Probably best you make yourself comfortable – as this is going to take some time. Few of his books are overtly political - even though they deal directly with political phenomena - and several of his books, including "Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes" and "The Technological Society" are required reading in many graduate communication curricula.Įllul was also a respected and serious Christian theologian whose 1948 work, "The Presence of the Kingdom," makes explicit a dual theme inherent, though subtly stated, in all of his writing, a sort of yin and yang of modern technological society: sin and sacramentality. His tenor and methodology is objective and scholarly, and the perspective is a sociological one. In the 40 books and hundreds of articles Ellul wrote in his lifetime, his dominant theme was always the threat to human freedom posed by modern technology. In 1946 he returned to Bordeaux where he lived, wrote, served as Mayor, and taught until his death in 1994. During World War II, he fought with the French Underground against the Nazi occupation of France.Įducated at the Universities of Bordeaux and Paris, he taught Sociology and the History of Law at the Universities of Strausbourg and Montpellier. During his Marxist days, he was a member of the French Communist Party. This is the situation of the 'lonely crowd,' or of isolation in the mass, which is a natural product of modern-day society, which is both used and deepened by the mass media.' "īaptised Catholic, Ellul became an atheist and Marxist at 19, and a Christian of the Reformed Church at 22. 'The most favorable moment to seize a man and influence him,' Ellul writes, 'is when he is alone in the mass it is at this point that propaganda can be most effective. It shows how modern, committed man, surrounded and seized by propaganda, more often than not surrenders himself to it only too willingly, especially in democracies-because he is educated for his rule as dupe.
Ellul has made many splendid contributions in this book." "The theme of Propaganda is quite simply.that when our new technology encompasses any culture or society, the result is propaganda. With the logic which is the great instrument of French thought, explores and attempts to prove the thesis that propaganda, whether its ends are demonstrably good or bad, is not only destructive to democracy, it is perhaps the most serious threat to humanity operating in the modern world." "A far more frightening work than any of the nightmare novels of George Orwell.
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