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War Propaganda
Some of the most emotionally incendiary propaganda to utilize the medium of film was conceived and directed towards partisans during the fighting of World War II. A pair of films, Went the Day Well and 49th Parallel, delicately play upon the psyche of their intended audiences to get viewers to emotionally, (and perhaps even physically) take a stance during the fighting of the second Great War. By demonstrating various aspects of homeland vulnerability and enemy infiltration, these movies were created to galvanize audiences into an anti-Nazi stance at the time when Hitler's Third Reich was at its peak of power.
The events that constitute the plot of Went the Day Well are obviously designed to prey on the fears of British residents during World War II. The film actually was released in 1942 while the war was still contested -- and largely undecided -- and depicts Nazi's posing as British soldiers to invade England. Such fears, of...
The response of the British subjects depicted in the movie, and the message to those in the audience was fairly clear -- the only way to prevent such an occurrence from happening and actually succeeding was to fight back with unmitigated violence. As such, there are plenty of scenes depicting the Nazis as ruthless, one-dimensional violent prone stooges whom the British subjects had no recourse to halt but by countering with their own violent proclivities. Naturally, the carnage wreaked by the Nazi's is depicted in a villainous way, while the many acts of ordinary British citizens that are equally as bloody and as devastating -- including a postmistress attack Nazis with an ax -- are portrayed as heroic.
Moreover, this film is narrated from a point in the future after the war was supposedly concluded. The film's narrator references the fact that the British and the…
Not only the German men were presented as barbarians, beasts who stopped at nothing in the countries they invaded, but also German women are described are being merciless and prone to laugh at the helpless and powerless wounded instead of helping him. The text reads: Wounded and a prisoner, our soldier cries for water. The German "sister" pours it on the ground before his eyes. There is no woman
In the end, it depends on the power of the propagandistic process. The third technique is related to the second one and includes the description of the common values and of current realities in a different way. More precisely, "when propagandists use glittering generalities and name-calling symbols, they are attempting to arouse their audience with vivid, emotionally suggestive words. In certain situations, however, the propagandist attempts to pacify the audience
war can never truly be called a humane practice, the atrocities of World War One were in many ways unprecedented. The program of "total war" that dominated military discourse enabled and in many cases actively advocated the killing of civilians, something that had not before been considered traditional military strategy. Moreover, significant technological developments in warfare made it possible to annihilate large numbers of people at once. Propaganda campaigns
War on Terror Although the rhetoric on the War on Terror has subsided somewhat since Bush left office, terrorism itself remains an unfortunate reality around the world. The War on Terror was largely a propaganda machine, which perpetuated a cultural climate of fear. As Coaty points out in Understanding the War on Terror, fear-mongering is destructive rhetoric. In the end, too much fear-driven crisis leads to uninformed and ill-devised political strategies.
War on terror has changed significantly since the attacks of 2001. Terrorism has always been a part of American life, with the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901 by Leon Czolgosz. More recently, however, the United States has contested with terrorism stemming from extreme Islamist groups that are at ideological odds with the Western way of life. The war on terror that began in 2001 has grown to represent
..to work properly, propaganda must strike a balance between reason and emotion." That may be true - it's probably why some political advertisements have been so effective, such as the "Daisy" ad used against Goldwater in 1964 and the "Willie Horton" ad used by then-Vice President George Bush against Michael Dukakis. Both of those ads were effective, but I question anyone who would argue that the ads were honorable. The one