This presentation is a brief insight into what Aldous Huxley's essay "Propaganda Under a Dictatorship" is all about.

1. A L D O US H UX L E Y
PROPAGANDA UNDER A
DICTATORSHIP
A Presentation by Suhasini B. Srihari

2. PROPAGANDA
Propaganda is an information, especially of a biased,
misleading nature, used to promote a political point
of view.
Huxley comments on how Hitler made use of the then
advanced technology to deprive 80,000,000 people
of their independent thoughts.
Huxley also remarks on how humans have become
slaves of technology and that any progress in this
path is sure to put the human species to doom.

3. QUOTATION
Albert Speer (Hitler’s Minister for Armaments)
comments that, “Hitler’s dictatorship differed in one
fundamental point from all its predecessors in history.
It was the first dictatorship in the present period of
modern technical development, a dictatorship which
made complete use of all technical means for the
domination of its own country … As a result of this
there has arisen the new type of the uncritical
recipient of orders.”

4. BRAVE NEW WORLD
Brave New World is Huxley’s novel which is about a
futuristic world set in London of AD 2540, of
technological advancement and its impact on
society.
The mentioning of this novel is to point out the fact
that this prophetic concept came close to realization
during Hitler’s regime.

5. METHODS IMPLEMENTED
1. Conditioning the lower leadership.
2. Technical devices used as weapons.
3. Carrying out experiments in the fields of Applied
Psychology and Neurology.
4. Establishing a hierarchical system.
5. Concept of herd-poisoning.
6. Getting rid of the intellectuals.
7. Concept of marching.

6. CONDITIONING THE
LOWER LEADERSHIP
The assistants at the lowest level needed to be that
men who could think and act independently. But, the
totalitarian system can do away with such men, for
the technical development has made it possible to
mechanize the lower leadership.

7. TECHNICAL DEVICES USED AS
WEAPONS
Technical devices used by the dictator were at large,
such as the radio, the loud speaker, the moving
picture camera and the rotary press. The images,
movements and the voice of the client was recorded
on spools of magnetic tape. With this technological
progress, Big Brother could be as omnipresent as
God.

8. EXPERIMENTS IN THE FIELDS OF
APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY AND NEUROLOGY
Hitler made use of the concept of indoctrination or
brainwashing. Indoctrination often refers to religious
ideas, when you are talking about a religious
environment that doesn’t let you question or criticize
those beliefs.
By a method of trial and error, the empiricists worked
out a number of techniques and procedures to
master the art of controlling the mind.

9. ESTABLISHING A
HIERARCHICAL SYSTEM
According to Hermann Rauschning (a Nazi member),
Hitler appreciated the Catholic Church and the
Jesuit order, not for its Christian doctrine but for the
hierarchical system that they had established.
Hierarchy of the Catholic Church
Pope
Cardinals
Archbishops
Bishops
Priests
Deacons
The Laity

10. Hitler perceived that this elaborated and controlled
hierarchical system was a trait of extremely clever
tactics, for they had good knowledge of human
nature and they made wise use of human
weaknesses in ruling over believers.
Hitler adopted this method and as a demagogue (a
political leader who seeks support by appealing to
popular desires and prejudices rather than by using
rational argument) his goal was to move the masses
systematically.

11. CONCEPT OF
HERD-POISONING
Assembled in a crowd, people lost their powers of
reasoning and their capacity for moral choice. It was
as if a man in a crowd behaved as though he had
had a large dose of intoxicants which only allowed
him to obey the authority without questioning the
authority’s power.
This concept, as Huxley termed, was called "herd-
poisoning". It made the intoxicated crowd uncritical,
for the individual made an escape from responsibility,
intelligence and morality into a kind of anxiety and
animal mindlessness.

12. GETTING RID OF THE
INTELLECTUALS
Intellectuals have a taste for rationality and an
interest in facts. Their critical habit of mind makes
them resistant to the kind of propaganda that works
so well on majority.
Among the masses “instinct is supreme”, and thus,
they can be controlled. While, the intellectuals are
like “hens in a poultry yard, who run this way and that
way”, thus, they cannot be controlled like the
masses.

13. According to Hitler, a propagandist must bear an
one-sided attitude and must never accept that he is
wrong or that the other is even partially right.
He believed that opponents should not be argued
with; they should be attacked, shouted down, or, if
they become too much of a nuisance, they must be
cleared up.

14. CONCEPT OF
MARCHING
Under the Nazis enormous numbers of people were
compelled to spend an enormous amount of time
marching in serried (crowded) ranks from point A to
point B and back again to point A.
This exercise of marching seemed to be a senseless
waste of time and energy initially, but much later a
subtle intention was revealed which expressed the
notion – Marching diverts men’s thoughts.

15. Hitler compelled people to spend an enormous
amount of time marching because, he wanted to kill
their though process and lose their individuality.

16. CONCLUSION
From Hitler’s point of view, he was perfectly correct in
his estimate of human nature. However, the Nazi
regime failed for they did not have time to brainwash
and condition their lower leadership.
Nevertheless, dictators today would perhaps be
more successful than Hitler because, there is
improvised technology and the crowds are more
willing to listen to a dictator in today’s world than in
the past.

17. THANK YOU!
If you have any comments, even critical ones, and
any suggestions to improvise my presentation, then
please do feel free to convey them to me.
Email ID – bssuhasini18@gmailcom