propaganda

A World War II propaganda poster showing a steadfast image of Winston Churchill, backed by the armed forces, supporting his view that the nation would ‘go forward’.

The skull at the microphone adds a dimension of fear to this quotation from Joseph Goebbels, the German minister of propaganda, at the time of the invasion of Russia during World War II.

Systematic spreading (propagation) of information or disinformation (misleading information), usually to promote a religious or political doctrine with the intention of instilling particular attitudes or responses. As a system of spreading information it was considered a legitimate instrument of government, but became notorious through the deliberate distortion of facts or the publication of falsehoods by totalitarian regimes, notably Nazi Germany.

The word comes from the activities of a special sacred congregation of the Roman Catholic Church (de propaganda fide) which sought to spread the faith and recruit members.

In the USA in the 1980s, the term ‘public diplomacy’ was introduced. Government-sponsored reports and articles were presented to the media as independent sources, especially on the subject of Central America.

There are various forms of propaganda: black propaganda (a pack of lies), grey propaganda (half-truths and distortions), and white propaganda (the truth).

Propaganda has been practised since earliest times, but modern mass media has made it much easier to appeal to wide domestic and foreign audiences.

In World War I propaganda was used to encourage recruitment and keep morale high among the civilian and military population; bad news concerning casualties and conditions was filtered out. Since 1918 the word has acquired a derogatory and sinister sense owing to the propaganda methods of fascist and communist governments. In the German Nazi state, under the direction of propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, Nazi propaganda ceased to have any reliable information value and became simply the science of moulding opinion.