Recent events reignite debate over value, limits of propaganda

Posted on Mon, Dec. 26, 2005

Recent events reignite debate over value, limits of propaganda
BY ALLEN PUSEY
The Dallas Morning News


WASHINGTON - On April 6, 1917, the nation entered World War I. It was not a popular decision, and one week later, President Woodrow Wilson launched one of the most effective propaganda campaigns in U.S. history.
The fervor that followed bound a diverse population of European immigrants together as a dedicated fighting whole.

It also stirred an Illinois mob to beat and lynch a German-American miner, provoked 14 states to ban the speaking of German in public schools and compelled newspapers to refer to outbreaks of "Liberty" measles among children.

Within every war there is a war of words, a battle for hearts and minds designed both to bolster the morale on the home front and to deflate the enemy. And in recent weeks, that battle has come into focus for the Bush administration and its Iraq policy.

The president's scrappy reiterations of his reasons for invading Iraq staunched faltering approval ratings in recent weeks. Even so, the day of his first speech, at Annapolis, it was revealed that the United States was paying for favorable treatment in the Iraqi press.

While it's hard for many people to accept, experts say, both of these efforts can be considered part of a wartime propaganda campaign. Both involve efforts to gravitate people to a particular point of view. But they also reveal what works and what doesn't in an age of global communications and perpetual political spin.


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http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/politics/13489962.htm

WWI was a stupid war and we should have stayed out of it.
But Wilson liked to prance around on the World stage and
could not have cared less about the American republic.
Instead we are still stuck with paying for all this
imperial bullshit.

http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/hist409/red.html