The Status of the Propaganda Theorist: A Rejoinder

• Main Author: Stanley B. Cunningham
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: University of Windsor 1994-01-01
• Series: Informal Logic
• Subjects: Propaganda; propaganda theorist; communication; belief; truth; Ellul
• Online Access: https://informallogic.ca/index.php/informal_logic/article/view/2446

In Propaganda Talk (1988), Dennis Rohatyn’s fictional spokesperson argues that even those (including Jacques Ellul) who analyse and discuss propaganda are themselves propagandists. This ‘membership claim’ seriously misrepresents the agency of the propaganda theorist. Different aims and epistemic values distinguish the actions of the theorist from those of the propagandist. Frontline propagandists prefer to use truth, but only because of its strategic utility. Most of all they value belief and credibility, and their principal aim is to modify behavior. Propaganda theorists, by contrast, esteem truthfulness (or “knowing well”); and their principal aim is to understand and to disclose propaganda as a social phenomenon.