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)

The Breakdown of Democracy

Image: A man poses in front of a burning car during a protest Atlanta, Georgia. Photo: Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images/AFPSource:AFP

Below is an excerpt taken from Chapter Three (The Breakdown of Democracy) in Stanley Payne’s book The Spanish Civil War. There are many similarities between Spain of the 1930s and the USA today. The leftists' attempt to overthrow the traditional, conservative, religious democratic republic of Spain and replace it with a revolutionary, communistic, atheistic authoritarian regime failed. Will the leftists succeed in overthrowing the USA today? Or will tradition, religion, and freedom prevail? Time will tell. The excerpt below points out some of the machinations used by the leftists to overthrow the democratic republic of Spain and eliminate their political enemies. Watch for the same tactics to be used in the USA today. In fact, many of these tactics are being used now...

The variety and volume of constitutional violations [committed by the leftists] in Spain between February and July 1936 were without precedent in the history of parliamentary regimes. They included: 

• The great strike wave, featuring many strikes without practical goals but seeking instead to dominate property, often accompanied by violence and destruction.

• Illegal seizures of property, especially in the southern provinces, sometimes legalized ex post facto…

• A wave of arson and property destruction, especially in the south.

• Seizure of churches and church properties in the south and east.

• Major economic decline… with a severe stock market decline, flight of capital, and in some southern provinces the abandonment of cultivation, when the costs became greater than market value…

• Broad censorship, with severe limitations on freedom of expression and assembly.

• Several thousand arbitrary arrests…

• Virtual immunity for members of the (leftist) Popular Front parties, who were rarely arrested…

• Politicization of justice through the creation of a special tribunal to censor and purge the judiciary, as well as through regulations and policies to facilitate political arrests and to place rightist parties outside the law.

• Dissolution of rightist groups, beginning with the Falangists in March and the Catholic trade unions in May, and moving to the monarchist Renovacion Espanola in July.

• Increasing electoral coercion, culminating in the suppression or opposition activity in the special elections of May in Cuenca and Granada.

• Arbitrary municipal and provincial government, with most local administration placed in the hands of appointees of the central government. Municipal elections originally scheduled for March 31, 1936 were postponed sine die.

• Politicization and subversion of the security forces.

• Growth of political violence, albeit very unequal in its extent in different parts of the country…

Gil Robles sharply protested such unprecedented abuses, observing that every day he read in leftist newspapers declarations that “the enemy must be smashed” or one must “practice a policy of extermination.” He continued:

“I know that you are carrying out a policy of persecution, violence, and extermination against everything that is rightist. But you are profoundly mistaken: however great may be the violence, the reaction will be greater still. For everyone killed another combatant will rise up… You who today are fostering violence will become the victims of it. The phrase that revolutions, like Saturn, devour their own children is commonplace, but no less true for so being. Today you are complacent, because you see an adversary fall. But the day will come when the same violence that you have unleashed will be turned again to you.”

Stanley G. Payne, The Spanish Civil War (pp. 59-61)