.

One thing to note: Jacques Ellul is also a theologian and Christian, and he doesn't make much of a secret of that in his book or his other writings. I am not a Christian myself (I'm an atheist), but I frankly think Ellul's Christianity not only DOESN'T cloud Ellul's sharp powers of logic and observation, but it does him a bit of service in his examination of propaganda and its harmful effects on the human being. He makes few bones about the idea that propaganda has a tendency to separate man from himself and his true spirituality and/or personality. This he relates among the other harmful effects on the world at large in the form of exploitation and war.

All I can say is read this book: You'll never look at things the same way afterwards.

Rating:
Summary: Monumental!
Review: Ellul's study still stands out as one of the greatest achievements in the history of the study of propaganda, in terms of how it is practiced, how/why it is effective and how it is inescapable and tied to the very nature of democratic society. Ellul's picture is not a pretty one. He views propaganda as ultimately dehumanizing, necessary and inevitable at the same time. Propaganda, ANY propaganda, regardless of motives or veracity, serves to reduce the individual to function as a meaningless syphon. Whether one agrees with his conclusions or not, it is still a well-argued, compelling and frightening look and modern societies.

The biggest drawback is that the book published today is the same as that published in 1965 (Ellul died in 1994 and no real updated edition was ever produced), and the cases analyzed may seem obsolete, in that he focuses primarily on National Socialist, Maoist, Soviet and US cold war propaganda. But the analysis of is still second to none. For those familiar with the study of propaganda, Ellul's work was by far the most comprehensive and penetrating study of propaganda to that point. It was a HUGE and monumental advance from the previous research into propaganda of Bernays, Lambert, or Fraser. This book ought to be required reading for anyone who wishes to consider themselves even remotely literate or intelligent. Although one may not agree with all his conclusions, it nonetheless provides a compelling argument and portrait of modern man and how frighteningly easy it is to systematically 'persuade' him. Any thinking person cannot but attempt to be cognizant of how we are influenced.
This book is relevant for several reasons. 1) The student of history will appreciate the Ellul's examples. 2) The book analyzes what are, essentially, the beginnings of modern propaganda making it important for anyone studying the phenomenon. 3) Ellul breaks the phenomenon down into easily understood categories and places them in the context of the modern 'technological', urbanized society and what Ellul calls the predicament of modern man. 4) The research and sources that went into writing this book are as comprehensive as they could have been. 5) It provides an excellent explanation of much of 'modern life'. 6) Ellul was also an interesting writer and individual (simultaneously an Evangelist and Anarchist).


Again, the only real drawback is that some might find the examples obsolete and there are more recent studies of modern propaganda techniques, which have naturally advanced since from those used during the cold war. One would also be well served to read the more recent studies of propaganda by Chomsky, Cialdini (a more psychological approach), Jowett or Cunningham. I would still give Ellul's book more than 5 stars if I could.

Rating:
Summary: Provides Foundation for Testing Theories MassMedia Influence
Review: I agree with the previous reviewers who attested to the value of this book, while also qualifying said value by noting that the systems of propaganda available for Ellul's study in 1965 have changed considerably since then.

As for the reviewer who complained about Ellul's study being limited to one nation's systems of propaganda, this criticism was also levelled against American mass communications researcher, Christopher Simpson, whose 1996 book titled SCIENCE OF COERCION used declassified archives to trace government's hidden funding of an entire new academic discipline, namely Communications. These two books, read alongside a book of essays by involved academics (some government-funded, others not) edited by Simpson and named UNIVERSITIES AND EMPIRE, Robert McChesney's RICH MEDIA, POOR DEMOCRACY, former ABC TV Producer of Children's Programming Dennis Mazzocco's NETWORKS OF POWER, and Chomsky & Herman's seminal content analysis study MANUFACTURING CONSENT provide a fairly inclusive frame of reference for studying propaganda systems, albeit primarily those of the western hemisphere. Let us not forget University of California Professor Emeritus Peter Dale Scott, whose booklength confessional poem COMING TO JAKARTA re-examines his silence while faculty colleagues accepted grants from the U.S. military and CIA to target native Indonesian student leaders, trade unionists, and intellectual elites for assassination during the early 1970's.

I am not a scholar or academic, yet wanting to understand the principles at work whenever I submit to the soothing rays of television, or enter the comforting parameters imposed on a world in chaos whenever I pick up a daily newspaper, weekly advertiser and/or magazine led me to continue seeking out the critical analysis offered by these books. Christopher Simpson's succint formulation of what had previously been a subconscious preoccupation of mine just about sums it up: "How do we come to know what it is that we think we know." The advantage in Simpson's book is that the footnotes can send a reader or media professional to documentation of the 'wizard' behind Media Oz. In one most startling case, given what we think we know about Harry Truman and his interpretation of American constitutional principles, a single footnote can lead down a historical rabbit hole, or is it really Orwell's 'memory hole'? If not THE Cold War, at least A Cold War is never too far off.

Rating:
Summary: Wow, this book is amazing...
Review: I don't think I could have asked for a more precise and in-depth look at this topic. Each chapter went more and more into deep discussion about how propaganda is used, how it evolved, and how it is affecting the freedom of our own minds in the modern world. The book talks a lot about psychology itself, especially of groups and nations and how propaganda affects the lone, isolated individual most of all.

A few of the examples that Ellul uses here and there are rather "out of date" and very hard to follow if you don't have some foreknowledge about what event he may be discussing. This does not take away from the whole of the book however, events are presented only to show an example of a point, and only a few times are they hard to follow. This book has many examples, but the focus here is on the psychological analysis and of it and how propaganda works on people. If you want to just examples, read Chomsky's "Propaganda and the Public Mind," it is all examples with little analysis and I thought this book had more what I wanted.

Another thing to note, this book is very "full" there are an incredible amount of points made in each section. I don't think I have ever spent quite this amount of time making notes in and underlining things in a 313 page book. Those of you that like to read a book in a few hours or even a few days will probably have trouble doing that here, at least if you want to understand it on the level that I did.

Everyone needs to read this, it is a real eye opener in our day and time. When the other reviewers say it is mind blowing they are correct. I have read a few things of this nature in the past so it was not as much to me, but for a person new to this topic who thinks propaganda always comes from "the bad guy" or "the other guys," this would be a good introduction for them. I think if everyone read and understood this our society would probably shut down completely...

Rating:
Summary: Orwell's 1984 = fiction; Ellul's Propaganda = prophecy
Review: Jacques Ellul is meticulous and thoughtful, so this book is occasionally dense and hard to follow. In addition, most of the examples and allusions will strike modern Americans as dated and obscure. Nonetheless, Ellul saw long ago where moderns were headed. He saw that authoritarian use of modern technologies would mesmerize, stultify, and reduce humans to thralls, just as Orwell and Huxley, in far more hysterical prose, had dramatized.

Orwell's electronic miracles monitored citizens directly or indirectly. Huxley's miracles were far more therapeutic or medical. But routine surveillance or treatment is inefficient and overwhelms any state that would depend on omniscience or envelopment. Ellul foresaw tools both electronic and human that would so condition subject-audiences that close monitoring and careful prescriptions would be unneeded.

Ellul also argued that this "Brave, New World" could not but subvert democracy and decency. Once the will of the citizen is not his or her own, then democracy in any meaningful sense is at least devalued and perhaps transformed into reassuring internment.

Perhaps Ellul's most important insight was that the educated believed themselves immune to propaganda when, due to their proclivity for reading and watching news and other governmental outflow, such "intellectuals" were actually far more vulnerable than masses who did not receive propaganda as often.

So turn off the set and log off the internet and settle in with a truly life-changing read.

Rating:
Summary: Thoroughly excellent scholarly discussion of propaganda.
Review: Jacques Ellul, famous French author decribes the incredible process of propaganda. Totally relevant in today's mind numbing information processing society. Arguably one of the most informative and concise books written on the subject. If you ever wondered what is propaganda and why do you think like you do, this book may help explain some of the difficulties in modern man's inherent thinking. The fact that this comes from French soil and was written prior to the Ken Starr investigation makes it all the more compelling.