Some gathered thoughts on Propaganda: Extremists on the Left and Right have taken heed of these concepts. It is time for a moderate Center to united against Extremism in all its form. Both sides recognize and use these propaganda tools/ concepts. And the end result of extremism is Totalitarianism.
“The broad masses of a population are more amenable to the appeal of rhetoric than to any other force.”
“All propaganda has to be popular and has to accommodate itself to the comprehension of the least intelligent of those whom it seeks to reach.”
“Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way round, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise.”
“As soon as by one’s own propaganda even a glimpse of right on the other side is admitted, the cause for doubting one’s own right is laid.”
“Hate is more lasting than dislike.”
“The receptivity of the masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan.”
“It is not truth that matters, but victory.”
“The victor will never be asked if he told the truth. ”
“I use emotion for the many and reserve reason for the few.”
“But the most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly and with unflagging attention. It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over. Here, as so often in this world, persistence is the first and most important requirement for success.”
“If you wish the sympathy of the broad masses, you must tell them the crudest and most stupid things.”
“No amount of genius spent on the creation of propaganda will lead to success if a fundamental principle is not forever kept in mind. Propaganda must confine itself to very few points, and repeat them endlessly. Here, as with so many things in this world, persistence is the first and foremost condition of success.”
“Only constant repetition will finally succeed in imprinting an idea on the memory of the crowd.”
For how shall we fill people with blind faith in the correctness of a doctrine, if we ourselves spread uncertainty and doubt by constant changes in its outward structure? …Here, too, we can learn by the example of the Catholic Church. Though its doctrinal edifice, and in part quite superfluously, comes into collision with exact science and research, it is none the less unwilling to sacrifice so much as one little syllable of its dogmas… it is only such dogmas which lend to the whole body the character of a faith.
“If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.”
“The great masses of the people will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one.”
“Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.”
“Great liars are also great magicians.”
“The art of leadership… consists in consolidating the attention of the people against a single adversary and taking care that nothing will split up that attention.”
“The leader of genius must have the ability to make different opponents appear as if they belonged to one category.”
“The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation.”
“It would be easier for the Devil to go to church and cross himself with holy water than for these people to comprehend the ideas which are accepted facts to us today.”
“All great movements are popular movements. They are the volcanic eruptions of human passions and emotions, stirred into activity by the ruthless Goddess of Distress or by the torch of the spoken word cast into the midst of the people.”
“Words build bridges into unexplored regions.”
“The best way to take control over a people and control them utterly is to take a little of their freedom at a time, to erode rights by a thousand tiny and almost imperceptible reductions. In this way, the people will not see those rights and freedoms being removed until past the point at which these changes cannot be reversed.”