Propaganda

The Invention of Printing and its Aftermath

The invention of the printing press greatly facilitated the spread of information. During the Renaissance the Catholic Church began to lose its solid grip on ideological control of the faith, and Western Europe was ripe for new beliefs and ideologies to take hold. Two men with vastly different worldviews emerged on the scene; Nicolo Machiavelli and Thomas More published volumes they were hesitant to attribute to themselves but have nevertheless had lasting impact on the ethics of rhetoric and propaganda.

     The more quoted of the two is Nicolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), whose book The Prince has become synonymous with the negative connotations of propaganda. It describes the means that a monarch uses to gain and stay in power. Political expediency hold more value than morality; guile and deceit are the tools to maintain authority, hence the term Machiavellian, which describes a character of subtle cunning, expediency, and dishonesty. Machiavelli's pessimistic opinion of man is in stark contrast to Thomas More's whose world outlook is more positive.

     Machiavelli was an intelligent, independent, and fearless thinker who regarded politics as the high art of creating, protecting, and strengthening the state. He was interested in the state as an institution rather than in the humanity that populated it. He wished to know why states rose and fell and what made them successful (Taithe 98). His negative view of man can be summed up in the following quote:

 "Whoever wishes to found a state and give it laws, must start with assuming that all men are bad and ever ready to display their vicious nature whenever they find occasion for it. If their evil disposition remains concealed for a time, it must be attributed to some unknown reason [. ...] The wish to acquire is in truth very natural and common, and men always acquire when they can; and for this they will be praised, not blamed."  (Discourses, I, 3, Prince, iii). 

      He also maintained that appealing to God or divinity helped convince people of one's righteousness: 

"In truth there never was any remarkable lawgiver [...] who did not resort to divine authority, as otherwise his laws would not have been accepted by the people; for there are many good laws the importance of which is known to the sagacious lawgiver, but the reasons for which are not sufficiently evident to enable him to persuade others to submit to them; and therefore do wise men, to remove this difficulty, resort to divine authority"  (Discourses, i, II).

     Machiavelli rejected the Christian ethic of goodness encompassing gentleness, humility, and nonresistance and its assumption that both states and citizens are bound by one moral code. A state must first and foremost be strong and protect its citizens, and a moral code based on weakness and humility might prevent it from doing that. Statesmanship must be freed of moral restraints. "It is necessary for a prince who wishes to hold his own to know how to do wrong, and to make use of it or not according to necessity" (Prince, XV). The ruler must distinguish between morality and statesmanship and must be ready to do what in private life would be considered evil if it is for the good of the state. He must study the art of diplomacy for sometimes cunning and deceit will achieve more than force and at a lesser cost.

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     There is no mention of political or moral goals rooted in truth or ethics or striving toward a higher goal since those actions were seen as signs of weakness by Machiavelli. The ruler must be strong in order to keep the state intact and use only methods leading toward the final goals no matter what the means. He promotes expediency and pragmatics as the overriding criteria in political deliberation, with the result that other desirable ends such as justice and honor come to be perceived as relative luxuries to be indulged in only when the security of the state has been assured and the pursuit of advantage has not been jeopardized. If the audience is turned off by what is morally obnoxious, its attention must be drawn toward the desirable end
(Cox 1112).

     There are many similarities between Machiavelli's arguments that the end justifies the means and those of Cicero's; however, Cicero felt that honor is superior to security while Machiavelli felt no such stricture. Machiavelli would only go so far to state that it would be advantageous to avoid offending the moral sensibilities of the audience, so that when the orator is arguing against an honorable course of action, this has to be done cautiously and indirectly
(Cox 1119).

     Sir Thomas More was in many ways Machiavelli's opposite. Where Machiavelli espoused lies and deceit as means to reach a goal, More embraced truthfulness and morality. His book, Utopia, published in 1516, is about an ideal state founded entirely on reason. The book, which anticipates the rise of socialism, contains criticism of the English government, society, and economy. For reasons of personal safety, More had it first published abroad in Latin.

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     The entire book can be regarded as humanist reform propaganda. In Utopia men are free and equal, living under the rule of laws that are few and simple. The people are ruled by elected phylarchs, whose top echelon elects a king for life. There is a fair amount of freedom of religion and tolerance of different creeds. More never spoke publicly about his book, but after his death it had a broad impact after it was translated into English and was widely distributed.

     More also showed his rhetorical abilities by speaking out on many important subjects of the day, such as the dangers of the English Protestants and the sanctity of the Catholic Church. It was the latter of the two subjects that brought about his downfall. More had been a highly regarded lawyer and judge, known for his wisdom and impartiality. In 1515 he became Speaker of the House of Commons and also served as Chancellor of England. When King Henry VIII wanted his marriage to Catherine of Aragon annulled in order to marry Anne Boleyn, he persuaded Parliament to pass an Act of Succession in 1534 to declare the marriage with Catherine invalid and made it a capital crime for anybody to question the validity of Anne's marriage to Henry. More did not agree and spoke out against the act, which he regarded as a ruinous assault upon the one true church. Henry VIII did not tolerate public opposition, so he had More arrested and eventually executed. 

     Here we see a principled man who used rhetoric to speak out against political tyranny for which he paid with his life. More's final words before his execution were: "The king's good servant but God's first." Sir Thomas More had wielded the persuasive power of rhetoric while he lived, and on the four hundredth anniversary of his death, the Catholic Church declared him a saint. His life and written legacy is an example of the power of rhetoric that demonstrates why people in power are so often afraid to let their subjects speak openly and freely.

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     It is interesting to compare these two contemporaries. Both men had exceptional rhetorical abilities and left lasting legacies. They both strove for what they believed to be an ideal state or ruler; they anonymously published what could be considered propaganda tracts, but the similarities stop there.  Machiavelli's belief that the end justified the means is very similar to modern propagandists while More's belief in a higher ideal of moral truth is similar to the ideals of the classic Greek philosophers.

     The word propaganda was first used in 1622 to describe the propagation of the Catholic faith. There was no malice intended
in spreading the word of God for what the Catholics considered the only true faith; however, the emerging Protestant religions began to challenge this notion. By the end of the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church had achieved a solid grip on the communication of ideas. The Church, in close cooperation with the universities it controlled, began to identify and attack what it considered heresy.

     The Protestant religion was gaining in strength and influence during this period, and they swiftly imitated the use of propaganda by responding with their own religious tracts to counter the dominant Catholic influence. In 1697, the Anglican minister Thomas Bray published A General Plan of the Constitution of a Protestant Congregation or Society for Propagating Christian Knowledge, which he consciously modeled after its Catholic counterpart (Taithe 98). The Protestants portrayed the Catholics taking part in a diabolical plot to establish ecclesiastical tyranny by trying to replace true Christianity with magic and superstition. The word propaganda was first intended to have a neutral meaning for spreading the true faith. By using distortion, exaggeration, and subversion of the facts we can see how even religious groups used propaganda to convey their ideas to persuade and influence others that theirs was the true Christian faith.

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     The French and American Revolutions were political upheavals of immense importance that popularized the idea of political authority emanating from the hands of the people. Traditional political and religious values were rejected and were replaced by the ideas of liberty and equality. The importance of public opinion became apparent along with the desire to influence it. Newspapers and pamphlets began to be consciously used to disseminate propaganda. Edmund Burke was one of the first to realize the importance of the printed word for the spreading of propaganda.
 
"What direction the French spirit of proselytism is likely to take [...] is not easy to determine. The seeds are sown almost everywhere, chiefly by newspaper circulation, infinitely more efficacious and extensive then ever they were" (Taithe 102).

     During this period one can detect the emergence of an understanding for the importance of using propaganda to spread
ideas, as can be seen in the following quote by Friedrich Gentz:

"Public opinion ought not to be neglected or disdained for a single moment. Instruction and guidance must be the permanent concert of the princes. They should exert their influence upon the ideas and principles of the age in all expedient ways, through frequently repeated solemn declarations, through publications, through sermons, through the education of the people, through the support and encouragement of talents" (Taithe 108).

     The revolution unified France and enhanced the power of the state. Napoleon rose to power shortly thereafter and showed himself to be a deft user of propaganda. Two aphorisms stand out regarding his overall philosophy: "Government is nothing unless supported by opinion" and "Truth is not half so important as what people think to be true" (Marlin 57). Napoleon's most important military strategy was to win the hearts and mind of his men. He knew each officer directly under his command and many of his soldiers. He felt that "In war, morale and opinion are more than half the battle" (Marlin 47). His inspiring speeches extolled the valor of the French soldiers over their enemies, which gained their loyalty, trust, and willingness to fight to the death for him.

     Napoleon was not personally religious, but he felt organized religion was useful in controlling people's mind. He realized the importance of knowing one's audience and the need to influence young people, which he did by gaining control of the school system and spreading ideas of the inevitability of the unequal distribution of wealth and possessions. He used censorship to control the flow of information so that no unfavorable news ever reached the masses.  On January 17, 1800 he ordered the suppression of sixty of the seventy-three newspapers then published in France. "Three hostile newspapers," he said, "are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets" (Durant 287). Here is an example of a gifted orator who realized the importance of using rhetoric and propaganda to influence and to gain control over his subjects.

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