Norman Davies’ 5 Rules of Propaganda

In the twentieth century, the scope for propaganda was dramatically expanded by the advent of new media, such as film, radio, and TV; by the techniques of marketing, mass persuasion, commercial advertising, and ‘PR’.

‘Total propaganda’ and the art of ‘the Big Lie’ was pioneered by the Bolsheviks. Lenin, after Plekhanov, distinguished between the high-powered propagandist, who devised the strategy, and the low-level agitator, who put it into practice.

Theorists of propaganda have identified five basic rules:

1. The rule of simplification: reducing all data to a simple confrontation between ‘Good and Bad’, ‘Friend and Foe’.

2. The rule of disfiguration: discrediting the opposition by crude smears and parodies.

3. The rule of transfusion: manipulating the consensus values of the target audience for one’s own ends.

4. The rule of unanimity: presenting one’s viewpoint as if it were the unanimous opinion of all right-thinking people: drawing the doubting individual into agreement by the appeal of star-performers, by social pressure, and by ‘psychological contagion’.

5. The rule of orchestration: endlessly repeating the same messages in different variations and combinations.

One of the more insidious forms of propaganda, however, is that where the true sources of information are hidden from recipients and propagators alike. This genre of so-called ‘covertly directed propaganda’ aims to mobilize a network of unsuspecting ‘agents of influence’…

who spread the desired message as if they’re acting spontaneously. By feigning a coincidence of views with those of the target society, which it seeks to subvert, and by pandering to the proclivities of key individuals, it can suborn a dominant élite of opinion-makers by stealth.