7.21.2009

Alienation through Propaganda

To be alienated means to be someone other (alienus) than oneself; it also can mean to belong to someone else, it means to be deprived of one's self, to be subjected to, or even identified with, someone else. That is definitely the effect of propaganda. Propaganda strips the individual, robs him of himself, and makes him live an alien and artificial life, to such an extent that he becomes another person and obeys impulses foreign to him. He obeys someone else.

Once again, to produce this effect, propaganda restricts itself to utilizing, increasing, and reinforcing the individual's inclination to lose himself in something bigger than he is, to dissipate his individuality, to free his ego of all doubt, conflict, and suffering - through fusion with others; to devote himself to a great leader and a great cause. In large groups, man feels united with others and he therefore tries to free himself by blending with a large group. Indeed, propaganda offers him that possibility in an exceptionally easy and satisfying fashion. But it pushes the individual into the mass until he disappears entirely.

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