The Propaganda of War, Part 1 of 4

By Mary Kelleher

Since the early years of politics, propaganda has been used to promote ideas and to justify both wars and the empowerment of the rulers at the time. Propaganda is fliers, art, news coverage or any other means of communication meant to influence a populaces’ opinions and beliefs, using emotional influence instead of facts or information. Sometimes data is used, but is often skewed, extremely altered or out of context. Some of the ways propaganda is distributed now is through news, museums, and through airborne leaflets (when bomb-like devices are dropped on an area, but instead of throwing shrapnel, throws fliers everywhere).
The different ways propaganda portrays its message have been categorized into about thirty different types (full list at The Wikipedia Page). Out of these, this exhibit focuses on six different types; repetition (the repeat of a word, phrase or the image itself,) common man (appearing to be the common sense of the general target audience,) unstated assumption (Implies a message that if stated, would be ridiculous), oversimplification (creating an overly clear-cut answer to a complicated problem,) scapegoating (blaming someone or a group on issues instead of addressing the problem) and appeal to fear (creating support by creating anxiety or paranoia.)
The six pieces which were chosen are from 1916 to 2004, but mostly from 1941-1945, the middle of World War Two. Three of them are American posters to Americans, but one is from the Nazi‘s to the Allied troops, another from Nazi Germany to the German populace, and the last, America to Iraq, in the modern war (translations has been provided for the last two).
Each one of the six art works are a different style of propaganda, and some could be classified as more. This exhibition is more than just that, it is an historical education piece. These are a small snapshot of when they were made. Each clearly states the view there were portrayed for, with different perspective, but all correlate because of why they were made.

The images which accompanies the introduction don’t actually have anything to do with the exhibit, it’s just an altered image and it’s original I created that I thought fit.