Cheap Propaganda (Book) (JACQUES ELLUL) Price

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Customer Reviews of Propaganda

A Chilling Study
Published in 1965, this book is a significant, if creepy study of that oft-misunderstood concept of propaganda. The references are unfortunately dated, but the insights are valuable, especially given how much propaganda is ignored in American society, particularly. It's not an easy read by any means, mostly because he throws so much at you at once you're sort of left punch-drunk. He lays it all out forthrightly.

The most terrible revelation he offers is when he points out that the most informed individuals (in the sense of consuming the most media) are the most propagandized (but unaware of being so). This is why this book doesn't get more play -- it would put the Massive Media and the "public relations" (aka, propaganda industry) out of business if people understood their real social role.

The book is bleak, and leaves you reeling. But it does provide intellectual ammunition -- namely, critical thinking -- as a hopeful vaccination from propaganda, except for Ellul's statement that people who think propaganda doesn't affect them tend to be propagandized....

I guess the safest thing you can do is assume you are a victim of propaganda, and then deal with it by sorting out what opinions are genuinely yours, and what are the result of "conventional wisdom" and "common sense". The alternative is to pretend you're somehow immune.

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Wow, this book is amazing...
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A few of the examples that Ellul uses here and there are rather "out of date" and very hard to follow if you don't have some foreknowledge about what event he may be discussing.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...

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Orwell's 1984 = fiction; Ellul's Propaganda = prophecy
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.