War propaganda

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War propaganda link (Propaganda)
File:George Orwell FUFNA.png Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays https://www.facebook.com/reel/1618074705897174

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But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting. Political language...is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it. Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception.

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. (On the manipulation of language for political ends.) We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act.” |Is about=War propaganda,war propaganda, truth, liberty, freedom of speech, polarising perspectives|+sep=, |Has wikipediaPage= |Has location=|+sep=, |Has publicationDate= |Sourced from=Labour Heartlands |Has sourceDetails= |Has sourceTitle= |Has sourceName=Labour Heartlands |Has sourceURL=https://www.facebook.com/reel/1618074705897174

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“Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defence against a homicidal maniac. In our time political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible.

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting. Political language...is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it. Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception.

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. (On the manipulation of language for political ends.) We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act.”
George Orwell

War propaganda is used by nation states to justify their own engagement in a war and to uphold morale and support for the war throughout. It can continue afterwards when certain narratives that have been constructed are important to the power-structures that are the victors. A Casus belli has historically been used to justify one's own entry into it (see Patrick Clawsons remarks at a QA of the Washington Institute in 2012).

Slate wrote in 2005 during the 2nd Iraq war:

A calculated and systematic effort to manage public opinion, it transcends mere lying and routine political dishonesty. When the Bush administration manufactures fake “news,” suppresses real news, disguises the former as the latter, and challenges the legitimacy of the independent press, it corrodes trust in leaders, institutions, and, to the rest of the world, the United States as a whole.

The Basic Principles of War Propaganda

Anne Morelli summarized and systematized the contents of Arthur Ponsonby's classic on war propaganda in "ten commandments of propaganda":

1. We do not want war.
2. The enemy alone is to be blamed for the war.
3. The enemy is inherently evil, resembling the devil.
4. We defend a noble cause, not our own interest.
5. The enemy commits atrocities on purpose; our mishaps are involuntary.
6. The enemy uses illegal weapons.
7. We suffer small losses, those of the enemy are enormous.
8. Artists and intellectuals back our cause.
9. Our cause is holy, it has a sacred character.
10. Whoever doubts our propaganda, is a traitor.

References