The broad mass of a nation does not consist of diplomats, or even professors of political law, or even individuals capable of forming a rational opinion; it consists of plain mortals, wavering and inclined to doubt and uncertainty. Sober reasoning determines their thoughts and actions far less than emotion and feeling. And this sentiment is not complicated, but very simple and all of a piece. It does not have multiple shading; it has a positive and a negative; love or hate, right or wrong, truth or lie, never half this way and half that way, never partially or that kind of thing. The function of propaganda is, not to weigh and ponder the rights of different people, but exclusively to emphasise the one right which has set out to argue for.
If propaganda renounces primitiveness of expression, it does not find its way to the feelings of the broad masses. The important thing is not what the genius who has created an idea has in mind, but what, in what form, and with what success the prophets of this idea transmit it to the broad masses. An article with a definite tendency is for the most part read only by people who can already be reckoned to this tendency. At most a leaflet or poster can, by its brevity count on getting a moment's attention from someone who thinks differently. The picture in all its forms up to the films has greatest possibilities. Here a man has to use his brains even less; it suffices to look, or at most to read extremely brief texts, and thus many more will readily accept a pictorial representation than read an article of any length. The picture brings to them in a much briefer time, I might almost say at one stroke, the enlightenment they can obtain from written material only after arduous reading. The leaflet can only suggest or point to something, and its effect will only appear in combination with a subsequent more thoroughgoing instructions and enlightenment of its readers. And this is and remains the mass meeting. The content of propaganda is not science, any more than the object represented in a poster is art. Its effect for the most part must be aimed at the emotions and only to a very limited degree the so called intellect.
The first task of propaganda is to win the people: the first part of organisation is to win men to continue the propaganda. The second task of propaganda is to disrupt and permeate the existing state and the second task of organisation is the struggle for power, to achieve final success. Criteria of humanitarianism and beauty are inapplicable to propaganda.
Propaganda tries to force a doctrine on the whole people; the organisation embraces within its scope only those who do not threaten on psychological grounds to become a brake on the further dissemination of the idea. It is expedient to disseminate an idea by propaganda from a central point and then carefully to search and sometimes examine the gradually gathering human material for leading minds. Sometimes it will turn out that men inconspicuous in themselves must nevertheless be regarded as born leaders. Propaganda will have to see therefore that an idea wins supporters, while the organisation must take the greatest care only to make the valuable elements among the supporters into members. As director of the Party's propaganda, I knew the more radical and inflammatory my propaganda was, the more this frightened the weaklings and hesitant characters, and prevented them from penetrating the primary core of our organisation. And this was good.
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