Mein Kampf
The second question, of absolutely central importance, was this:
At whom should propaganda be directed? At the scientific intelligentsia, or at the less-educated masses?
It must be aimed perpetually at the masses alone!
For the intelligentsia, or what today unfortunately often calls itself so, we have not propaganda but scientific instruction. But judged by its substance propaganda is no more science than the technique of a poster in itself is art. The art of the poster is in the designer’s ability to attract the attention of the crowd with form and color. A poster for an art exhibition has only to draw attention to the art in the exhibition; the better it succeeds, the greater is the art of the poster itself. The poster ought further to give the masses some notion of the importance of the exhibition, but it should by no means be a substitute for the art there on display. Anyone who wishes to concern himself with art itself, therefore, must study more than just the poster; in fact for him a mere stroll through the exhibition will not suffice. He may properly be expected to give a profound scrutiny to the individual works, and then slowly to form a sound opinion.
The situation is the same with what we today call propaganda.
Propaganda’s task is not scientific training of the individual, but directing the masses’ attention to particular facts, occurrences, necessities, etc., whose importance is thus brought within their view.
The whole art consists in seizing this so adroitly that a universal conviction of the reality of a fact, the necessity of an occurrence, the rightness of something necessary, etc., is produced. But as it is not and cannot be a knowledge in itself, (since its job, like that of the poster, is to draw the crowd’s attention, and not to instruct a person with scientific training or a thirst for education and knowledge), it must always attempt to work chiefly on the feelings, and only to a very limited extent on the so-called intelligence.
All propaganda must be popular in tone, and must keep its intellectual level to the capacity of the least intelligent among those at whom it is directed. In other words its purely intellectual
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