Consciental War and Propaganda: Tasks and Challenges for Intellectuals

Article

Abstract

[In Belarusian]

Nowadays there are a number of concepts used in expert circles to define a new type of war without the usage of conventional lethal weapons: psychological, informational, netwar, cyberwar or combined strategies, like, hybrid wars. This list can be also complemented by the concepts used by Russian analysts – anonymous war, organizational warfare, and finally, the consciental war. The last type of war is not primarily focused on the physical destruction of the enemy, but creates a lasting effect of the propaganda on the proper and the enemy audience, which would allow changing significantly the mental schemes, prevailing values and ways of self-identification of people to control and manipulate their behavior. One of the fundamental issues of the topic is: why does the most reflective and critical thinking part of the society – the intellectuals – nevertheless turn into the victims of propaganda effects of the consciental war? To answer that question it was important to appeal to the modern concept of the theory of propaganda by J. Ellul, who confirmed that there are many possibilities of direct and indirect impact on the individual, even a highly reflective one in the modern propaganda. Finally, the last question concerns the possibility to protect oneself somehow from the effects of consciental warfare and their damaging effects? Both passive and active forms of protection were analyzed in the article.