Dr. Manoj Dash, Bhubaneswar, 11 October 2025
Propaganda is a centuries old term. Psychoanalytical research pioneered by Erich Fromm (Eminent German Social Psychologist and Psychoanalyst) describes propaganda as “a process of fooling people to identify with something big and important, therefore creating meaning beyond an individual’s life.” It usually doesn’t resolve any pressing issues of individuals such as house, income, employment and education.”
Such a meaning was or is often deliberately and consistently manufactured mostly by people who are not trained as historians and they often belong to a party or organisation of some ideological leaning (left, right and centre – all types without any exception!).
They usually assign themselves roles of spokespersons, journalists or columnists and many of them write for some publication that can be linked to a political party in power and without power. They never use established methods of research and never quote sources but use big words to push their agenda based on falsehood. Their writings often embrace the style of grand narration based on community gossips which fail to get accepted by any credible publication.
When some characters who never wrote on history of any kind are/ were suddenly seen writing whenever their party or organisation came to power, they are the ones to be identified as confirmed propaganda creators, suggested Erich Fromm.
They have been part of courts of kings and sultans, academic institutions, paid columnists, independent persons and the like and they were always present in all phases of human life and society.
A Religious Past and Present
Following its religious roots of the past, propaganda acts similar to religion—asking for a sacrifice of individualism in the name of something bigger—god, country, society, or political party. In the end, people willingly engage in propaganda because, although sacrificing something, they vicariously receive unity with the bigger powers of other people, organizations, political parties, countries, and so on.
Since the beginning of human civilisation, these characters (of all types, sexes, ages and of all kinds) often manipulated historic data, life spans of rulers, astronomical cycles, and real events to place a current ruler in a favourable light—for example, aligning the birth date of a current leader with the birth date of a stronger leader of the past to suggest the old leader’s reincarnation.
The rise of propaganda, and the appearance of the term itself, is closely related to religion. Eminent American Sociologist F E Lumley (Author of Outlines of Sociology of Human Behaviour) suggested that all religions, essentially, have been a big propaganda in itself.
Religious men and women announced things to the people; they led the people; they thought for the people; they always manipulated public opinion. The religious background of propaganda is indeed quite important to understand the roots and mechanisms of propaganda.
Modern Makeover of Propaganda
The modern aspects of propaganda brings into the civic life its religious arsenal. In recent decades, propaganda received a significant boost and developed new tactics including the two world wars of the 20th century.
Some modern and contemporary scholars and practitioners led by American Political Communications Scholar Harold Lasswell say that self-appointed activists keep using the words like, public relations, public diplomacy, or advertising for propaganda while constantly referring to something bad, negative, and inherently evil is waiting to happen and that should be avoided at all costs or something needs to be freed from the clutches of specific people of the past years.
They use or always used deception to push the whole art of propaganda, whether it consists of half-truths, lies, ambiguities, evasions, calculated silence, red herrings, unresponsiveness, slogans, and catchwords.
The politician or rulers always had an uneasy feeling about using the word ‘propaganda’ to describe the activities of his or her own group; he or she discredited the activities of his or her opponents by calling these activities propaganda.
Although these activities may denote the same communication acts, their connotations are quite distinct. In fact, usage patterns show that people tend to think of their own activities as promotion, public information, public diplomacy, or anything else but propaganda. At the same time, the very same activities when performed by others may be labelled as propaganda!
In this context words frequently used as synonyms of propaganda are lies, distortion, deceit, manipulation, mind control, psychological warfare, and brainwashing.
Former US President Kennedy’s famous slogan, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”—is said to be a statement that represented the quintessential act of propaganda. Such thoughts, if reflected in action, reduce citizens to subjects and often result in permanent disempowerment of citizens in a democracy because there is no citizen without rights.
Propaganda and Its Targets
People are constantly targeted by such propaganda messages from governments, international organizations, organizations they work for, and even their communities. Propaganda often becomes an essential component of building a nation or saving a community from imminent danger.
Propaganda’s ambition is to make people sacrifice their personal wishes and even their own lives for something bigger and, presumably, more important. Once again, this reminds us of propaganda’s religious background, references to a supreme being, and references to sacrificing private interests in the name of something bigger.
Therefore, the same way as religions, many governments demand their citizens to sacrifice profits, health, even lives for the sake of democracy, freedom, country, or some other bigger goal no matter how real or illusory it might be.
The basic assumption of this theory of propaganda is the aloneness of the human being in the modern world. Erich Fromm explained that humans are imaginatively torn away from their primary union with nature which magnifies their aloneness and separateness; of their powerlessness and ignorance; the accidentalness of their birth and of their death. They could not face this state of being alone even for a second if they could not find new ties with their fellow men and women. Even if all their psychological needs were satisfied, they would experience this state of aloneness and individuation as a prison from which he or she had to break away in order to retain sanity and survival.
If a human being realizes that his or her life does not have any meaning except to live and eventually die, that might cause a personal crisis and, eventually, for the society. That is why people tend to look for the meaning in their lives, trying to become part of something bigger, something that would provide meaning to their lives. In other words, people attempt to become one with a bigger community by submission to a person, to a group, to an institution, to God.
Such submission maybe to a country as people become patriots, a religion as people become religious, a business organization as people become workaholics, a sports team as people become sport fans, and many other organizations from sororities and fraternities to criminal gangs.
As a result, propaganda makes use of this individual human need to be a part of something. It uses a need in symbiotic relations, creating meaning in a human life, at the same time, reaching its own purpose; in other words, millions of people are often ready to be “brainwashed.”
Impact of Cognitive Dissonance
As a result, a person is made to think that he or she is no longer alone in the world, this person is now a member of the group. Governments, of course, tend to use this “us against them” theme to increase support for their own goals. But even without government’s campaigns, people themselves start propagating this theme so strongly and loudly with each other that it becomes their own. This could be explained through a phenomenon of a cognitive dissonance, an idea pioneered by American Social Psychologist Leon Festinger.
Cognitive dissonance is experienced when person’s feelings and attitudes conflict with this person’s behaviour and actions. For example, when people are forced to perform a boring task they do not want to do, they experience cognitive dissonance. In order to overcome this dissonance, people tend to invent some meaning or significance for this task in order to make the task seem more important or fun, and, thus, resolve the dissonance of why they are performing this task in the first place.
All these emanate from the fact that some people have lost the sense of the significance and uniqueness of the individual, that they have made themselves instruments for purposes outside themselves, that they experience and treat themselves as commodities, and that their own powers have become alienated from themselves. Since people do not trust their own power, they have no faith in themselves or in what their own powers can create.
The Road Ahead for Common Citizens
Every educated or thinking person is capable of evaluating the falsehood or factualness of different interpretations of history and can always differentiate between what is propaganda and what is a fact. Realisation of self-power and making sense of available information will always save people from cheap and motivated propaganda creators who belong to all kinds of parties and organisations.
