Propaganda

Propaganda is a powerful, dangerous, misused tool used within circumstances that are good or bad. I consider war to be an appropriate setting for propaganda. There are many examples that I can think of when propaganda comes to mind. Propaganda can be advertisements used in newspapers and magazines, posters, billboards, and speeches. Mostly you can say that, propaganda is any way of communication between humans.

The first example of propaganda that I noticed was one that was used by the United States during World War II. The propaganda was on a poster called, The Sowers. The poster had a burley, mean looking Russian soldier. The solider had a full bag of skulls, and he was throwing the skulls into a pit. The background of the poster had smoke rising and other Russian soldiers were in it. These posters were used as propaganda because it could have been scary to someone and make him or her feel threatened or uncomfortable. At a time of war, The Sowers audience was the American public. Basically, this poster would have served as a means of motivation for Americans to do their part in preventing a victory for the Russian soldiers.

I believe that propaganda motivates people by frightening them into responsibilities that the government wants to accomplish. For example, President Roosevelt's Pearl Harbor Address where he used certain words and expressions to excite Americans about going to war with Japan. He used the word "empire" to describe the nation of Japan rather than "country", so that the Japanese appear to be more powerful and threatening to America. Besides this type of propaganda during World War II there was also some propaganda that was too effective. During World War II a lot of propaganda was published, so much that American soldiers were extremely violent and brutal towards Japanese soldiers, where with extreme cases American soldiers would cut off body parts of Japanese soldiers to take back home as souvenirs. This