Once democracy becomes the object of propa­ganda, it also becomes totalitarian

 

 

What is this democracy that no longer includes minorities and opposition? As long as democracy is merely the interplay of parties, there can be opposition; but when we hear of a massive democracy, with grandiose ceremonies in which the people participate at the prompting of the State, that signifies, first of all, a confusion between the government and the State, and indicates further that anyone who does not participate is not merely in opposition, but excludes himself from the national com­munity expressing itself in this participation. It is a truly ex­traordinary transformation of the democratic structure, because there can no longer be any respect for the minority opposition to the State—an opposition that, lacking the means of propaganda —or at least any means that can compete with those of the State— can no longer make its voice heard.

The minority is heard even less because the effects of the myth, inflated by propaganda, are always the same and always antidemocratic. Anyone who participates in such a socio-political body and is imbued with the truth of the myth, necessarily be­comes sectarian. Repeated so many times, being driven in so many different forms into the propagandee’s subconscious, this truth, transmitted by propaganda, becomes for every participant an absolute truth, which cannot be discussed without lies and distortion. Democratic peoples are not exempt from what is vaguely called “psychoses.” But such propaganda, if it is effective, predisposes people to—or even causes—these psychoses.  

If the people do not believe in the myth, it cannot serve to com­bat totalitarian propaganda; but if the people do believe in it, they are victims of these myths, which, though democratic on the surface, have all the traits of all other myths, particularly the impossibility, in the eyes of believers, of being questioned. But this tends to eliminate all opposing truth, which is immediately called “error.” Once democracy becomes the object of propa­ganda, it also becomes as totalitarian, authoritarian, and exclusive as dictatorship.
 

Jacques Ellul, Propaganda (pp. 248-9)

A few very powerful companies control all the propaganda media

It is argued that the first condition would be met by the absence of a monopoly (in a democracy) of the means of propaganda, and by the free interplay of various propagandas. True, compared with the State monopoly and the unity of propaganda in totali­tarian States, one finds a great diversity of press and radio in democratic countries. But this fact must not be stressed too much: although there is no State or legal monopoly, there is, nevertheless, indeed a private monopoly. Even where there are many newspaper publishers, concentration as a result of “newspaper chains” is well established, and the monopolization of news agen­cies, of distribution and so on, is well known. In the field of radio or of motion pictures the same situation prevails: obviously not everybody can own propaganda media. In the United States, most radio and motion picture corporations are very large. The others are secondary and unable to compete, and centralization still goes on. The trend everywhere is in the direction of a very few, very powerful companies controlling all the propaganda media. Are they still private? In any event, as we have already seen, the State must make its propaganda, if only under the aspect of disseminat­ing news.

Jacques Ellul, Propaganda (pp. 236-7)

How a world of closed minds establishes itself

 

 

This double foray on the part of propaganda, proving the excellence of one’s own group and the evilness of the others, produces an increasingly stringent partitioning of our society. This partitioning takes place on different levels—-a unionist parti­tioning, a religious partitioning, a partitioning of political parties or classes; beyond that, a partitioning of nations, and, at the summit, a partitioning of blocs of nations. But this diversity of levels and objectives in no way changes the basic law, according to which the more propaganda there is, the more partitioning there is. For propaganda suppresses conversation; the man op­posite is no longer an interlocutor but an enemy. And to the extent that he rejects that role, the other becomes an unknown whose words can no longer be understood. Thus, we see before our eyes how a world of closed minds establishes itself, a world in which everybody talks to himself, everybody constantly reviews his own certainty about himself and the wrongs done him by the Others—a world in which nobody listens to anybody else, everybody talks, and nobody listens. And the more one talks, the more one isolates oneself, because the more one accuses others and justifies oneself.

Jacques Ellul, Propaganda (pp. 213-14)

The Big Propaganda Party is a Menace to Democracy

 

 

A single party takes big propaganda action while the others cannot regroup or put into operation the necessary big apparatus because they lack money, people, or­ganization. From then on, we see such a party rise like a rocket, as Hitler's party did in Germany in 1932, or the Communist parties in France and Italy in 1945. This is clearly a menace to democracy; we are face to face with an overwhelmingly strong party that will capture the government. This party continues to grow stronger as it becomes richer and assumes more solid propa­ganda foundations. It definitely jeopardizes the democratic sys­tem, even if it has no dictatorial ambitions; for the other parties, incapable of regaining the mass of those 75 percent (more or less) undecided, are increasingly unable to use big propaganda.

Jacques Ellul, Propaganda (p. 218) 

 

The horrifying uncertainty of love and grace

The uncertainty of fluctuating things like love and grace horrifies us. Saying that God loves us grants us no reassurance. We would prefer it if he gave us fifty things to do, so that when we had done them we could be at peace. We do not want an ongoing relationship with God. We prefer a rule. It does not satisfy us that God shows grace to us or frees us. We prefer to bind him by our virtues and to be sure that he has no freedom to do with us as he chooses… We have set up sovereignties (ecclesiastical or political) that represent God on earth and with which we can have a clear relationship. We have overvalued law, making it an expression of God’s will. We have replaced the sovereignty of love with that of politics, and liberty with duties.

Jacques Ellul, The Subversion of Christianity (p. 152)

Holy War: The Influence of Islam on Christianity

For three centuries Christianity spread by preaching, kindness, example, morality, and encouragement of the poor. When the empire became Christian, war was hardly tolerated by the Christians. Even when waged by a Christian emperor it was a dubious business and was assessed unfavorably. It was often condemned. Christians were accused of undermining the political force and military might of the empire from within. In practice Christians would remain critical of war until the flamboyant image of the holy war came on the scene. In other words, no matter what atrocities have been committed in wars waged by so-called Christian nations, war has always been in essential contradiction to the gospel. Christians have always been more or less aware of this. They have judged war and questioned it.

 Jacques Ellul, The Subversion of Christianity (p. 101) 

The Freedom of Love

As Genesis shows us, the origin of sin in the world is not knowledge, as is often said (as though God were interdicting our intellectual development, which would be absurd); it is the knowledge of good and evil. In this context knowledge means decision. What is not acceptable to God is that we should decide on our own what is good and what is evil. Biblically, the good is in fact the will of God. That is all. What God decides, whatever it may be, is the good. If then we decide what the good is, we substitute our own will for God’s. We construct a morality when we say (and do) what is good, and it is then that we are radically sinners. To elaborate a moral system is to show oneself to be a sinner before God, not because the conduct is bad, but because, even if it is good, another good is substituted for the will of God. 

This is why Jesus attacks the Pharisees so severely even though they are the most moral of people, live the best lives, and are perfectly obedient and virtuous. They have progressively substituted their own morality for the living and actual Word of God that can never be fixed in commandments. In the Gospels Jesus constantly breaks religious precepts and moral rules. He gives as his own commandment “Follow me,” not a list of things to do or not do. He shows us fully what it means to be a free person with no morality, but simply obeying the ever-new Word of God as it flashes forth. Similarly, Paul attacks what might seem to be morality in Judaism, rules and precepts laid down by men and not coming from God at all. The great mutation is that we have been freed in Jesus Christ. The primary characteristic of free people is that they are not bound to moral commandments. “All things are lawful,” Paul twice proclaims. “Nothing is impure,” he teaches. We find the same message in Acts. We are as free as the Holy Spirit, who comes and goes as he will. This freedom does not mean doing anything at all. It is the freedom of love. Love, which cannot be regulated, categorized, or analyzed into principles or commandments, takes the place of law. The relationship with others is not one of duty but of love.

Jacques Ellul, The Subversion of Christianity (pp. 70-71)   

Christians are constantly obliged to renew God’s demand

In reality, all solutions, all economic, political, and other achievements, are temporary. Christians cannot at any time or to any extent believe that they are complete and will endure. They are always contaminated by the sin that binds them, by the very environment in which they exist. Thus Christians are constantly obliged to renew God’s demand, to bring this order repeatedly into confrontation with an order that is moving constantly toward disorder. And because of God’s always-fresh demand on the world, Christians are placed in this way in a permanently revolutionary situation. Even when the institutions, laws, and reforms that they advocate come to pass, even if society is reorganized along the lines that they have advocated, they must remain in opposition and require yet more, because what God demands is infinite, as is his pardon. Thus Christians are called to continually question all that is termed progress, discoveries, facts, established results, reality, and so on. They cannot be satisfied at any time with all this toil, and, as a result, they must demand that it be surpassed and replaced. They exercise their judgement according to the Spirit---they do what is essentially revolutionary. If it is not so, it is because in some way Christians have betrayed their vocation in the world.

Jacques Ellul, Presence in the Modern World (p. 30)    

The Judgment of Jonah

The Judgment of Jonah

That the conversion which God accepts is an interested one is self-evident. Every conversion is interested. Who can dare to say that his own life and death are of no concern to him? What ridiculous idealism would make us so pure, so spiritual, so objective that we could be converted for any other reason than because we are in danger of death and dangers of all kinds? To claim for oneself an abstract and idealistic conversion of this kind is to pretend to bring to God a valuable sacrifice, a perfect man. It is to want to replace Christ. It is to reach the summit of arrogance. The cry which God hears comes from the depths of the abyss, from sickness and suffering, from the heart which is humbled, bruised, and despairing. This is the cry which produces conversion because things cannot stay as they are, and conversion is a change of route for man. The moment a man decides to change his style of life in this way, the moment he remembers God again, his way which was plunging more and more deeply into the dark is suddenly directed to the light in a dizzy reascent. The truth is that God responds, not to our better feelings, but to the desperate cry of the man who has no other help but God. God responds just because man is in trouble and has nowhere to turn.

Obviously, when man has somewhere to turn he does not pray to God and God does not come to him. As long as man can invent hopes and methods, he naturally suffers from the pretension that he can solve his own problems. He invents technical instruments, the state, society, money, and science. He also invents idols, magic, philosophy, spiritualism, and all these things give him hope in himself that he can direct his own life and control his destiny. They all cause him to turn his back on God. As long as there is a glimmer of confidence in these means man prefers to stake his life on them rather than handing it over to God. When the sailors tried to save the ship by their nautical skill, Jonah slept. All these aids had to be shattered, all solutions blocked, and man’s possibilities hopelessly outclassed by the power of the challenge, to cause Jonah to return to God. Only when man has lost the vast apparatus of civilization, in personal response, does man remember God. 

Jacques Ellul, The Judgment of Jonah, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1971) pp. 56-57

Review: The Presence of the Kingdom, by Jacques Ellul

Review: The Presence of the Kingdom, by Jacques Ellul


I’ve read quite a few of Jacques Ellul’s books over the years but I just got around to reading his first book, which was written in 1948: The Presence of the Kingdom by Jacques Ellul https://amzn.to/2ls7k8J


I had high hopes for this book, and I wasn’t disappointed. Ellul can be a challenge to read. And the fact that he wrote in French, and everything he wrote must be translated, doesn’t help. But it’s mostly his thinking that is challenging. Most people, including myself, simply haven’t thought about things as much as Ellul did, so it’s hard to get a grasp on his thinking.

The Presence of the Kingdom is the easiest of his books that I’ve read thus far, and this is probably because it’s his first book and the many thoughts he later fleshed out are, in The Presence of the Kingdom, in a more germinal stage.

This makes the book more interesting to me because, although he expands upon his ideas in later books, this book allows me to think for myself, and try to imagine where we should go next, as though he never wrote another book, which is exactly what Ellul was hoping for when he wrote The Presence of the Kingdom.

We need to know where we are before we can know where we need to be going. We need to realize the trouble we’re in and how to get out of it. We need to reach the world for Christ by living a different style of life in the world around us.

If you want to know why politics and wars never solve problems but only create new ones… if you want to know why we can never say “no” to the latest new technology… if you want to know why communication technology has created a lack of genuine human relationships… if you want to know how we can reach the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ… buy this book. You’ll be very glad you did.

Rarely, after reading a book, do I feel like buying a case of them and passing them out to neighbors, friends, and strangers on the street. But with The Presence of the Kingdom I feel like doing exactly that.

“At the present moment we are confronted by a choice: either a mass civilization, technological, ‘conformist’ — the ‘Brave New World’ of Huxley, hell organized upon earth for the bodily comfort of everybody — or a different civilization, which we cannot yet describe because we do not know what it will be; it still has to be created, consciously, by men. If we do not know what to choose, or, in other words, how to ‘make a revolution,’ if we let ourselves drift along the stream of history, without knowing it, we shall have chosen the power of suicide, which is at the heart of the world. But we cannot have any illusions; confronted by the power of organization, our revolutionary knowledge can scarcely be used. On the other hand, where are the men and women, at the present time, who have a true sense of ‘revolution’?”

Jacques Ellul, The Presence of the Kingdom (p. 31)

“We do not have to strive and struggle in order that righteousness may reign upon the earth. We have to be ‘just’ or ‘righteous’ ourselves, bearers of righteousness. The Bible tells us that where there is a just man justice prevails… Thus justice is not a goal to attain, or a balance to be acquired, but it is the gift of God, free and inexplicable, which exists in our life so that our means are not intended to ‘bring in’ justice, but to manifest it.”

Jacques Ellul, The Presence of the Kingdom (p. 66)

“When I speak of ‘life’… I simply mean the expression of the Holy Spirit, working within us, expressing himself in our actual life, through our words, our habits, and our decisions. Thus what we need is to rediscover all that the fullness of personal life means for a man standing on his own feet in the midst of the world, who rediscovers his neighbor because he himself has been found by God. In the powerful presence of the Holy Spirit we receive the answer to this work of God, and we are bewildered because we are no longer very sure about the way forward, which no longer depends upon us. The end, as well as the means, has been taken away from us, and we hesitate as we look at this way which lies open before us, whose end we cannot see; we have only one certainty, and that is the promise which has been made to us of a certain order, which God guarantees: ‘Seek ye first His Kingdom and His righteousness, and all things shall be added unto you’ (Matt. 6:33).”

Jacques Ellul, The Presence of the Kingdom (pp. 77-78)

“Day after day the wind blows away the pages of our calendars, our newspapers, and our political regimes, and we glide along the stream of time without any spiritual framework, without a memory, without a judgment, carried about by ‘all winds of doctrine’ on the current of history, which is always slipping into a perpetual past. Now we ought to react vigorously against this slackness—this tendency to drift. If we are to live in this world we need to know it far more profoundly; we need to rediscover the meaning of events, and the spiritual framework which our contemporaries have lost.”

Jacques Ellul, The Presence of the Kingdom (p. 138)