Hope as Propaganda

Marcy Taylor
English 5060
Professor Huckin
01 December 2012
Hope as Propaganda
When I was diagnosed with cancer in 2002 I often heard, "I hope you get better soon," or "I hope your medication won't make you too sick," or my personal favorite, "god works in mysterious ways, I hope this is just a test in your path of life." What my friends and family weren't discussing was the painful realization that cancer has a high potential for killing its host. Behind all of the hope was a deep fear of losing a friend, sister, mother and co-worker. Hope, however, was tossed around as if it held the secret cure for my cancer and allowed us to disengage from talking about the fears surrounded all of us.
Where did hope come from? Was it just a way of coping? Did it have its origins in religion? Hope became a quest for me; I had to know why so many people invested in a word that seemed inactive and rarely effective at making me feel better.
Propaganda, as defined by Thomas Huckin, "is false or misleading information or ideas addressed to a mass audience by parties who thereby gain advantage. Propaganda is created and disseminated systematically (though not always consciously) and does not invite critical analysis or response." ("Propaganda Defined". Unpublished, 2012.) Using this definition has hope been used as propaganda throughout history?
In Classical Greek Mythology hope is introduced in the poem The Works and Days written by Hesiod in approximately 700 BC. According to Hesiod's poem Pandora was given a beautiful container, which she was not to open under any circumstance. Impelled by her curiosity, given to her by the gods, Pandora opened it, and all evil contained therein escaped and spread over the earth. She hastened to close the container, but the whole contents had escaped, except for one thing lay at the bottom, which was the Spirit of Hope named Elpis.


Is Pandora's hope evil? If not, why was it placed in the jar? Was it a way for mankind to cope with hardship? We often interrupt this hope as a gift for mankind to help dispel the evils of the world, however, the Greeks believed that hope was evil, just as infectious as disease. Just as devastating as war. For the Greeks, hope belonged in that box for a reason. Hope for hope's sake was one of those evils. How did the hope myth morph into a virtue?
The Roman persecution of Christians ended in AD 313 under the reign of Constantine the Great and Christianity flourished after this period. One explanation for its widespread acceptance was Christianity's promise (or hope) of an afterlife. Many people during the middle ages were suffering after the collapse of Roman and Greek societies and wanted an end to this anxiety and looked forward (with hope) to the glory of heaven. "Perhaps the deepest anxiety in all of us relates to death and the afterlife, and it is not surprising that religious offering palliation of such anxieties …" as hope is enticing and gives people a purpose (Hughes 98).

The Catholic Church also spread the theory that all authority derives from only a select few of apostles. This theory has serious implications on the political and social structure as "it restricts the circle of leadership to a small band of persons whose members stand in a position of incontestable authority. Second, it suggests only the apostles had the right to ordain future leaders as their successors" (Pagels, Elaine, The Gnostic Gospels New York, 1989. Print). Because of this authority many dissenting views were not allowed, often times leading to inquisitions and punishment. This meant the teaching of hope, as a virtue would remain throughout modern times.
Though in modern times it is easy to disregard the stories of Classic Greek culture and middle age myth, it is hard to ignore its ties to our current propaganda. "The English word myth derives from the Greek word mythos, which literally means "story". Our national myths, then, are national stories – stories that serve the nation in important and crucial ways" (Hughes 2). In essence myth is a pathway of identifying with one another, giving meaning to our individual identities, making myth a vital component not only in our national ideologies, but also in what and how we believe.
The myth of hope was created out of fear of the unknown and disseminated by a select few during a period in history that was bleak, yet the hope myth is established in modern societies sense of the sacred. This is the creation of a myth and the propaganda that still permeates our society.
Today Christianity is ranked the largest religion in the world and has marched forward into our current civilization with the hope of heaven and virtue. Perhaps Ellul said it best, "Propaganda cannot create something out of nothing. It must attach itself to a feeling, an idea; it must build on a foundation already present in the individual" (Ellul 36). So hope was built on foundations of past eras and has attached itself to feelings/emotions that is established in each individual of the modern world. Hope, in present times, is often defined as the "feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best" or the act of "look[ing] forward to something with desire and reasonable confidence" or "feel[ing] that something desired may happen" ("Hope " Define Hope at Dictionary.com". Dictionary.reference.com. 1992-11-27. Retrieved 2012-12-01.) Hope deals directly with emotions and for propaganda to be persuasive in relies on emotional levers. Emotions have long been used to distract people from asking questions and digging for truth. But is hope just emotion or an action that can be measured?

Charles Richard Snyder, who was a pioneer in "positive psychology", a branch of psychology that emphasizes the importance of using the scientific method to determine how things "go right" with people. Charles Snyder's focus was on hope and forgiveness, creating the "Hope Scale." The "Hope Scale" has numerous statements that the client/audience rate to get a snap shot of their current level of hope. The statements are in essence an examination of goal setting and problem solving and how motivated the client/audience is in obtaining the goal. Snyder has taken hope out of the realm of emotion and has tied it to the action of goal making. Jacques Ellul, in Propaganda, asserts, "The aim of modern propaganda is no longer to modify ideas, but to provoke action. It is no longer to change adherence to a doctrine, but to make the individual cling irrationally to a process of action. It is no longer to lead to a choice, but to loosen the reflexes. It is no longer to transform an opinion, but to arouse an active and mythical belief [emphasis added]" (Ellul 25).
Snyder also seems aware of the power of the word hope, as it has been wielded since the Greeks and is engrained in the American culture as a virtue. Snyder has made a "Glittering Generality" which is defined as "associating something with a 'virtue word' … to make us accept and approve the thing without examining the evidence" (Hughes 102).
Myth, much like propaganda, is meaningful, because people believe and identify with it. America was founded on hope. Europeans left for hope of a New World, and as Abraham Lincoln phrased it, "that we are the last best hope of earth." America's soul is steeped in the hope for happiness, equality, and progress. The phrase "The American Dream" encompasses these ideals. Hope has had a front row seat in our national myth, as it has been spread through the rank and file as a way to ward off the unimaginable, the hurtful, the fearful and often times after major catastrophes. Like slow growing ivy, hope has wound itself so deeply into American culture that many people don't even recognize it's strangle hold on the public and use it unconsciously.
In 2008 hope became a commodity, a mass-produced idea that would secure the first bi-racial President in America. Barack Obama found a way to harness the American soul with one word: Hope. During his 2008 presidential campaign Obama is quotes as saying:
Hope is not blind optimism. It's not ignoring the enormity of the task ahead or the roadblocks that stand in our path. It's not sitting on the sidelines or shirking from a fight. Hope is that thing inside us that insists, despite all evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it, and to work for it, and to fight for it. Hope is the belief that destiny will not be written for us, but by us, by the men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is, who have the courage to remake the world as it should be.


Obama's hope is courage, work, and not allowing our future to be written for us. Hope is now a buzzword used to encourage the masses to place all their "hope" in one basket, behind one candidate. Obama found a word that worked; he found a strategic and sound tactical way to make a word work in his favor. Because of the past uses of "hope," illustrated throughout this essay, Obama didn't have to work to hard on his campaign slogan. As Frank Luntz shows in Words that Work, "you can have the best message in the world, but the person on the receiving end will always understand it through the prism of his or her own emotions, preconceptions, prejudices, and preexisting beliefs" (Luntz xiii). Because of preconceived ideas of hope and its promise of better times, the poster in Obama's campaign (above) only requires one word, however its implications are much deeper. This would be a time of change, a coming together for a common good, hard work by hard working Americans, and a time to fight for the American way. A hope many Americans were thirsty for, as the economy was on the verge of collapse, millions of Americans were living in fear of joblessness and homelessness. And that's what lies at the heart of hope … fear.
Whether it was the Greeks, the Christians or the politicians, each group was playing on the deep seeded fears of the public. Obama wasn't giving hope; he was talking about the fears of failure, veiled through the glimmering curtain of hope. Christians weren't giving hope, they were avoiding talking about the fear of death, they were giving hope to the idea of a heaven, a place so beautiful it has been described hundred of thousands of different ways. Maybe the Greeks had it right. Hope was at the bottom of the jar as an evil because it perpetuates irrational thought, doesn't lend to critical examination and ultimately keeps man idle in his fear, unaware of his immobility. I think Friedrich Nietzsche said it best, "Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man."
Hope keeps us from facing fear. When I was diagnosed with cancer I was afraid. I was afraid that I wouldn't see my children grow up and that they would never know whom I was or forget whom I was (they were one and two when I was diagnosed.) I was afraid to die. That is the simple truth, and hope, no matter how beautifully packaged, didn't take that fear away. The moment I acknowledged my fear, and really understood that I couldn't change my current circumstances, I learned to live and no longer torment myself with hope. I learned to live with the fear that I may never have the same opportunities in the future. Cancer's fear taught me to tell everyone how much he or she meant to me. Fear taught me to write heart-wrenching letters to my children, just in case I wouldn't be able to watch them grow. Fear taught me that the small incidentals of life really don't matter, that enjoying the moment, no matter how chaotic, boring, startling or fearful it was, those emotions made life worthwhile.
Hope is a false promise. It masks fear so that you don't really have the opportunity to embrace the sobering truth of our mortality. When I hear someone say, "I hope," I want to ask him or her what he or she is afraid of? I want to ask them what opportunities of knowledge they are ignoring by running away from fear. There is more to learn in the truth of circumstances than wishing them away with hope.









Works Cited

Ellul, Jacques. Propaganda. New York: Random House, 1965.
Hesoid. The Works and Days. Michigan and Ontario: Vail-Ballou Press, 1962.
Huckin, Thomas. "Propaganda Defined". Unpublished, 2012.
Hughes, Richard. "Myths Americans Live By." University of Illinois Press.
Luntz, Frank. "Words that Work." New York: 2008.
Pagels, Elaine. "The Gnostic Gospels." New York: 1979.







Taylor 1