English
中文One of the biggest impacts that the twentieth century had on philosophy was the fracture of knowledge. Through the actualities that saw two World Wars and absurd and grossly inhumane social systems that incorporated the people’s submission and acceptance to such regimes, reality had been called into question with harrowing consequences. Due to the colonial situation and the fall out of the European empires, the purchase of modernisation became the driving force of the nation states. Under the guise of such seemingly contrary ideology these nation states gained sway not only over their people, but over the realities of their people. Whether communist, fascist, democratic or liberal, the state had found a new approach; to manipulate the reality of its people through language, idea, rhetoric and the arts so as to control them. Due to the culmination of such seminal ideas pertaining to the schools of knowledge and scientific endeavour such as evolutionary theory, social equality and national identity, the state became an interpreter and dispenser of the ideas that dictated not only the actions, but the beliefs, attitudes and will of the masses. The tool that offered the state this power was propaganda. Propaganda was perhaps not new to the twentieth century. However, its development as a science throughout the nation states of primarily modern Europe gave it a new and confounding guise, the likes of which had not been seen before. The development of state propaganda as a science can be seen explicitly coming to fruition in Nazi Germany and less explicitly, but just as effectively, in Communist Russia in the twentieth century. Given the title of ‘Ministry for Propaganda and the New Enlightenment’ by Leader of the Nazi party Adlof Hitler, Joseph Geobbels outlined a notion of propaganda that suggested a new relationship between the state and the people. Indicating the power of propaganda, Goebbels stated that,
The essence of propaganda consists in winning people over to an idea so sincerely, so vitally, that in the end they succumb to it utterly and can never escape from it.” (Goebbels)
Giving his rationale, or rather the Nazi party’s rationale, for the importance of such a device, Goebbels also stated that,
“Propaganda is not an end in itself, but a means to an end. If the means achieves the end then the means is good………the new Ministry has no other aim than to unite the nation behind the ideal of the national revolution.” (Goebbels)
So how did propaganda change the relationship between the state and the people so that such a cruel and reality defying regime such as the Nazi party could gain control over the people and what part did the First World War play in this? This relationship can be seen in the states manipulation of reality and use of propaganda for the mobilisation and enlistment of its people for military action leading up to and during the First World War. In Britain the Empire and affluence of the home nation state had been successfully actualised due to War, invasion and conquest under a notion of cultural supremacy. Essentially, the notion of civilisation had justified the colonisation and its many Wars. Seen in literatures such as Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, the perception of the coloniser’s culture and nature was understood as barbaric and primitive ones. The notion of education, social system, economic structure, trade links and crucially modernisation was the vehicle for the ongoing enforcement and reinforcement of the Empire and its colonies. Essentially, this meant that the people of Britain were fighting for country, righteousness, civility, order, justice and modernity throughout the world. Of course, this is the perspective of the Empire itself and cannot be seen to be universal truth as the civilisations, cultures and people of the colonies were decimated during these colonial times and their riches plundered for the benefit of British sovereignty. However, what was significant at this time was the manipulation of this perception of righteousness in the Empire’s involvement in the rest of the world. The putting forth of this perception and the manipulation of the reality that it created within the society of the people was achieved primarily through the arts. Evidence for this can be seen in the involvement, occupation and manipulation of the Orient during the end of the nineteenth century by the British Empire. For instance, the orient was written by travel writers and revealed by artists of the Empire to be a place of cultural, historic and geographic mysticism and splendour while its current society a barbaric, simple and uncivilised race. This worked in propagating the idea that the region was important to the Empire as a place of cultural and historic significance, but that for the sake of the unsophisticated civilisation residing there the Empire was also important to it. This creation of the Orient as a place of significance was essentially the onus of propaganda that was used throughout the nineteenth century and which came to be realised by the state, quite intentionally, as a way of recruiting people to serve in the First World War.
We can see from the art and posters during the Great War that the very strong notion of nationalism, brought into place due to the success of the Empire, is prevalent. This manipulation of national sentiment can be seen in depictions of Lord Kitchener directly stating that the country needs the individual in an inescapable way . The role of the female is also manipulated in pictures depicting the woman’s acceptance and desire for their men to go to War . This propaganda was served throughout the Empire and was maintained by local regions as ‘Commonwealth material from both World Wars consists of locally designed and printed posters and those produced in Britain for distribution to the countries of the Empire’ . This meant that the state was using propaganda throughout its empire, which ultimately led to the war being perceived as a World War. Essentially, this could not have been achieved without the British states former use of cultural propaganda in the justification of colonisation from the previous century.
With regards to Germany, the historic backdrop and cultural reality that both Germany and Europe had found themselves in at the time was one of great modernisation and the colonising of other parts of the world through empire building as was the case with Britain. Often cited at the time as the Dark Continent, Europe had found itself amidst despotic leaderships due to its powerful nations’ lusting for empire expansion in the prior century. In this period, the uniting of the German state had been finally achieved in 1871 by the tough stance of a Kaiser. The empowerment of dictatorial rule was perceived as being crucial in achieving the unity, identity and nation state that the region had long craved. This idea of a dictator led leadership was fuelled by the tough stance that the Bismarck had taken against those that he had considered enemies to the German nation. Relinquishing the powers of the Catholic Church, the Bismarck had inaugurated a series of laws and police measures that had been aimed at bringing the Church and its practises under the complete state rule of Prussia. Essentially, the sense of nationalism had gained weight throughout the German nation. Since 1871, the German nation had found a national unity but was still without an Empire or major group of colonies. This proved in strengthening people’s national identity to that of a united Germany that had not long since been established. This national identity and social longing felt amongst the people of Germany was the essential catalyst for the acceptance of an idealistic, driven and rhetorically powerful state and left the people open to the cultural manipulation of propaganda . However, propaganda began its purpose in the Great War. Austro-Hungary and Germany, who were allies during this War, used nationalist sentiment throughout works of art and culture whilst incorporating their superior design techniques to formalise a new political artistry that would come to be identified as an essential part of national identity. This socio-political artistry that was born of the time of national unity and creation of the notion of homeland became the focal part of the propaganda that the state used to influence its people into going to war.
The effects that this state endorsed propaganda of the First World War had on both Britain and Germany, and Europe itself, was massive. It fundamentally changed the way in which the state viewed its people and its people viewed the state. Through the development of propaganda and state control of arts and culture, the notion of nationalism was able to be used throughout the post war countries to form a new relationship between the state and its people. This post war states use of propaganda was particularly prevalent in the nation of Germany. Writing on the implications of propaganda and the state, Shelley Baranowski wrote of historical analyst Peter Fritzsche’s assertion of post WW1 state propaganda that,
‘Although recognizing that a non-Socialist popular politics began to flower in the 1890s, Fritzsche sees World War I as the defining moment in populist activism. Total war spawned an unprecedented level of volunteerism in support of the troops and an outpouring of popular self expression that articulated the common experience of anxiety and loss. At the same time, the duration and costs of the war encouraged dissatisfaction with both the Reich’s and the Kaiser’s deficiencies, and they brought increased pressure for democratisation from circles well beyond the constituencies of the left. Petit bourgeois and peasant populism championed the Volksgemeinschaft, the solidarity national community that rejected the selfish claims of special interests, the class egoism of Marxism and the arrogance of big-business capitalism while insisting on greater political participation and social reform.’
Essentially, we can see from this extract that it was not only the understanding of cultural propaganda that had turned the nation of Germany from a country attempting to be unified and keep up with its European neighbours in terms of modernisation, but also the direct consequences of propagation of the first world war. That is to say, that without the use of popularised common experience, unified failure and anger at Europe’s many political ideologies, then the state could not have facilitated the propaganda required to produce the nationalist socialist party. Essentially, we can see that just as was the case with the historical events that had gone into supporting the propaganda of the First World War, so too was the national socialists rise to power given scope by state administered propaganda. With the Nationalist Socialist party in power it was then easy to instil into the people, via controlled propaganda borrowed from the First World War, that for society to become a national utopia someone would have to have total control of the state for the betterment of that society. With the manipulation of ideologies such as Darwinian evolution and an emphasis on racial supremacy that invoked the Aryan myth, the post war state of Germany was able to create a common enemy that the German people could oppose themselves to and in doing so adjoin themselves to the state and its propaganda under the guise of nationalism. This was achieved through a heightened cultural propaganda begun in the First World War and administered in the same way by persecuting the Jewish through cultural propaganda. Using them as scapegoats for all of the ills and vices that had befallen liberal Germany since the First Great War throughout art, media, educational institutions and so on. This propagation of the Jews and exultation of the Aryan acted in strengthening the peoples identity to a nationalist ideal that had only been recognised as a consequence of the propaganda of the First World War and reinforced through culture such as the arts and education. For instance, leader of the Nazi party speaking on euthanasia in his address to the German people at the Nuremberg rally of 1929, Hitler was able to proclaim that;
‘If Germany was to get a million children a year and was to remove 700-800,000 of the weakest people then the final result might even be an increase in strength. The most dangerous thing is for us to cut off the natural process of selection and thereby rob ourselves of the possibility of acquiring able people. The first born are not always the most talented or strongest people. Sparta, the clearest case of racial state in history, implemented these racial laws in a systematic way. As a result of our modern sentimental humanitarianism we are trying to maintain the weak at the expense of the healthy.’
In this we can see clearly how the states use of propaganda in the First World War had changed the relationship between the state and the people. Essentially, German nationality had gone from being the premise of propagating the people into fighting a War (WW1) into a state sanctioned totality into which the people went from being behind into being only to conform to. To emphasise this united feeling of nationalism and persecution of the Jews amongst the people, the state then censored art and literature from public book burnings to stripping art deemed to liberal from galleries. Similarly, in Communist Russia, ideologically specific art and culture was put in place that extolled Stalin and the working classes. This cultural control was realised during the First World War and the states emphasis on a national need to take arms that had been reflected through the schools and institutions of Europe at the expense of all else .
However, propaganda is not merely confined to the recent dark history of Europe that immediately followed the First World War. It is still apparent today in a variety of guises and has been the source of philosophical enquiry ever since the War. In the Eastern states comprising of the Eastern Block of Europe, critics looked at how language was being altered by the state to distort reality. Czech republican and author, Vaclav Havel, highlighted in his novel The Memorandum the ways in which propaganda could be used as an absurd tool by any institution as a means to disrupt reality to the point that reality was entirely lost to rhetoric (Havel, 1993). Although a literary work of fiction, the play showed how reality could be determined by the language itself and mirrored the warning of how reality could be distorted to make people accept truth as lies. Even in the contemporary age we can see evidence of this. For instance, recent comments regarding the contentious notion of global environmentalism and the need for change in western habits, reveals that this still exists. Criticism has been raised at comments justifying the insignificance of a lacking in truth such as ‘These points…are trivial details in the context of the main argument of the film, which is unambiguously correct in its portrayal of mainstream scientific understanding of climate change’ . This overlooking of the actual incorrectness of certain specifics regarding a film in light of the greater political message is reminiscent of the acceptance of lies for the benefit of the greater truth that is at the heart of propaganda’s agenda. Although the west and its people may consider themselves free of propaganda and its emphasis on fabricating truth, it is certainly the case that many people still remain vigilant with regards to any states use of it. Essentially, as a consequence of the use of propaganda amidst the nations of the First World War in particular, the relationship between the state and the masses will never be the same.
