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 these mechanisms and the necessity of propaganda. This article therefore provides a general definition of the term “propaganda” that can be applied regardless of place and time. Our analysis is based on universal logic and internal coherence. And although we use a modern theoretical description as a starting point, we define the term on the basis of its practical emergence in human history.

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 in the preceding century.

Through the invention of the printing press and 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 vulnerable 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.”

[On Voluntary Servitude; Etienne de La Boetie]*

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 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 material power relations remained; only the justification of rule was adjusted so that it was again accepted by the oppressed target group. 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 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, centrallyly, 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. Propaganda did not become negative because it existed, but because its techniques were recognized. Visible manipulation loses its legitimacy.

Conclusion

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 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, we arrive at the following universal definition of the term propaganda:

“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.”