Propaganda cannot create something out of nothing. It must attach itself to a feeling, an idea; must build on a foundation already present in the individual.
Never make a direct attack on an established, reasoned, durable opinion or an accepted cliche, a fixed pattern. ...Existing opinion is not to be contradicted, but utilized. Each individual harbors a large number of stereotypes and established tendencies; from this arsenal the propagandist must select those easiest to mobilize, those which will give the greatest strength to the action he wants to precipitate. - Jaques Ellul
Simply to ask an individual [via a survey] if he believes this or that, or if he has this or that idea, gives absolutely no indication of what behavior he will adopt or what action he will take.
Through such processes as crystallization and intense rationalization, propaganda builds monolithic individuals. It eliminates inner conflicts, tensions, self-criticism, self-doubt. And in this fashion it also builds a one-dimensional being without depth or range of possibilities. At the same time, this crystallization close his mind to all new ideas. The individual now has a set of prejudices and beliefs, as well as objective justifications. His entire personality revolves around those elements. Every new idea will therefore be troublesome to his entire being. He will defend himself against it because it threatens to destroy his certainties. He thus actually comes to hate everything opposed to what propaganda has made him acquire. Propaganda has created in him a system of opinions and tendencies which may not be subjected to criticism. That system leaves no room for ambiguity or mitigation of feelings; the individual has received irrational certainties from propaganda, and precisely because they are irrational, they seem to him part of his personality. He feels personally attacked when these certainties are attacked. There is a feeling here akin to that of something sacred. And this genuine taboo prevents the individual from entertaining any new ideas that might create ambiguity within him. Incidentally, this refusal to listen to new ideas usually takes on an ironic aspect: the man who has been successfully subjected to a vigorous propaganda will declare that all new ideas are propaganda.
Propaganda strips the individual, robs him of part of himself, and makes him live in an alien and artificial life, to such an extent that he becomes another person and obeys impulses foreign to him. He obeys someone else. It pushes the individual into the mass until he disappears completely.
The terms, the words, the subjects that propaganda utilizes must have in themselves the power to break the barrier of the individual's indifference. They must penetrate like bullets; they must spontaneously evoke a set of images and have a certain grandeur of their own. To circulate outdated words or pick new ones that can penetrate only by force is unavailing, for timeliness furnishes the "operational words" with their explosive and affective power. Part of the power of propaganda is due to its use of the mass media, but this power will be dissipated if propaganda relies on operational words that have lost their force. In Western Europe, the word Bolshevik in 1925, the word Fascist in 1936, the word Collaborator in 1944, the word Peace in 1948, the word Integration in 1958, were all strong operational terms; they lost their shock value when their immediacy passed.
Propaganda tries first of all to create conditioned reflexes in the individual by training him so that certain words, signs, or symbols, even certain persons or facts, provoke unfailing reactions. Eventually the myth takes possession of a man's mind so completely that his life is consecrated to it. ...When the time is ripe, the individual can be thrown into action by active propaganda, by the utilization of the psychological levers that have been set up, and by the evocation of the myth.
To the extent that propaganda is based on current news, it cannot permit time for thought or reflection. A man caught up in the news must remain on the surface of the event; be is carried along in the current, and can at no time take a respite to judge and appreciate; he can never stop to reflect. There is never any awareness -- of himself, of his condition, of his society -- for the man who lives by current events. ...Real information never concerns such a person. ... Propaganda addresses itself to that man; like him, it can relate only to the most superficial aspect of a spectacular event, which alone can interest man and lead him to make a certain decision or adopt a certain attitude.
As man's memory is short, the event that has been supplanted by another is forgotten; it no longer exists; nobody is interested in it any more. In November 1957, a Bordeaux association organized a lecture on the atomic bomb by a well-known specialist; the lecture would surely have been of great interest (and not for propaganda purposes). A wide distribution of leaflets had announced it to the student public, but not a single student came. Why? Because this happened at exactly the same time as Sputnik's success, and the public was concerned only with this single piece of news; its sole interest was in Sputnik, and the permanent problem was forgotten.
All propaganda must play on the fact that the nation will be industrialized, more will be produced, greater progress is imminent, and so on.
Man always has a certain need to hate. ... Propaganda offers him an object of hatred ... And the hatred it offers him is not shameful, evil hatred that he must hide, but a legitimate hatred, which he can justly feel.
Under the influence of propaganda, certain latent drives that are vague, unclear, and often without any particular objectives suddenly become powerful, direct and precise. Once propaganda begins to utilize and direct an individual's hatred, he no longer has any chance to retreat, to reduce his animosities, or to seek reconciliation with his opponents. Moreover, he now has a supply of ready-made judgments where he had only some vague notions before the propaganda set in; and those judgments permit him to face any situation. He will never again have reason to change judgments, that he will thereafter consider the one and only truth.