History can teach us things so it’s worth looking at some of Goebbels’ comments about propaganda to see what we can learn in 2025, an age when, with social media and 24 hour news, everyone is vulnerable to what powerful people say and do. In America, the UK andother nations right wing and populist extremists are having a corrosive and powerful impact upon the mindset of millions. So what sort of advice did Joseph Goebbels give to those wishing to promote their ideas in the minds of a nation? Here’s a few of his tips from his hugely detailed diaries and letters:
"There is no point in seeking to convert the intellectuals and the learned. For intellectuals and the intelligent will question and will never be converted. But they will yield to the stronger, and this will always be "the man in the street." Arguments must therefore be crude, clear and forcible, and appeal to emotions and instincts, not the intellect.”"Propaganda must facilitate aggression by specifying the targets for hatred."
"Those who are to be persuaded by propaganda should be completely immersed in the ideas of the propaganda, without ever noticing that they are being immersed in it."
“The masses need something that will give them a thrill of horror."
"It is the absolute right of the State to supervise the formation of public opinion."
"If you tell a lie long enough, it becomes the truth."
"Propaganda works best when those who are being manipulated are confident and they are acting on their own free will."
"The rank and file, the ordinary man in the street is much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitious to appeal to man’s basest and animal instincts."
"We enter parliament in order to supply ourselves, in the arsenal of democracy, with its own weapons. If democracy is so stupid as to give us free tickets and salaries for this work, that is its affair. We do not come as friends, nor even as neutrals. We come as enemies. As the wolf bursts into the flock, so we come."
"We shall reach our goal, when we have the power to laugh as we destroy, as we smash, whatever was sacred to us as tradition, as education, and as human affection."
“When we have power, we will never give it up again unless we are carried out of our offices as corpses”
"It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned that a square is in fact a circle. They are mere words, and words can be moulded until they clothe ideas and disguise."
"Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play"
One only needs to read these comments from almost a century ago to feel a chill, a frisson of fear at what is happening in today’s world. The most powerful man in the world, aided (or probably led) by the richest man in the world has used these titbits of advice from one of the most evil men who has ever lived to grab power and rapidly change the mindset of his country and perhaps the whole world. Millions have taken on board his easy to understand “crude and clear” lies repeated over and over again in the media - just as Goebbels recommended: “America First”, “Drain the Swamp”, “Make America Great Again”, “Build A Wall”, “Lock her up”………. Goebbels' “displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred" made real in America 2025. These unsubstantiated assertions and subliminally violent mantras have been cleverly cobbled together by evil men and women to appeal to the emotions and baser instincts of ordinary people often incapable of understanding more nuanced and complex arguments - the sort of person that arch Nazi Goebbels identified as simple, open to persuasion, unthinking, unquestioning, accepting of lies, innuendo and blind hatred. And so potent is the propaganda at play in the USA and further afield that these same ordinary citizens are unaware that they, and their minds, are being manipulated, they think they are acting of their “own free will”.
Joseph Goebbels would recognise all this and be proud that his message still resonance in 21st century America. And should we not feel a chill when we read Goebbels’ comment that "…… If democracy is so stupid as to give us free tickets and salaries for this bear's work, that is its affair. We do not come as friends, nor even as neutrals. We come as enemies. As the wolf bursts into the flock, so we come…..We shall reach our goal, when we have the power to laugh as we destroy, as we smash, whatever was sacred to us as tradition, as education, and as human affection….. When we have power, we will never give it up again unless we are carried out of our offices as corpses " As I read these words I remember the invasion of the Washington Capitol in January 2021 when Trump’s supporters mindlessly and terribly challenged the democratically elected people and institutions of American civic life. Trump’s refusal to accept the decision of the electorate, and then his pardoning of those responsible for these heinous crimes chimes completely with Goebbels' comments. Trump's declared aim on taking up the Presidency in 2025 that Americans would “never need to vote again” spells out clearly his long term intentions; Trump and Musk have learned the lessons of Joseph Goebbels well – sadly and worryingly, however, many in America have failed to take note and are, in their ignorance, happy to be led like lambs to the slaughter as, to quote Goebbels “the wolf bursts into the flock”.
We, in the UK should not gloat on America's malaise, or be unworried, thinking that this is all happening a long way away in the USA, that we are much too sensible to be taken in by such things. Our very own William Shakespeare five hundred years ago had his finger on the pulse and recognised immediately the ability of unthinking men and women - English or of any other other breed - to follow the herd, unquestioning, uncaring, happy in their ignorance; in King Lear he sums up our present day discontents perfectly when he says "Tis the times' plague, when madmen lead the blind". Quite. Think of the propaganda surrounding the Brexit debate, the “Boris Bus” promising millions for the NHS through Brexit “savings”; think of the lies that became for millions a “truth” about the “hordes” of immigrants who were crossing the Channel, think of the riots after the Southport murders when thousands took to the streets following “true information” fed on social media about the alleged killer…………. . We are just as vulnerable as anyone else, and especially so in this day and age when so many get their “truths” from social media platforms. Be it Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram or any other outlet they all have an inbuilt ability to generate misinformation and potential propaganda - untruths. They exist on brief, arguments, ideas reduced to their bare bones, black and white, no room for discussion - and in another throw back to Goebbels they simply reflect back to the reader or the listener their own deeply held fears and prejudices. Goebbels knew this, that successful propaganda or moulding opinion was all about building upon the prejudices, fears and unspoken convictions of the masses - we saw this with startling and dreadful clarity in the street violence in the UK following the Southport murders. Few will bother to read a post like this one, it’s too long, too boring many will say; they want their feed to be sharp, quick, hard hitting, black and white, no place for nuance or explanation. And that is the well spring of propaganda, for as Goebbels told us the message must be “crude, clear and simple”. But there is more, for “simple, crude and clear” arguments with no place for nuance, or another point of view, and with no supporting evidence to bolster an argument or an assertion are the first steps into tyranny. As American Jewish film maker Albert Maysels reminded the world half a century ago, “Tyranny is the deliberate removal of nuance”.
American and we are on a spiral to hell, repeating the errors of the 1930s, unable to learn form history. And to this end it is worth thinking about two comments from America written in those long gone times, from two of the world’s great journalists.
In the Baltimore Evening Sun on 26 July 1920 the hugely famous and revered American journalist Henry Louis Mencken wrote: “When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental — men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost... All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
And, in the late 1930’s world famous American journalist Dorothy Thompson, recognised at the time as the second most influential woman in America after Eleanor Roosevelt, met Hitler as he was rising to power. Following the meeting she wrote: “No people ever recognise their dictator in advance … When our (American) dictator turns up you can depend on it that he will be one of the boys, and he will stand for everything traditionally American. And nobody will ever say Heil to him, nor will they call him Führer or Duce. But they will greet him with one great big, universal, democratic, sheeplike bleat of “OK, Chief! Fix it like you wanna, Chief! Oh Kaaaay!”
Dorothy Thompson was the first journalist to be expelled from Germany by Hitler.
We have been warned. History has given its lesson and just as Goebbels fed Hitler’s ego and provided the propaganda framework to ensure Hitler’s rise, so today in the White House Elon Musk prances while Donald Trump dances their macabre dance of malevolent celebration. And millions across America are bewitched, soaking up lies as the world’s great truths, unwilling to comprehend that they are being played, unable to discriminate truth from lies, being given a “horror story” of hatred reflecting their own prejudices and fears to twist and bend their “basest instincts and emotions”. And as Musk and Trump dance and prance they are, as did the Nazis nearly a century ago, “destroying and smashing whatever was sacred as tradition, as education, and as human affection” in American life and institutions. Trump and Musk must be unable to believe their luck, comprehend the ease with which they have usurped a nation - and all by following the simple steps in Joseph Goebbels' idiot’s guide to propaganda; easy-peasy, like 1,2,3, join up the dots, follow the playbook that advised them that “….the rank and file, the ordinary man in the street is much more primitive than we imagine”……easily fooled, easily taught a new reality, easily made to do our bidding". These two morally bankrupt, pernicious and egregious charlatans shout with glee as they reel and dance and prance around the Resolute Desk in Oval Office, they've learned well the lessons of history as set out by Joseph Goebbels …….and, meanwhile, the world looks on, shaking its head in bewilderment, uncomprehending, fearful, fixated, unwilling to take action, unable to learn the lessons of history........
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