Propaganda: its power to Influence and Control

Paul Joseph Goebbels: Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945

Propaganda can be used in a variety of ways to influence the thoughts and behavior of others. While this can sometimes prove beneficial, it is often a tool by which vulnerable groups can be manipulated.

The meaning of propaganda

Propaganda involves the deliberate inculcation of ideas intended to serve the interests of those who believe they will benefit by their widespread acceptance.  Drawn from Latin, it has been translated as promotion of “those things which must be disseminated”.  
Its danger lurks in the bias and power of the disseminator to impact upon the thoughts, and emotions, and eventual choices of large numbers of people.  Its pervasiveness is such that few of us living in modern western societies are not touched, on a day-today basis, by some aspect of its presence.  A signboard urging attendance at a specified church, a radio or TV statement of a particular candidate’s worthiness for an office, or an email suggesting the passage of a particular law, all contain elements of propaganda.  

Propaganda was not always viewed as evil

Originally, when proliferation of fruitful public knowledge was difficult, it had to be announced in public forums, or shouted by town-criers whose voices could reach a large number of people.  
In time, as the Catholic Church began to train priests as emissaries of Biblical teaching, the term “propaganda” came to represent the propagation of such beliefs, with the intent to commandeer the thoughts of skeptics.  

Mind control: from brain washing to commercial coercion

The human brain has been shown to be far more susceptible to involuntary influences than most of us would wish to admit.  Its impact can range from the savage torments of brain washing to the promotion of a product via bypassing sensory filters, such as sight or hearing.  Brain washing stands at the most savage end of this spectrum.  Torture consisting or combined with prolonged water and food and/or sleep deprivation can affect brain function.  If nothing more, the brain-stem is hard-wired to sustain survival at any cost. Once this take-over has been achieved, the victim can later be persuaded his former persecutors are his friends.  At times, this has resulted in prisoners of war joining with enemy forces against their own countries.  

The dangers of subliminal advertising 

In a less destructive way, these methods became implemented by advertisers.  Life, after WWII, accelerated hence, in order to gain access to the human mind, “subliminal” advertising” was deployed.  
The word “Subliminal” has been defined as sending input directly to the brain, below the threshold of the senses.  Thus, in movie theaters, words like “chocolate” or “popcorn” would be flashed quickly enough on a screen to create a desire to devour these foods, sold during intermission, without ever being acknowledged as such.

  

The outlawing of subliminal advertising

During the 1950s, as a television became part of most American and many European households, the dangers of invasion of the brain by this type of advertising began to pose an ever-increasing menace.  Such ideas as, “Venus Shampoo is for you” or “Become a king by driving a Kingsley car” were rendered illegal. Still, the number of movie-goers and TV-viewers had become so widespread as to make this restriction largely irrelevant.  Far more effective plans were afoot which were bound to result in greater impact.  

Role theory as a commercial tactic

No law forbade the physical appearance of a celebrity connected with an advertised item.  Thus, with a “Kingsley Car” a gorgeous girl to say to her date, “I absolutely adore your Kingsley” became a delightful endorsement.  The fact of four out of five accidents having occurred, due to a manufacturing defect in brake function, might well be overlooked and ignored.  Still, as standards of testing increased, the original image undoubtedly stayed rooted as an initial impression.

Music masking messages absorbed by the brain of the listener

It is believed by some psychiatrists that music preceded language as a means of communication.  For this reason, stroke victims whose speech is halted, often succeed when responding to a doctor’s suggestion of singing what they are striving to say.  
In any case, as choosing to listen to music is often a deep source of pleasure, the human mind has been shown to be receptive to words spoken so softly as to elude hearing.  

As the soothing music relaxes the listener, in theory at least, his mind will be receptive to the words beneath the music.  Those who purchase such a recording are given an exact printed copy of these verbalization's. Thus far, no negative consequences have been traced to this method.  Still, a level of trust is involved which not all of us share, when we cannot be entirely sure of the words and ideas to be implanted.  

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