PROPAGANDA. – If certain truth (whether revealed, scientific, or moral) gradually wins over minds and therefore requires dissemination and popularization, simple opinions that hasten toward success—and all the more so the less solidly founded they are—turn instead to p. This term, once practically equivalent to the other two (dissemination, popularization), has at present somewhat declined in meaning and good repute: both because of the abuse made of it and because of its now characteristic indulgence in exaggeration, distortion of the truth, and the light-hearted or vicious denigration of whatever opposes it, without regard for the duties of charity, legitimizing all this by the demands of commercial or ideological struggle.
It involves a multifaceted activity (the spoken word, oratory, the press, posters, the novel, cinema, radio, the theater, choreographic demonstrations, charity) carried on in private or in public, generally in a coarse and simplistic tone, usually immodest, directed in some way toward doing violence to the reasoning faculties, or toward catching them unawares and influencing them through the astute exploitation of the psychology of the uninformed, the impressionable, and the masses.
P. thus understood is consequently not suited to the works of intellect and virtue; it is instead the ordinary instrument for promoting competing commercial products, new medicinal specialties among many similar ones, and especially social and political opinions and ideologies. Indeed, the term now spontaneously calls to mind the proselytizing of political parties and trade-union organizations, whereas for commercial products and services one speaks rather of reclame and pubblicità (v.).
The law of competition also reaches p.; hence, in social and political life, especially during electoral periods, p. confronts p. in a contest, with means that are increasingly conspicuous, gaudy, and costly. This brings discredit upon social and political activities, insofar as it leads them to be regarded as bound to those who pay, at least for the most part, their vast and ever-increasing p. expenses.
Sound and moral ideas cannot therefore compete with others on the terrain of p., where effectiveness rests solely upon exaggerated and bizarre forms, denigrating and defamatory gestures, or threatening and sensationalist ones—the only forms capable of arousing curiosity and sensitivity among the less educated, the least balanced, and the least conscientious. Sound and moral ideas must rely entirely upon the instruction and elevation of the people, the force of good example, and the evidence of good results in practical applications.