Propaganda Starts At A Young Age

Propaganda, the word brings up the thoughts of dirty tricks. It is certainly a word that has a relationship to politics. Every country in the world uses propaganda in one form or another. But what exactly is propaganda? I could go to the dictionary and get the definition but I would rather use my own that I have learned from life experience. Propaganda is the dissemination of certain information that can be true or false, that is used to make one party look good or another look either foolish or guilty.

Did anyone notice the tremendous amount of propaganda that we put out before attacking Iran. We said that that they had chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction and that they were on their way to making nukes. In this case it turned out to be false but it did give some credibility to our invasion at the time. Propaganda is nothing new, but when most of us hear the word we think of NAZI Propaganda, or during the cold war we thought of Soviet Propaganda. I am sure that the Soviets thought of American Propaganda. It almost goes hand in hand during heightened times of military readiness.

Everyday Propaganda

We civilians have our propaganda also. Companies sometimes put it out against each other. There was once a story of a mouse found in a bottle of Coke. No one knew where it came from but stories like this always hurt the company even if the hurt is only temporary. Utility companies are often accused of putting out propaganda. The electric company may continue to raise its rates and blame it on the price of fuel while also changing separately for fuel on their bills. I use an electric company that does precisely that. Political parties are great at putting out propaganda against each other. The Republicans label the Democrats as Bleeding Heart Liberals and The Democrats label the Republicans as Rightest Tyrants. Even some teachers are putting out propaganda when they express their own views on world affairs. It seems that propaganda has a life of it's own.

Getting back to the Nazis, they actually issued propaganda stating that Nostradamus predicted that they would be the master race, so England countered that by putting out propaganda saying that the prophecies favored them. Poor old Nostradamus, he probably never dreamt that two powerful countries would be fighting over the meaning of what he said. Having read some of these predictions, it would be quite easy to say they meant anything. The prophecies were written in such a way as to resemble riddles. The passages were called quatrains. As far as I am concerned, they represent nothing because you can make them represent anything. During the cold war the Soviets had a ball with the propaganda they got out of the crash of our U2 spy plane in the Soviet Union. They held public trials and demanded an apology. I guess when you think about it, we would have done the same thing. Countries just don't like other countries flying over their air space. Would Kennedy really have attacked Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis if the missiles weren't removed? The propaganda we put out said that we would, but would we really have done it? Only Kennedy and a few others knew for sure.

Ancient Propaganda

All of us look at the pyramids and the Sphinx and are in awe. What do we really see when we look at the pyramids? Most of us see some of the biggest structures ever erected by man that are thousands of years old. Others see tombs that were meant to prevent break ins and built on a gigantic scale. The Sphinx is more of a mystery to us. When we look at it we see a huge statue of a lion with the head of a man but what does it symbolize? We all could be missing the point here. Maybe we are not looking at these structures properly. Could it be that these structures are really propaganda? Maybe the real purpose of the pyramids were to show the rest of the world, at the time, that Egypt was nobody to mess with. By building these unheard of huge structures they were showing the rest of the world that they had enormous power and the pharaoh was also showing the world that his people would do anything for him. This all might have been ancient propaganda. As far as the Sphinx goes, who knows. Gee I am a poet and don't know it.

When the ancient Greeks were planning to attack Troy, supposedly because one of the kings of Greece had his wife stolen and taken to Troy, they turned on the propaganda machine. Troy was a city that the Greeks always wanted to conquer and plunder. Now they could appeal to all Greeks that a foreign power had abducted one of their queens and it had to be avenged. What they really wanted was the spoils of one of the richest cities in ancient times. It worked, the propaganda machines churned out page after page and it heated Greek blood through the entire country. It is said that a thousand ships were launched from Greece. We all know what happened to Troy.

Propaganda can be a very useful thing but it is also a two headed dragon. You have to be very careful of what you put out least some of it be used against you. In a way, the modern news media fosters propaganda. There are many stories throughout the world on a daily basis that turn out not even to be true. Some are even in the biggest papers. I remember reading a story a few years back about gorillas going into buildings in a town in Africa. The story said they were looking for a baby gorilla that had been taken from them. It was sheer hog wash and a retraction was printed the next day. Another story that appeared years ago talked about something a politician had done, but in truth the story was put into the papers by his enemies and he really hadn't done what he was accused of.

So the next time you read something that is derogatory or seems to get your blood hot, think for a second, was this put into the news as propaganda?