19 | MP introduction

takes to have a correspondingly touching scenario written (story
of former fire-brigade mare sloughtered in Flanders)."

In this case a natural sentiment was tied to the cart of a
social purpose extraneous to it - the desire to hamper American
economic aid to the Allies. The same sentiment could be used pro-
pagandistically for almost any social purpose whatever - for
anti-German propaganda (German officials ill-treating dogs), pro-
Nazi propaganda (Goering the animal lover), pro-bolshevik propa-
ganda (Professor Schmidt and the wounded seal near the North Pole),
monarchist propaganda (the respective king and almost any animal),
etc.

In the same way, given a floating sentiment of hatred, the pro-
pagandist can, as we shall see in chapter 5, within limits divert
it to almost anything.

In this book we have very little to say about instincts[21] in
themselves. Instincts become interesting to the propagandist only
when they are not satisfied. If a person's instincts were satis-
fied, if, in other words, he had reached adaptation, he would
turn a deaf ear even to the enchanting propaganda of the sirens.
But an instinct, impulse, or desire, if unsatisfied, leads to re-
pression and discontent, and that gives the propagandist his
chance.

Repression, usually, is the outcome of a conflict between
social necessities and individual desires. When repressing, we
hold back ideas and wishes from our consciousness, hold them
back from ourselves and others, and force the impulse into dis-
guise and concealment.[22] A drive becomes unconscious, is dis-
torted and disguised. It then comes up again in a concealed or