How Propaganda is Used as a Psychological Tool During War-Times?

In his book "Mein Kampf," Adolf Hitler wrote, 

"The function of propaganda is, for example, not to weigh and ponder the rights of different people, but exclusively to emphasize the one right which it has set out to argue for. Its task is not to make an objective study of the truth, in so far as it favors the enemy, and then set it before the masses with academic fairness; its task is to serve our own right, always and unflinchingly." 

Nazi forces used this as a method to incite hatred among people against the Jews and gain the support of the masses in World War II. War propaganda, though infamously associated with Hitler, had its roots in times of Alexander the Great and then World War I. It was used by the state to shape public perception in favour of its motives before Hitler, during his time, and, unfortunately, even today, years after Him. I am discussing war propaganda with respect to Hitler to emphasize that the Holocaust exemplifies the gravity of its implications, the extent of the atrocities that can be carried out against the innocent population using war propaganda.

Every newspaper, magazine, news channel, radio station, advertisement, or any other type of mass media contains elements of propaganda. Thus, any negative implication of propaganda is widespread, difficult to control, and most importantly, dangerous, as documented in the Holocaust.
The war propaganda is discussed in terms of its historic roots and political motives; however, another key aspect to be included in the discussion is its psychological methods. In this article, I discuss propaganda as a method of psychological warfare in wartime.

Propaganda as a Psychological Tool

Propaganda often works by appealing to cognitive biases, such as the confirmation bias, where people seek out information that confirms their existing beliefs, and the bandwagon effect, where people adopt a belief because they perceive it as widely accepted.

Emotional Priming: 

You must have noticed that social media platforms are flooded with AI-generated graphic images without credible sources. The artificial intelligence made these images explicitly to make your stomach drop every time you see them. This is used by the war strategists to prey on your emotions to trigger a response that is desired to fulfill their objectives. The strategic use of symbols and imagery to trigger pre-conscious emotional responses like fear, pride, or anger.

In Nazi Germany, the government circulated posters depicting Jews in a way to trigger the fear responses of the larger population, in an effort to prevent any form of empathy that could lead to revolt against the government in support of the Jewish population. The parallel could be drawn to the Gaza genocide, where a population is depicted as a terrorist population despite the large numbers of them being innocent civilians, without any statehood or resources. 

Social Proof Manipulation: 

We require social approval for our behaviors, thoughts, and feelings. When a baby is "learning to be alive" in its early months after the birth, it constantly evaluate their primary caregiver's response to understand how to react in a situation. Evolutionarily, this has helped humans to survive. Babies are not inherently scared of dogs, snakes, or even lions. Seeing people around them getting scared of it makes them learn this behavioral response.

This is manipulated by the propaganda strategists; if we are made to believe a prejudice about a community is widely accepted, though it must not necessarily be true, we are more likely to align our opinions to conform.

Identity Fusion:

We associate ourselves with other people around us. This is called social identity in psychological terms. An individual has a personal self, which is their own beliefs, thoughts, feelings, morals, etc., and a social self, which is the part of their existence that aligns with the groups they associate with, that could be religious communities, cultural groups, or even university peers. However, in situations like wars, where there is an external threat to the "group," there might be a fusion of our identity with our group identity

The propaganda used in times of war aims to blur these boundaries. In the worst case, people start to endorse the extreme behaviors of the group or might go to the extend to harming themselves or others to protect the group identity.  

The Illusory Truth Effect: 

"Seeing is believing." The easiest way to make people have a certain opinion about anything is to flood them with the same message in different forms and ways. Thus, propaganda works by utilizing repetitive messaging to exploit the brain's tendency to perceive familiar information as inherently true. In psychology, we call it the availability heuristic. 

Seeing negative depictions of a group of people in the media 24/7 shapes negative perceptions about the group. For example, broadcasting that Middle Easterners are extremists, or that every Jew is a zionist, with flashing red lights on screens and sirens of "breaking news", might lead a large population to end up Islamophobic or anti-semitic. 

Narrative Framing: 

War propaganda often looks for a moral or ethical high ground, oftentimes even completely omitting the actual reality of the situation. A war for economic dominance or territorial extension might be labeled as a war against inhumanity or injustice, to gain support and reduce the chances of uprising against the war. Of course, it is easier to advocate for peace in a war for oil control rather than a war that is happening to bring democracy or to give human rights to someone; in that case, the one denying the war is denying the human rights. 

Even Adolf Hitler sold the war against Jewish people not as a campaign of hatred, but through a "noble" narrative of racial purification, self-defense, and national rejuvenation. He framed the persecution as a necessary, heroic struggle to save the German ("Aryan") race from perceived existential threats.

Conclusion

One must be very intentional and cautious about the information one is consuming from tradition and/or social media. This is especially important in times of war, where one is forced to take sides by the political class to keep their influence. Beyond the walls of communities, religions, or nations, we must take perspectives from various sources to form our own informed opinion about the situation.

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