Propaganda And The US Essay Research Paper

Propaganda And The U.S. Essay, Research Paper

Propaganda and the United States

That awful power, the public opinion of a nation, is created in America by a horde of ignorant, self-complacent simpletons who failed at ditching and shoemaking and fetched up in journalism on their way to the poorhouse.

- “License of the Press” speech

Mark Twain

Propaganda exists in every aspect of our lives. It is used in any form of persuasion, advertising, debate, etc. And it is also one of the oldest and most popular methods of psychological warfare that governments have used to build a sense of nationalism and recieve positive opinions from the public. Propaganda is a planned system that uses any form of public or massed-produced communication designed to affect the minds and emotions of a given group for a specific public purpose, whether military, economic, or political.# Propaganda is based on public opinion, which is a system of law emanating from the body of the people. It is the only check to the pernicious exercise of the power of the government. # Propaganda induces emotions on every level. It can make the victims of the propagandists feel simple emotions like fear, or complex emotions like pride or adventure; or other emotions such as self confidence, ambition, end even love. All human emotions have always provided propagandists with means of influence . Some particular emotions can even offer a stronger passage or channel for the propagandists to work with.

The history of governmental propaganda can be traced back to the

great minds of the first philosophers. For example, in ancient Greece, Plato and Aristotle practiced and taught propaganda. Plato s Republic uses simple methods of writing and discusses the directions to keep people loyal to the state. He was an advocate of censorship and protection of security of the government. Aristotle s Rhetoric was a better example of a classic method of propaganda and unrelated to government. He believed in speech and persuasion. He was only similar to Plato in that he taught his pupils to refuse the ideas of an opponent.#

During the Crusades, which was another time that was guided more by religion than philosophy, the people of opposing countries were riled by atrocious stories of their enemies and convinced to fight. And this took place in the religious wars of the Seventeenth Century, with the development of the printing press, the Protestants attacked the Catholic Jesuits by propagandizing lies to evoke hatred. And the Catholics fought back with the same method.

Propaganda has been used in every conflict and war since then. During the wars that the United States has been involved with, the government used propaganda In the same way as it has always been used: to drive it s people. The government used posters, leaflets, movies, radio broadcasts, and any other effective form of communication. Leaders of all governments alike have had to have skills in propagandizing situations. For example, Hitler was the German Workers Party s Chief of Propaganda before he took control. It was during that service he wrote his famous book, Mein Kampf. Also during World War II, Franklin D. Roosevelt participated in a radio show called the Fire Side Chats. That s when he talked directly to the people across the country explaining the events that were taking place. He used persuasion to calm the people or bring about their anger or frustration to strengthen support for his political, economic, or foreign goals.

America s program of psychological warfare developed relatively slower than the other country s programs. But however slow it was, the American program was the most ruthless on the downplaying of its foe s. The U.S. propaganda program became strongest during the Cold War with the U.S.S.R. In the Department of the State s bulletin on March 12, 1951:

At the risk of oversimplifying, we can say that we have four chief objectives: (1) Exposing to the world, directly and indirectly, the truly reactionary, vicious and phony nature of Kremlin communism; (2) building up a spirit of unity, spunk, determination and confidence in all the nations of the free world; (3) inculcating in other peoples a readiness and desire to cooperate with America — by disproving Soviet lies about us and by making clear that we are a resolute, strong, and honest nation whose moral strength and physical strength can be counted on; (4) building, behind the Iron Curtain, psychological obstacles to further Kremlin

aggression. #

Then, in the Kiplinger Magazine, the Voice of America (an organization later defined) wrote to the Russians:

The Russian people are oppressed by the Soviet Government. Stalin is a scheming, sly man, with all the attributes of a Hitler or a Mussolini. Disaffection and restlessness are spreading through the Soviet Union and through her satellites like an indestructible fungus. Exploitation of the Russian people gets worse every passing day. The people cannot hope to improve themselves under their present regime. The Russian talk of peace is phony. The Soviet leaders want war, because war is the way of all dictatorship. The Kremlin has revived the Big Lie. The Kremlin discredits and distorts everything for it s own ulterior purposes. Imperialism is the keynote of Russian communism. The United Sates wants peace and will stand by the United Nations. B