PROPAGANDA. — If certain truth (whether revealed, scientific, or moral) slowly wins over minds and therefore requires dissemination and popularization, simple opinions that are eager for success—and all the more so the less solidly founded they are—resort instead to propaganda. This term, which at one time in practice was equivalent to the other two (dissemination, popularization), has now somewhat fallen in meaning and reputation: both because of its abuse and because of its characteristic indulgence in exaggeration, distortion of the truth, and light yet fierce denigration of whatever opposes it, without regard for the duties of charity, and legitimizing all this with the demands of commercial or ideological struggle.
This is a many-sided activity (word, oratory, press, posters, novels, cinema, radio, theater, choreographic displays, charity) carried on in private or in public, usually in a coarse and simplistic tone, generally immodest, aimed either at forcing rational faculties to yield in some way or at surprising and swaying the unwary, the impressionable, and the masses through the cunning instrument of psychology.
Propaganda thus constitutes a powerful rival to works of intellect and virtue, while it is the ordinary means for promoting commercial products in competition, new medicinal specialties among many similar ones, and particularly social and political opinions and ideologies; indeed, the term today spontaneously recalls the activities of political parties and labor unions, whereas for commercial products and services one speaks rather of advertising and publicity (q.v.).
The law of competition extends even to propaganda: hence in social and political dynamics, especially during election periods, propaganda campaigns are waged against one another with ever more striking, brazen, and costly means. This is a cause of discredit for social and political activities, since it makes them appear dependent on those who, at least for the most part, foot the enormous and growing expenses of propaganda.
Healthy and moral ideas therefore cannot compete with others on the terrain of propaganda, where effectiveness is entrusted solely to exaggerated and bizarre forms, to denigrating and defamatory movements, or to threatening and sensationalist ones—the only means capable of arousing curiosity and sensitivity among the less educated, the less balanced, and the less aware. Healthy and moral ideas must instead rely entirely on the instruction and elevation of the people, on the power of good example, and on the evidence of good results in practical applications.