What is Propaganda?

In the public perception of Western societies, propaganda is usually regarded as a relic of the past. When the term is used at all, it is mostly to describe the machinations of hostile regimes or historical extreme examples from the 20th century. Yet hardly anyone is able to describe this term logically without referring to certain individuals, epochs, or institutions. However, it is crucial to properly understand the mechanisms behind this term and the actual necessity of propaganda. This article therefore provides a general definition of the term “propaganda” that can be applied regardless of place and time. And although a modern theoretical description serves as a starting point, the term is described on the basis of its practical emergence and application.

We will repeatedly examine the term propaganda from the perspective of natural law. In brief, this states that all living beings are born with the right to self-determination and therefore possess the natural right to exercise their own will in order to live in sovereignty and free from violence or coercion. We encourage all who have not yet engaged with the universal concept of natural law to do so in a benevolent manner.

Modern Definition and Word Origin

The term propaganda derives from the Latin verb “propagare” and means something like “to spread, multiply, or propagate.” One of the most common modern definitions of propaganda can be found in the German Duden or the Oxford Language Dictionary:

“The systematic dissemination of political, ideological, or similar ideas and opinions with the aim of influencing general consciousness in a specific way.”

The formulation “systematic dissemination” implies a planned, coordinated, and targeted process as part of a higher-level system.

Origin

According to official historiography, the first institutional use of the term “propaganda” dates back to the year 1622. At that time, the Catholic Church under Pope Gregory XV founded the Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide. Literally, this means “Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith.” This papal authority had the explicit mandate to disseminate the Catholic faith in a centralized, coordinated, and systematic manner. In doing so, the Holy Roman Empire was responding to the phenomena of that time. The previous claim to interpretive authority of the Holy Roman Empire over Central Europe had begun to waver considerably in the preceding decades.

Through the invention of the printing press and the increasing literacy of the population, a public sphere developed in which information could be shared in a decentralized manner. Thus, the worldview that had previously been transmitted only from top to bottom became comparable and open to critique. The people were now able to spread their own truth through pamphlets and broadsheets in a reproducible, comparable, anonymous, and supraregional manner. Examples of such anti-authoritarian broadsheets known throughout Europe are „The Ship of Fools“ by Sebastian Brant or “Discours de la servitude volontaire” [On Voluntary Servitude] by Etienne de La Boetie.

“If you decide to serve no more, then you are free.”

— Etienne de La Boetie, On Voluntary Servitude

In addition, the power structures became increasingly repressive over time. This was evident, for example, in the expropriation of usage rights, higher levies, and harsher penalties. This extension and densification of the power structures of external authority is not an isolated case but a logical consequence. A ruling class of people will always have an interest in gaining more power. No institutional authority in the world can or will prohibit or restrict precisely those practices on which its own existence is based. Rather, it will always try to grow. These mechanisms can be observed regardless of place and time. Increasing totalitarian structures inevitably lead to a rise in consciousness of the oppressed target group, as the immoral power relationship gradually becomes too obvious and too painful. This has as a further consequence unrest and uprisings.

From the perspective of the Catholic Church, the Augustinian monk and priest Martin Luther further escalated this entire tension. Although there is much to say about the controversy with Luther, we will keep it as long as necessary and as short as possible for the purpose of this investigation. As an intra-ecclesiastical actor and member of the Catholic educated elite, Martin Luther shook the Church’s monopoly on truth in 1517 with his 95 Theses. He exercised indirect criticism of authority and questioned many practices of the Catholic Church, without however questioning the fundamental mechanisms of power and control through an external worldly authority. Regardless of Luther’s personal intention, the Reformation ultimately had a structurally stabilizing effect and absorbed the tensions of his time. As a leading figure, he opened the door to the new state power model with his doctrine of the two kingdoms. Through the establishment of Protestantism as a new state religion, the existing radically autonomous forces and ideas, such as those represented by Thomas Müntzer or Sebastian Franck in Central Europe, could be nipped in the bud. The fundamental structural power relations remained; only the justification of rule was adjusted so that it was again accepted by the oppressed target group — the people. The Reformation defused the potential social explosive power of a true evolution of that time without allowing an actual redistribution of power. Levies, feudal services, and obedience continued under different auspices and with different terminology but persisted nonetheless.

In 1622, the Catholic Church responded to the described social upheavals and the spirit of the times by founding the Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide. This authority was to combat Protestantism as a competing belief system in a systematic and structured manner and to adapt its own teachings linguistically, culturally, and strategically to different contexts. In doing so, the Church dealt openly and confidently with the fact that it wanted to deliberately influence the worldview of other people in order to enforce its claim to rule.

Nevertheless, external authority shifted increasingly from the religious to the political sphere in the 18th and 19th centuries. Centralized religious institutions lost their authority, as a sacred truth was no longer sufficient to legitimize rule. Through increased public awareness, the modern state developed into an increasingly effective model of authority, thereby maintaining the fundamental power structures. Thus, the heretic became the enemy of the state, the priest became the civil servant, and the sin became the criminal act.

Modern nation-states took the place of the Church as the central power of truth and order. Textbooks replaced sermons as the most effective long-term means of conveying truth. In Prussia, for example, the state educational system was deliberately expanded to promote loyalty, discipline, and a sense of duty. History books told a linear national history in which the state appeared as the natural culmination of historical development. The religious salvation history was replaced by the national history of progress.

It was only in the early 20th century, when state propaganda was deployed industrially, centrally, and psychologically systematically through the two world wars, that the term took on its negative connotation. Here too, we can note that the increasingly exaggerated and totalitarian application of propaganda in the form of deliberate disinformation, censorship, enemy images, and warmongering led to a rise in consciousness among the oppressed target group. After the end of the war, the public recognized that its perception had been deliberately manipulated.

What Exactly Is Propaganda Then?

First, we must establish that propaganda always goes hand in hand with an institutional, centralized power structure. In Central Europe, this was initially the Catholic Church and later the nation-states that emerged from it. In both cases, it is an external authority that prescribes a worldview to the people. Since neither state nor church exist as independent actors, it is always concrete groups of people who define truth and exercise power in the name of these institutions. These people always argue that they are acting in the name of a greater cause — divine order, the common good, public order, etc. This external authority defines rules and norms that are based on coercion and compulsion. Under the assumption of natural law as a normative standard, this is therefore always an immoral and unnatural construct.

In order to maintain such an externally prescribed order long-term without permanently applying violence, systematic control of perception, meaning, and behavior is required. This is precisely where the functional role of propaganda lies. There is a direct dependency between the public awareness of the target group about the structure and functioning of the current power structure and the way in which propaganda must be implemented. The greater the public awareness, the more subtle the propaganda must be.

On the basis of this investigation, the following universal definition of the term propaganda can be stated:

“Propaganda is the systematic dissemination of political, ideological, or similar ideas and opinions with the aim of asserting, in the name of a self-proclaimed higher authority, a permanent claim to power and control over a target group, whereby the general consciousness of the target group is influenced in such a way that it bestows loyalty and legitimation upon this external authority. The greater the public awareness of the target group toward these immoral power structures, the more subtly the techniques of propaganda must be applied.”

Propaganda is thus not a historical exception but a permanent functional condition of modern power structures. It describes the necessity of every organized religion or government. From the perspective of natural law, propaganda presents the oppressive and immoral power relations as an indispensable tool of apparently modern societies.

Propaganda is also not exclusively a crude instrument of authoritarian regimes. Its true nature lies in its constant adaptability and expediency. This expediency ends only through the overcoming of a socially accepted external authority. The ruling class will always sell their claim to power as a necessary evil for a civilized society.

Propaganda Through the Ages

In the 19th and 20th centuries, industrialization brought significant structural changes to Europe. Millions of people moved from rural regions to the cities, where they lived spatially concentrated and socially heterogeneous. This developing anonymous and interchangeable mass society was no longer based on the traditional social bonding structures of agrarian societies. In rural societies, people lived most of their lives in the same village or the same region. One knew one’s neighbors and risked exclusion and loss of reputation for deviation from social norms. This social pressure declined considerably in the anonymous mass society of the city. The personal loyalty of the individual toward state authority thus had to increasingly be secured through collective perception management. The corresponding structural preconditions for this were simultaneously created through industrial mass communication via radio, television, and newspapers.

Public Relations

In fact, the insights of mass psychology in the 20th century significantly expanded the research field of propaganda for governments, militaries, and later also corporations. New scientific theories about group behavior, emotions, authority, and collective perception professionalized the conscious manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses.

The two world wars mark a decisive turning point in the application and perception of propaganda. An estimated 100 million people lost their lives through direct consequences of war or indirectly through hunger, disease, or displacement. Accordingly, the number of those who experienced traumatic and painful experiences during this formative time is many times higher. The peoples of all participating alliances were drenched in state propaganda. An unprecedented, systematic alignment and continuous media bombardment filled the public perception of that time with hatred, fear, and division.

This open brainwashing was so painful and memorable in its ultimate consequence that the term propaganda and the associated practices were inseparably negatively tainted in public discourse. The public awareness looked deep into the totalitarian face of state power structures through collective pain. As a result, as during the peasant protests of the Reformation era, there were increased countermovements with numerous autonomous and state-critical currents. These interpreted the exaggerated state faith, nationalism, and obedience to authority as central causes of the catastrophes of the 20th century. Among the well-known names of these currents are Emma Goldman, Hannah Arendt, and Albert Camus.

“It is irrelevant whether a government invokes a God-given right or the will of a majority. The goal is always the absolute submission of the individual.”

— Emma Goldman

Consequently, propaganda as a means of manipulative influencing of social perception had to be wrapped in a new guise in order to continue legitimizing the existing power structures. This new guise was popularized worldwide in the 1920s through the work of Edward Bernays as public relations. Although he was neither the first nor the only public figure who coined this term, his work and reach allow us to trace the development of that era well. Bernays was the nephew of Sigmund Freud and belonged to the new influential educated elite of that time. He was excellently informed about the workings of mass psychology and gathered valuable practical experience during World War I as a representative of the American war propaganda agency (U.S. Committee on Public Information). This is not to say, however, that Bernays and his associates were aware of their role. Rather, they acted as products of the prevailing worldview, shaped by moral selectivism, elite thinking, and an exogenous way of life.

This is clearly traceable in the case of Edward Bernays through his book Propaganda published in 1928. He is considered one of the most important pioneers of modern state and economic manipulation and control techniques. Following are some lines from his book that illustrate his motivation and standpoint:

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in a democratic society. Those who manipulate this mechanism constitute an invisible government and are the true ruling power in our country.”

— Edward Bernays, Propaganda [p. 9]

“In the past, those with power were leaders. They set the course of history by doing what they wanted. If today’s successors of the rulers — those who have power by virtue of their position or abilities — can no longer do what they want without obtaining the consent of the masses, then they find in propaganda an ever more powerful instrument to obtain this consent. Therefore, propaganda is here to stay.”

— Edward Bernays, Propaganda [p. 27]

“Due to the increasing complexity of modern life and the resulting necessity of making the actions of one part of the public understandable to other parts of the public, the new profession of public relations has emerged. It is also due to the increasing dependence of organized power of all kinds on public opinion. Governments — whether monarchical, constitutional, democratic, or communist — depend on the approval of the public for the success of their efforts. Indeed, a government exists only because of the consent of the public.”

— Edward Bernays, Propaganda [p. 37]

“A propagandist must understand the true motives and must not content themselves with accepting the reasons that people give for their actions. It is not enough to understand only the mechanical structure of society, the groupings, divisions, and loyalties. An engineer may know everything about the cylinders and pistons of a locomotive, but if he doesn’t know how steam behaves under pressure, he cannot make his machine run. Human desires are the steam that drives the social machine. Only when the propagandist understands them can he control this vast, loosely connected mechanism that constitutes modern society.”

— Edward Bernays, Propaganda [p. 52]

Bernays was convinced that the ordinary person was too uneducated to make their own decisions. Therefore, a self-proclaimed intellectual elite would have to lead and direct the public through manipulation. He justified this immoral claim to power with ethical basic principles. What exactly this meant is revealed, for example, by the analysis of his collaboration with the United Fruit Company and the violent coup in Guatemala. This successful PR strategy resulted in a years-long civil war in which mainly indigenous people died.

Bernays and his associates transformed the worn-out propaganda methods from an openly and self-confidently acting state model into a system that acts more subtly and appears democratic. In doing so, he wrapped the means necessary for controlling and manipulating the population in a new, more efficient guise. His greatest innovation was the shift from pure political propaganda to universal social opinion management. He was one of the first visionaries of his time to recognize that it is more efficient to apply propaganda techniques in an overall societal context rather than steering the masses solely through state and institutionally organized propaganda. Public relations thus became an economic strategy, a government communication tool, and a cultural management instrument. People who direct their attention outward in an exogenous mode of existence and who are oriented toward consumption, status, and prestige are easier to steer and control. Common means of manipulation for him were the staging of authority, emotional symbolic politics, and the control of the media. These techniques continue to shape the modern world of power and capital to this day.

He also diluted propaganda as a concept by using it for any organized effort to spread a particular doctrine. He correctly recognized that the techniques for manipulating human consciousness can be applied in all areas of societal relevance. And of course, the societal power structures are also inseparably linked to the financial system or the educational system. However, there is a crucial difference between voluntariness and coercion. One can apply manipulative techniques to sell a particular product for personal enrichment. One can apply the same manipulative techniques to the same target group to legitimize a particular social power structure for the personal enrichment of a ruling class. In the first example, the target group has the choice of consuming the product. In the second example, the loyalty of the target group is enforced with violence and coercion in an emergency. So one can advertise all possible ideas with propaganda techniques, but only propagandize authoritarian power structures. Unfortunately, this crucial distinction was lost in the public perception of propaganda through these new developments around public relations.

Think Tanks as a Necessary Link

Another noteworthy aspect in the further development of institutional control mechanisms for maintaining existing power relations is the global emergence of so-called think tanks. Historical examples include the Council on Foreign Relations (founded 1921, USA), the Royal Institute of International Affairs (1920, Great Britain), or the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (1962, Germany). Think tanks were and are powerful idea factories founded to influence public opinion. They are formally funded by influential foundations, corporations, and government programs and represent the necessary link between networks of politics, science, business, and media. In contrast to established institutional methods, such apparently independent idea factories can make messages appear more objective and thus enable longer-term planning of politics and social development.

Propaganda in the 21st Century

After the Second World War and during the Cold War, the concept of information warfare between rival powers became established. A theoretical foundation for this development was formulated by the American diplomat George Kennan in 1948 with his concept of “Political Warfare,” which he submitted to the US Secretary of State in an internal memorandum. Therein, Kennan described political conflicts as a permanent competition below the military threshold. This was to be conducted through media, cultural influence, economic networks, and institutional cooperation. He also legitimized therein the state use of covert instruments such as support for opposition forces, disinformation, intelligence operations, and psychological warfare in the struggle for the so-called national interest. The state interest in East and West serves here as legitimation for all necessary measures to secure the loyalty of one’s own people toward the prevailing power structures in one’s own country and beyond. In order to maintain the appearance of objective analysis and academic neutrality, the forms of psychological warfare and public manipulation from this time onward ran mostly under neutral or scientifically sounding terminology such as “International Communication,” “Opinion Research,” or “Strategic Communication.”

Hybrid Warfare

From the mid-2000s onward, the concept of “hybrid warfare” increasingly entered the minds of the intellectual pace-setters of state propaganda. This new concept sought an even more intensive fusion of military, economic, political, and cultural means. US military analyst Frank G. Hoffman defined “Hybrid Warfare” in 2007 as the coordinated and simultaneous use of conventional armed forces, irregular actors, information operations, political influence, and economic and psychological means within a unified strategic framework. On the surface, this is about influence strategies of rival states. These serve to shape geopolitical power structures. Ultimately, however, it is also about controlling one’s own population. Through permanent information stimuli, polarization, and the generation of uncertainty, citizens lose track of what is happening around them. In this state of insecurity, citizens naturally seek safety and certainty and apparently find it in the presented truth and the promised security of their own state structures. Such a society inevitably results in subtle mechanisms such as self-censorship, social fragmentation, and identity conflicts out of fear of newly emerging uncertainty and insecurity. From this time at the latest, information, economic pressure, social expectations, and political influence operations became the decisive strategic instruments of modern power.

Cognitive Warfare

The latest escalation stage of state propaganda is “Cognitive Warfare.” Here, the focus is no longer just on classic manipulation of information, but on the entire thinking capacity of the population. With the help of algorithms, constant outrage, fragmentation, and emotionalization, the target group is to be completely destabilized through a permanent sensory overload. Citizens should no longer need to be convinced of a state truth, but should resign in the face of the overwhelming flood of information. Such a disoriented person no longer asks questions about the truth but only seeks belonging and security.

Propaganda researcher Jonas Tögel has written an entire book on this new, all-encompassing war under the title Cognitive Warfare. The term originates from security and futures research at NATO. In a research report published in April 2025 in cooperation with the European Defence and Security Conference, titled “Cognitive Warfare — The Human Mind as the New Battlefield,” NATO writes openly about its efforts:

“The term ‘Cognitive Warfare’ designates a concept developing in both the academic and military fields. It aims to exploit human cognition and technology to disrupt, weaken, manipulate, or alter human decision-making processes. To date, neither the military nor the academic community has established a fully mature concept of cognitive warfare. In this context, NATO Allied Command Transformation announced in July 2024 that efforts to create such a concept were underway.” (p. 88)

In an official publication from December 2025, the term is also used in connection with the civilian population by NATO:

“Cognitive warfare aims to exploit facets of perception to disrupt, undermine, influence, or modify human decision-making processes by altering human behavior and perception with all means and making use of technological advances. Military and non-military tactics are employed that target both military actors and the civilian population throughout the entire crisis spectrum.”

Western governments are by no means the first or only states to engage with such thinking and research impulses. Similar concepts are known in Chinese military theory as “Three Warfares.” In fact, the Chinese government is playing a pioneering role. Already in 2003, China introduced the concepts of public opinion warfare, psychological warfare, and legal warfare when it revised the “Guidelines for Political Work of the People’s Liberation Army.” Chinese surveillance technology — from facial recognition software to smart ID cards — has meanwhile become a global export hit. Governments from all over the world are being inspired by the Chinese model of a totalitarian surveillance state.

In Russian strategy papers as well, it becomes clear that information warfare and the information domain are viewed as central elements of Russian military and security thinking. Similar efforts can also be observed in the Australian government. This is a universal research field of all states and governments in this world. For logically, every ruler has an interest in having even more power.

All military alliances and governments have one thing in common. The practices of cognitive warfare are always officially said to be practiced only by other states, which is why one is logically compelled to open this research field in order to protect oneself from the evil machinations of other states. It goes without saying that no government in the world officially employs such tactics against its own population. However, anyone who has understood the nature of the ruling power structures of our world recognizes the logical self-interest of all governments in the extension and intensification of control and surveillance in their own sphere of rule. Why then should one not use one’s own findings and technological means? Every citizen is the focus of this new cognitive warfare.

The Information Revolution as a Key Factor

Ultimately, the latest developments in state propaganda are closely connected to the information revolution and the establishment of the internet in the 21st century. In the era before the “World Wide Web,” state institutions possessed a general information supremacy. It was easy to spread a particular message through broadcasting, newspapers, television, and other channels. It was, however, difficult to critically question this message or to gain access to information critical of the government or war. Governments could sanction, defame, and regulate unwelcome media. To do this, every state merely had to maintain control over the centrally managed media houses in its own country. How this looked in Germany — and still looks today — we have investigated extensively in our research analysis.

With the increasing decentralization of information acquisition through the internet, this power relationship shifted. Meanwhile, over 80 percent of the world’s population owns a smartphone and can inform themselves comparatively freely. With a few clicks, every individual citizen has access to information that questions the interpretive authority of governments and other centralized institutions. These developments require a reorientation and expansion of state propaganda. This environment demands cognitive warfare.

At the same time, the Internet of Things (IoT) and technological progress in the form of smartphones, surveillance cameras, artificial intelligence, smart homes, digital currencies, and facial recognition software offer unprecedented possibilities for controlling and monitoring the population.

In her book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, economist Shoshana Zuboff describes the digital “shadow text” that people leave behind when using smartphones and computers. These data — summarized as Big Data — allow a detailed analysis of human behavior and can also be used for military or political influence strategies with the help of algorithms and AI. The manager of the NATO Innovation Hub, François du Cluzel, stated in 2021 that the use of such data is at the center of modern military research. The aim is to better understand and, if necessary, influence the behavior of individuals.

From this development arises the idea of a “digital twin” that maps the psychological profile of a person. Building on this, so-called soft power technologies operate. Political scientist Joseph Nye describes Soft Power as the ability to get others to do what you want — without violence or coercion. A well-known example is micro-targeting, which was used by the company Cambridge Analytica. Through the analysis of large amounts of data, individually tailored messages could be created to deliberately influence the behavior of voters. The company came under international criticism after it became known that millions of Facebook data were used to conduct political campaigns and psychological influence operations.

To what extent the development and popularization of the internet itself was in the interest of global power structures may be posed here as a question. After all, the internet emerged from the military-funded research of DARPA and initially ran under the term “ARPANET.” More on this in Surveillance Valley by Yasha Levine.

Conclusion

In pre-state times, individual groups could control the lives of millions of people by claiming to have received this right from a supernatural force. When this manipulative claim no longer worked due to growing public awareness, the greed for power had to find new explanations. The desire of elite forces to rule over land and society led to the political paradigm still current today. The world-famous myth states that the “common people” created concepts such as governments, military, and authorities as a compromise for a more peaceful world. In fact, however, these ideas were popularized by sophists and aristocrats who were convinced of their own superiority and of the firm opinion that the “common people” must be ruled and controlled. History shows how public awareness gradually became aware of these facts — with immense suffering and pain. The consequence was always increasingly complex and subtle explanations and structures of authoritarian power to keep the masses in check.

Ideas such as the social pact, the social contract, the national interest, the common good, the rule of the majority, and representative government have replaced the divine right of kings and the privileges of the aristocrats. In our modern culture, it is necessary to convince the individual citizen that he determines his own destiny in order to effectively rule him. For this reason, the rhetoric of the social control system under which we live is full of euphemisms that conceal the oppressive and violent nature of its existence. Thus the bombing of hospitals or schools is called a defensive strike; a robbery under threat of violence is called taxation; and groups of people who claim rule over certain geographic territories are called governments. All efforts to legitimize this power structure of an external power over the lives of all others can thereby be called propaganda.

Propaganda today is omnipresent — and at the same time invisible. It does not work through prohibitions but through shifts in meaning. Not through coercion, but through moral framing. Not through persuasion, but through limiting what is thinkable. Thus, information warfare transformed into cognitive warfare. Propaganda develops from controlling what people should think to influencing the way in which people think.

“The strongest and most effective force ensuring the long-term maintenance of power is not violence in all its forms employed by rulers to control the ruled, but consent in all its forms through which the ruled come to terms with their own submission.”

— Mark Boyle, Drinking Molotov Cocktails with Gandhi

Anyone who wants to understand propaganda must stop looking for it only in others. The decisive question is not whether propaganda exists, but whether it is recognized as such.

Those who want even deeper insights into the potential future of state surveillance and propaganda methods will find them, for example, with Tom-Oliver Regenauer or Jonas Tögel.

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Note: This article was revised in September 2026 and merged with the two companion articles (Propaganda Through the Ages & Next Level Propaganda).