Thomas Merton on Propaganda
Propaganda makes up our minds for us, but in such a way that it leaves us the sense of pride and satisfaction of men who have made up their own minds. And in the last analysis, propaganda achieves this effect because we want it to. This is one of the few real pleasures left to modern man: this illusion that he is thinking for himself when, in fact, someone else is doing his thinking for him.
“The real violence exerted by propaganda is this: by means of apparent truth and apparent reason, it induces us to surrender our freedom and self-possession. It predetermines us to certain conclusions, and does so in such a way that we imagine that we are fully free in reaching them by our own judgment and our own thought. Propaganda makes up our mind for us, but in such a way that it leaves us the sense of pride and satisfaction of men who have made up their own minds. And, in the last analysis, propaganda achieves this effect because we want it to. This is one of the few real pleasures left to modern man: this illusion that he is thinking for himself when, in fact, someone else is doing his thinking for him. And this someone else is not a personal authority, the great mind of a genial thinker, it is the mass mind, the general “they,” the anonymous whole. One is left, therefore, not only with the sense that one has thought things out for himself, but that he has also reached the correct answer without difficulty - the answer which is shown to be correct because it is the answer of everybody. Since it is at once my answer and the answer of everybody, how should I resist it?”
"One reads or hears list of statistics, editorial opinions, the results of opinion polls, the decisions of statesmen. This mass of information from various sources has been hastily read and not assimilated. You do not have time to think about it, or weigh the meaning of it. You are simply left with a general sense that because those who know all this have come to certain conclusions, their conclusions are probably the right ones. It is these impressions and "acts of faith", rather than rational, well-informed judgments, that guide the decision of not only ordinary citizens but even of experts and 'authorities'. Consequently, because they have formed an impression -- and are satisfied that others have formed the same impression -- they feel as if they had reached a fully rational conclusion."
Thomas Merton
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