バートランド・ラッセル「感情に訴える宣伝」

* 原著：Education and the Social Order, 1932, chapt.15: Propaganda in Education
* 牧野力(編/訳)『ラッセル思想辞典』より
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　ローマン・カトリック教会に対する感情は、幼少の頃、夜半のミサや受難(記念)日の荘重な儀式、復活祭の喜びの中で、闇と香と神秘に包まれて感得した感情に結びついている。この種の感情が、ある政治集団に溶けこむと、一種の知的な確信をムザムザと踏みにじる感情に変る。この型の宣伝をカトリック教会は一番よく知っている。約二千年の間その宣伝技術を磨いてきたからである。教会ほど完全でないが、似たことを国家は軍歌、軍隊行進、国旗掲揚儀式という形で実用化している。幼い頃、赤い服の英国軍隊の行進に狂喜した生々しい記憶が私にもある。これが消えない限り、軍国主義崇拝は必ず作り出されよう。
　「感情に訴える宣伝」には諸種の危険性が伴う。悪い動機にも使われ、合理的に議論する心をなくす危険性もまたある。平穏な時には国際協調派の人も戦争や死に直面すると愛国者や宗教家に変るものである。
( The sentiment of Roman Catholics for the Church is bound up with the emotions that they felt in youth at midnight mass, at the solemnity of Good Friday and the joyfulness of Easter, at incense and darkness and mystery. When strong childish or adolescent emotions of this sort become associated with a political group, they may, and often do, generate a sentiment which is capable of overriding all intellectual convictions. This form of propaganda is best understood by the Catholic Church, which has had nearly two thousand years in which to perfect its technique. But the same sort of thing is done, though less perfectly, by national States, in such forms as martial music and military displays. In my childhood, British soldiers still wore the traditional red coats, and I remember vividly the delight of seeing regiments on the march. Such delights tend, unless counteracted, to produce a belief in militarism. Emotional propaganda has several dangers. In the first place, it is just as easily used in a bad cause as in a good one, perhaps more easily. ...
Another danger of emotional propaganda is that it tends to close the mind to argument. The conscious mind may be rational, but just below the level of consciousness unalterable convictions remain from early years. Many men, in quiet times, are internationalists and freethinkers, but when there is danger of war or death they become patriotic or religious. )