Quotes about propaganda
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“About mid-day, Kesselring telephones me and tells me that we shall probably have to wait three or four days before our large-scale counter-measures begin to get under way. Until then there can be no major shift of developments in our favour. Kesselring is nevertheless in good heart. He is assured and full of character in his estimate of the situation and there is not a trace of defeatism with him. He tells me also that the attitude of the civil population has somewhat improved under the influence of our propaganda.”

Albert Kesselring (1885–1960) German Luftwaffe Generalfeldmarschall during World War II

Joseph Goebbels, diary entry, April 1, 1945.

Way, Waiting, Heart

“We must call attention, among the workers parties or the extremist tendencies within those parties, to the need to undertake an effective ideological action in order to combat the emotional influence of advanced capitalist methods of propaganda. On every occasion, by every hyper-political means, we must publicize desirable alternatives to the spectacle of the capitalist way of life, so as to destroy the bourgeois idea of happiness. At the same time, taking into account the existence, within the various ruling classes, of elements that have always tended (out of boredom and thirst for novelty) toward things that lead to the disappearance of their societies, we should incite the persons who control some of the vast resources that we lack to provide us with the means to carry out our experiments, out of the same motives of potential profit as they do with scientific research.”

Guy Debord (1931–1994) French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker and founding member of the Situationist International (SI)

Our Immediate Tasks
Report on the Construction of Situations (1957)

Life, Happiness, Way, Motivation

“What greater challenge today.... to disorder and insensitivity; what greater propaganda for integration than this emotionally intense, dramatic division of space?”

Ad Reinhardt (1913–1967) American painter

quote in 1943, discussing the art of Piet Mondrian
Quote of Ad Reinhardt in: Abstract Expressionism, Davind Anfam, Thames and Hudson Ltd London, 1990, p. ?
1940 - 1955

“American traditions and the American ethic require us to be truthful, but the most important reason is that truth is the best propaganda and lies are the worst. To be persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; to be credible we must be truthful. It is as simple as that.”

Edward R. Murrow (1908–1965) Television journalist

Speaking as the Director of USIA, in testimony before a Congressional Committee (May 1963) http://pdaa.publicdiplomacy.org/?page_id=6

Truth

“Iranian society is multi-ethnic and multi-religious and blessed with a rich culture. All the national and religious identities of the Middle East can be found there. This diversity is in contrast to the hegemonic claim of the theocracy, which cultivates a subtle religious and ethnic nationalism; the ruling class does not shrink back from anti-modernist propaganda whenever it serves their interests, although they implement capitalist modernity.”

Abdullah Öcalan (1949) Founder of the PKK

The Political Thought of Abdullah Ocalan, p.52
The Political Thought of Abdullah Ocalan (2017), Democratic Confederalism

“Superiority of existence and ideology cannot easily be broken. The youth (and even the children) are subjected to the same strategies and tactics, ideological and political propaganda, and oppressive systems as the woman - adolescence, like femininity, is not a physical but social fact.”

Abdullah Öcalan (1949) Founder of the PKK

The Political Thought of Abdullah Ocalan (2017), Liberating Life: Women's Revolution

Children, Youth

“when you confuse art with propaganda, you confuse an act of God with something which can be turned on and off like the hot water faucet. If "God" means nothing to you(or less than nothing)I'll cheerfully substitute one of your own favorite words,"freedom."”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

You confuse freedom—the only freedom—with absolute tyranny…
all over this socalled world,hundreds of millions of servile and insolent inhuman unbeings are busily unrolling in the enlightenment of propaganda.
Essay in the anthology The War Poets (1945) edited by Oscar Williams

God, Art, Freedom, Water

“When their propaganda lines up with their behavior in the real world it would be very foolhardy to ignore it.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, Interview with the Reuters War College (April 2017)

World, Behavior

“Few things are more important to Pyongyang than its propaganda apparatus. Even when the rest of the nation came to a standstill in the mid-1990s, it never missed a beat.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2000s, Stranger Than Fiction (February 2005)

“Talk about the reality, about the facts, when to talk about children being killed, children of who? where? how? you're talking about propaganda, about media campaign, about sometimes fake pictures on the internet, we cannot talk but ones of the facts. We can talk about the facts, I cannot talk about allegations.”

Bashar al-Assad (1965) President of Syria

Interview with Bill Neely https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45odEv_1DAY (July 2016) on " NBC: Exclusive Interview with Bashar al-Assad https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/syria-s-president-bashar-al-assad-speaks-nbc-news-n608746"

Children, Reality

“You may ask what then will become of the fundamental principles of equity and fair play which our constitutions enshrine; and whether I seriously believe that unsupported they will serve merely as counsels of moderation. I do not think that anyone can say what will be left of those principles; I do not know whether they will serve only as counsels; but this much I think I do know — that a society so riven that the spirit of moderation is gone, no court can save; that a society where that spirit flourishes, no court need save; that in a society which evades its responsibility by thrusting upon the courts the nurture of that spirit, that spirit in the end will perish. What is the spirit of moderation? It is the temper which does not press a partisan advantage to its bitter end, which can understand and will respect the other side, which feels a unity between all citizens—real and not the factitious product of propaganda—which recognizes their common fate and their common aspirations—in a word, which has faith in the sacredness of the individual.”

Learned Hand (1872–1961) American legal scholar, Court of Appeals judge

"The Contribution of an Independent Judiciary to Civilization" (1942).
Extra-judicial writings

Fate, Faith, Feeling, Understanding

“The worse the quality of the paper is, the more seriously you should take the propaganda printed on it because that poor-quality paper indicates it's being distributed on a large scale inside the country.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, Interview with the Reuters War College (April 2017)

Country

“Cuba had become what Washington had always feared from the Third World—a good example. Parallel to the military and economic belligerence, the United States has long maintained a relentless propaganda offensive against Cuba. A number of examples of this occurring in other countries can be found in other chapters of this book. In addition to its vast overseas journalistic empire, the CIA has maintained anti-Castro news-article factories in the United States for decades.”

William Blum (1933–2018) American author and historian

Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Chapter 30. Cuba 1959 to 1980s: The unforgivable revolution

Books, World, Fear, Country

“We need only look at the much lower level of anti-Americanism in Vietnam to realize that suffering incurred in wars does not necessarily dictate decades of animosity and fear between peoples. It’s what propaganda does with history — for contemporary political ends — that counts.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

"On the Recent Spate of 'Why North Korea Hates America' Articles" http://sthelepress.com/index.php/2017/05/27/1419/ (27 May 2017), Sthele Press <br class="br">2010s

War, People, Fear, History

“What we've come to realise is those two extremes - far-right fascism and Islamist extremism - have a symbiotic relationship, where they mutually reinforce the other's very generalised view of the other, and they feed off each other's propaganda.”

Maajid Nawaz (1977) British activist

Extremists and gangsters - good meeting for bad company https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13939227 BBC News (28 June 2011) <br class="br">2011

“In practice, the enemy has been making much more propaganda for us than we have ourselves.”

Ho Chi Minh (1890–1969) Vietnamese communist leader and first president of Vietnam

Instructions Given at the Conference (Fall 1950)
1950's

Making love

“I see the nations of the world arming in ways that have never before been known in the modern world. I am not speaking of new forms of poison gas, heavier or swifter bombing planes, or parachutes to land brigades of soldiers… What is revolutionary is that the minds of men, women and children are being deliberately trained, directed, distorted, by every conceivable instrument of education and propaganda, to make them tolerant of war, receptive of war, prepared for war, lovers of war. The greatest menace in the world today is not poison gas. There are gas masks against that. The menace is poisoned words, poisoned ideas.”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

Dorothy Thompson’s Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
Source: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
pp. 33-34

Women, Men, War, Children

“I shall put the case somewhat from the standpoint of the militant suffragettes themselves, trying to give some idea of the philosophy and ethical principles underlying the militant propaganda and, above all, with the hope of making clear to American readers some of the radical differences between English and American conditions.”

Mary Winsor (1869–1956) American suffragist

Source: The Militant suffrage movement (1914)

Making love, Hope, Idea

“The nature of liberal democracy prevents propagandistic statements from being banned, since among the liberties it permits is the freedom of speech. But since humans have characteristic rational weaknesses and are susceptible to flattery and manipulation, allowing propaganda has a high likelihood of leading to tyranny, and hence to the end of liberal democracy.”

Jason Stanley book How Propaganda Works

Source: How Propaganda Works (2015), p. 27

Democracy, Nature, Freedom

“The most basic problem for democracy raided by propaganda is the possibility that the vocabulary of liberal democracy is used to mask an undemocratic reality. If so, there could be a state that appeared to be a liberal democracy. It would be a state the citizens of which believed was a liberal democracy. But the appearance of liberal democracy would be merely the outer trappings of an illiberal, undemocratic reality.”

Jason Stanley book How Propaganda Works

Source: How Propaganda Works (2015), p. 11

Democracy, Problem, Reality, Appearance

“It is almost always impossible to get the fascist party together without using some anti-capitalist slogans, in the early stages at any rate, of the necessary propaganda. And this type of propaganda may have so coloured the minds of the rank and file of the Fascist party as to make them difficult adequately to control.”

John Strachey (1901–1963) British politician and writer (1901-1963)

Source: The Coming Struggle for Power (1932), p. 262

Making love

“Pornography, it seems to me, is no different from war films or propaganda films in that it tries to make the visceral, horrific, or transgressive elements of life consumable. Propaganda is far more pornographic than a home video of two people fucking.”

Michael Haneke (1942) Austrian film director and screenwriter

[Christopher Sharrett, http://www.kinoeye.org/04/01/interview01.php, Austrian film: Michael Haneke interviewed, Kinoeye, 20 September 2011]

Life, War, People, Making love

“Communication is always "propaganda."”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

The emitter always wants "to get something across."
Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), Part 2, p. 487

Communication

“Nobody knew better than Goebbels that a Propaganda Ministry was almost a contradiction in terms. Propaganda is the more effective the less people know that they are supposed to be influenced, and vice versa.”

Curt Martin Riess (1902–1993) German journalist and writer

Source: Total Espionage: Germany’s Information and Disinformation Apparatus 1932-41 (1941), Joseph Goebbels: A Biography (1948), p. 101

People

“Propaganda is the kitchen of war, Propaganda is war itself. First comes the militarisation of national holidays, then the news is replaced by propaganda shows.”

Dmitry Muratov (1961) Russian journalist and television presenter

"Nobel peace prize Dmitry Muratov: Propaganda is war itself" https://voxeurop.eu/en/nobel-peace-prize-dmitry-muratov-propaganda-is-war-itself/, Vox Europ, 3 May 2022

War, Holiday

“Aggressive marketing of war affects people and they start thinking that war is acceptable. Governments and their propaganda supporters are fully responsible for the militaristic rhetoric on state-owned television channels.”

Dmitry Muratov (1961) Russian journalist and television presenter

War, People, Support, Thinking

“WHO WAS J. F. LEHMANN?
This book postulates that Adolf Hitler made a subtle, but all-important shift from proselytizing the myth of Germans as the oppressed victims of an “international Jewish conspiracy” to that of the superior race and oppressor because of J. F. Lehmann. It is not until after J. F. Lehmann brought Hitler the infamous Baur-Fischer-Lenz book on eugenics that Hitler’s speeches shifted from the stab-in-the-back myth, or the “Dolchstoßlegende,” with Germans as the oppressed victims of betrayal, to the eugenic propaganda of Germans as the pinnacle of white-supremacy. Weakness and superiority are incompatible attributes, and J. F. Lehmann is responsible for the shift away from the weakness inherent in victimhood to a racial superiority. Thus, it begs to question, who was this pivotal figure in Adolf Hitler's life, and why is his name and history not part of the commonly accepted history of The Holocaust? Nothing of The Holocaust or World War II can be understood without documenting who was Julius Friedrich Lehmann. Yet, J. F. Lehmann barely makes it onto the radar of even the most thorough books on the subject, and then only to name him as the person who delivered the Baur-Fischer-Lenz book to Adolf Hitler at Landsberg prison.”

A.E. Samaan

Source: From a "Race of Masters" to a "Master Race": 1948 to 1848

Life, War, Books, World

This quote waiting for review.