War Propaganda: "Honest, unbiased news simply disappeared out of the American papers..."

[Hannah Bell]

Emotional agitation is a favorite technique of the propagandist, because "any emotion may be 'drained off' into any activity by skillful manipulation." A second propaganda technique used by the CPI was demonization of the enemy...A particularly effective strategy for demonizing Germans was the use of atrocity stories. "A handy rule for arousing hate," said Lasswell "is, if at first they do not enrage, use an atrocity. It has been employed with unvarying success in every conflict known to man."

After the war, Edward Bernays, who directed CPI propaganda efforts in Latin America, openly admitted that his colleagues used alleged atrocities to provoke a public outcry against Germany. Some of the atrocity stories which were circulated during the war, such as the one about a tub full of eyeballs or the story of the seven-year old boy who confronted German soldiers with a wooden gun, were actually recycled from previous conflicts.

In his seminal work on wartime propaganda, Lasswell speculated that atrocity stories will always be popular because the audience is able to feel self-righteous indignation toward the enemy, and, at some level, identify with the perpetrators of the crimes. "A young woman, ravished by the enemy," he wrote "yields secret satisfaction to a host of vicarious ravishers on the other side of the border."




http://www.100megspop3.com/bark/Propaganda.html

[SpiralHawk]

1. "The First Casualty...

...when war comes is truth." - US Senator Hiram Warren Johnson (1918).

[cali]

2. what a terrible argument.

The U.S., for example, denied the terrible facts of the Concentration camps until virtually the last moment.

[Hannah Bell]

3. what are you talking about?