50 Fun Facts About Propaganda

Which children's author drew over 400 political cartoons for the newspaper PM and wrote US Army propaganda films?

Dr. Seuss, the pen name of Theodor Geisel, used his cartoons to attack Hitler and American isolationists. He joined the Army in 1943 and wrote the Private Snafu training cartoons.

Which Disney character has a nightmare about a Nazi factory in the Oscar-winning 1943 short Der Fuehrer's Face?

Donald Duck wakes up hugging a model Statue of Liberty, glad to be an American. It is the only Donald Duck film to win an Academy Award, and it was made to sell war bonds.

Which superhero punched Adolf Hitler on a debut comic cover almost a year before the US entered World War II?

Captain America was created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby as an openly anti-Nazi hero. The first issue went on sale in December 1940 and sold out within days.

Which national symbol points straight at the viewer in James Montgomery Flagg's 1917 US Army recruiting poster?

Uncle Sam only gained a standard look with this poster, for which Flagg used a modified version of his own face. More than four million copies were printed in 1917 and 1918.

Edward Bernays, who wrote the 1928 book Propaganda, was the nephew of which pioneer of psychology?

Sigmund Freud was related to him twice over: Bernays's mother was Freud's sister, and his father was the brother of Freud's wife. Bernays used his uncle's ideas to sell bacon and eggs as the all-American breakfast.

Which composer's Fifth Symphony gave the BBC its wartime V for Victory call sign, matching Morse code for V?

Beethoven opened the symphony with three short notes and a long one, the same pattern as dot-dot-dot-dash. The BBC used it to introduce broadcasts to occupied Europe for the rest of the war.

Jacques-Louis David painted Napoleon crossing the Alps on a rearing horse; which animal did Napoleon really ride?

A mule, led by a guide, carried him over the Great St Bernard Pass in 1800. Napoleon refused to pose for the propaganda portrait and asked to be shown calm on a fiery steed.

Which propaganda technique of joining the crowd is said to be named for a phrase from Zachary Taylor's 1848 campaign?

Bandwagon appeals claim that everyone else is already on board. In the popular story circus clown Dan Rice invited Taylor onto his band's wagon, though the earliest written evidence dictionaries give is decades later.

Which fictional worker became the American symbol of women who took factory and shipyard jobs during World War II?

Rosie the Riveter began as the title of a hit song in 1942. The famous poster of a woman flexing her arm was not linked to that name during the war.

The word propaganda comes from a missionary office founded in 1622 by which religious institution?

The Catholic Church set up the Congregation for Propagating the Faith during the Counter-Reformation. Its Latin name, Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, was soon shortened to Propaganda.

Which Nazi leader, holder of a doctorate in philology, served as Hitler's propaganda chief from 1933 until 1945?

Joseph Goebbels wrote a novel, Michael, before entering politics. He was particularly adept at using the new media of radio and film, and took control of Nazi newspapers across the country.

Which German director made the Nazi rally film Triumph of the Will and Olympia, about the 1936 Olympic Games?

Leni Riefenstahl trained as a dancer and starred in mountain films before Hitler asked her to film the 1934 party rally. The work damaged her career and reputation after the war.

Which US president set up the Committee on Public Information in 1917 to win American support for World War I?

Woodrow Wilson created it by executive order in April 1917. Its chairman, the journalist George Creel, set out to reach every American several times over with patriotic messages.

Which World War I volunteers gave patriotic speeches in American cinemas while projectionists changed reels?

Four Minute Men were named for the time a projectionist needed to change reels. Some 75,000 volunteers gave the speeches in 5,200 communities during 1917 and 1918.

What nickname did Allied troops in the Pacific give the women who broadcast enemy radio propaganda in English?

Tokyo Rose was never a name used on air by any Japanese broadcaster. It was later pinned on Iva Toguri, an American citizen stranded in Japan, whom President Ford pardoned in 1977.

Which British war minister points at the reader in Alfred Leete's famous 1914 army recruiting poster?

Lord Kitchener first appeared in this pose on the cover of the magazine London Opinion in September 1914. The image began as a magazine advertisement and was only later turned into a recruiting poster.

In George Orwell's Animal Farm, which pig serves as the propaganda chief who explains away every broken commandment?

Squealer is Napoleon's second-in-command and a skilled orator. He even persuades the animals that the knacker's van taking Boxer away belongs to an animal hospital.

Which department in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four employs Winston Smith to rewrite old news for the Party?

Ministry of Truth is a deliberate misnomer, because its real work is falsifying the historical record. Each of the four ministries in the novel does the opposite of what its name promises.

Which Soviet Communist Party newspaper, launched by the Bolsheviks in 1912, has a name that means truth in Russian?

Pravda was the party's official paper until 1991. Because the rival paper's name means the news, Soviet readers joked that there was no news in the Truth and no truth in the News.

Which silversmith's engraving of the 1770 Boston Massacre helped turn colonial opinion against British troops?

Paul Revere copied the scene from an engraving by Henry Pelham and is often credited as its creator. It shows an officer ordering his men to fire and labels the customs office Butcher's Hall.

A champion athlete with no medical training praises a cough syrup in an advert; which propaganda technique is this?

Testimonial propaganda borrows the reputation of a respected or famous person to sell a message. It was one of the seven devices described by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis in the 1930s.

A wealthy candidate poses in overalls on a farm to look like an ordinary voter; which propaganda technique is this?

Plain folks appeals present the speaker as an average Joe who shares the audience's concerns. The aim is to win the trust of people who are suspicious of polished or intellectual speech.

Which propaganda technique pins an insulting label on a rival so that audiences reject him without weighing evidence?

Name-calling swaps argument for a bad label and lets fear and prejudice do the rest. Branding a politician a flip-flopper is a modern example.

Which propaganda technique leans on vague, appealing words such as freedom and honour without any concrete argument?

Glittering generalities are vague phrases with positive connotations and nothing to back them up. The term dates from the mid-19th-century United States, where Senator Rufus Choate probably brought it into general use.

Which propaganda technique borrows the respect people feel for a national flag and attaches it to a candidate?

Transfer, also called association, projects the qualities of one thing onto another. It is why American presidents are so often photographed in front of the flag.

Which propaganda technique shows only the facts that favour one side and hides everything that counts against it?

Card stacking is named after the trick of stacking the deck, in which cards that look shuffled are secretly arranged. The same method is also called cherry picking.

Which propaganda technique of blaming one group for a nation's ills is named after a ritual in Leviticus?

Scapegoating recalls the goat that was sent into the wilderness carrying the sins of the people. It shifts blame away from those responsible and distracts from fixing the real problem.

Which technique, named by Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf, uses a claim so outrageous that people assume nobody invented it?

The big lie works, Hitler argued, because ordinary people cannot imagine anyone having the nerve to twist reality so completely. Historian Jeffrey Herf says the Nazis used the method themselves.

Which propaganda technique picks emotionally charged words, such as regime where a neutral speaker says government?

Loaded language persuades through connotation rather than argument. Other pairs that describe one thing in two tones are bureaucrat and public servant, or elitist and expert.

Which tactic, long tied to Soviet replies to Western criticism, answers an accusation with a counter-accusation?

Whataboutism charges the critic with hypocrisy instead of answering the point. Soviet officials would meet criticism with a question beginning 'What about' and then name an event in the West.

Which word for a fake grassroots campaign did Texas senator Lloyd Bentsen coin in 1985 after a flood of staged letters?

Astroturfing borrows the name of a brand of artificial grass. Bentsen said a fellow from Texas could tell the difference between grass roots and the synthetic kind when insurers swamped him with mail.

Which practice of turning a leader into a flawless hero did Nikita Khrushchev attack in his 1956 secret speech?

Cult of personality was in the title of the report, which denounced Stalin almost three years after his death. Khrushchev read it to a closed session with no journalists present.

Which term means false information spread on purpose, unlike misinformation, which stems from honest error?

Disinformation is deliberate, while its sister term covers honest mistakes. Some trace the word to the Russian dezinformatsiya, apparently taken from the name of a KGB department.

Which word for political art and theatre began as the short name of a Soviet Communist Party department?

Agitprop blends the Russian words for agitation and propaganda. After the 1917 revolution an agitprop train toured the country with artists and actors performing simple plays.

Which colour names the kind of propaganda that hides its real source and pretends to come from the side it attacks?

Black propaganda carries a false source, often the very group it sets out to discredit. The white kind names its true origin openly, while the grey kind gives no source at all.

Which word entered English in 1950 through reporter Edward Hunter's articles on Chinese methods in the Korean War?

Brainwashing is a literal translation of a Chinese phrase meaning to wash the brain. It became a stock phrase of Cold War headlines, used to explain why some American prisoners cooperated with their captors.

Which name for sensational news reporting comes from a comic-strip character fought over by Pulitzer and Hearst?

Yellow journalism is named after the Yellow Kid, a comic strip that ran first in Pulitzer's New York World and later in Hearst's Journal. Both papers used scare headlines to win a circulation war.

Which word for aggressive, flag-waving patriotism comes from the chorus of a British music-hall song of the 1870s?

Jingoism grew out of a song sung in British pubs during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877 and 1878. The radical George Holyoake turned its catchword into a political label in a newspaper letter.

Which propaganda device softens a harsh reality, as critics say of the military term collateral damage?

Euphemism swaps an unpleasant phrase for a mild one. Critics argue that the term hides the human cost when non-combatants are killed or injured in combat.

Which term did the RAND Corporation coin in 2016 for a stream of rapid, repetitive messages across many channels?

Firehose of falsehood describes a model RAND saw in Russian propaganda: enormous volume and no concern for consistency. People are more likely to believe a story that seems to come from many sources.

Which Hollywood director made the Why We Fight films for the US Army under General George Marshall?

Frank Capra enlisted after Pearl Harbor and made the seven films as a direct response to the Nazi film Triumph of the Will. He reused enemy footage, recut to discredit the people who shot it.

Which 1925 Soviet film by Sergei Eisenstein dramatises a 1905 mutiny and includes the famous Odessa Steps scene?

Battleship Potemkin was written by Eisenstein as revolutionary propaganda and as a test of his theories of film editing. Its scene of soldiers firing on civilians has been recreated many times.

Which broadcaster, covertly funded by the CIA until 1972, beamed news into the Soviet bloc from its base in Munich?

Radio Free Europe was heavily jammed by the Soviet authorities, yet Polish Solidarity leader Lech Wałęsa later recalled listening in secret. Its headquarters stayed in Munich until 1995.

Whose sayings fill the Little Red Book, the most printed book in the world during China's Cultural Revolution?

Mao Zedong's quotations were first compiled for soldiers under his chosen successor, Lin Biao. Most editions had a red vinyl cover and were small enough to slip into a pocket.

Which animal, named Bert, taught American schoolchildren to duck and cover in a 1952 civil defense film?

A turtle called Bert ducks into his shell when a monkey sets off a firecracker beside him. The film was paid for by the Federal Civil Defense Administration and is often characterised as propaganda.

Which Olympic ceremony was devised for the 1936 Berlin Games, staged by Hitler's government as a propaganda showcase?

The torch relay from Olympia to the host city was promoted by organiser Carl Diem and became a permanent tradition. The 1936 Games were also the first to be televised.

Rival New York newspapers chased sensational stories about the sinking of the USS Maine in Havana before which war?

The Spanish–American War followed within months of the mysterious explosion that sank the ship in February 1898. Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst both saw headlines that would sell copies.

Which idealised art style did the 1934 Congress of Soviet Writers make the only approved method for Soviet artists?

Socialist realism showed an ideal Soviet society, with forced optimism about both the present and the future. Tragedy was allowed only if it was set in another time or place.

Which agency did President Roosevelt create in 1942 to run US wartime posters, radio broadcasts and film messages?

Office of War Information staff, led by the CBS newsman Elmer Davis, also reviewed Hollywood scripts for anything that showed the country in a negative light. The agency closed in September 1945.

Which Roman general wrote a third-person account of conquering Gaul to promote his victories to ordinary Romans?

Julius Caesar used the Commentaries to speak directly to the plebeians, bypassing the Senate. He cast himself as a superb military hero while his enemies in Rome spread rumours about his intentions.