EOTO Part 1: Propaganda
Propaganda- information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.
Propaganda is usually used by governments of the world to advance their agenda. It can be a positive agenda or it can be negative or neutral. There are a lot of examples of propaganda in history. A huge piece of propaganda in the United States’ history was during WWII, the Rosie the Riveter poster where she says “We Can Do It!” This is an example of positive propaganda since most of the men were off at war fighting the Japanese and the Germans. The message is there to motivate women to step up and work in factories and farms and for them to have a bigger role in society during the war. The women can work as well as men mentality stuck around after the war and this started the rise of women in the workplace instead of solely being stay at home moms.
Another example of propaganda was created by Disney. It was an anti-Nazi propaganda video depicting Donald Duck having a nightmare. This nightmare was depicting him living in Nazi Germany as a Nazi. It shows how poor he is and this shows how little supplies the German soldiers would have later on in the war since they were stretched so thin. This video also shows Donald working against his will in a factory creating ammunition for the German Army. The video also makes a mockery of how often the Germans would have to Heil Hitler. This video overall shows that the conditions of the United States are much better than they are in Germany. It shows that we had more food and treated our workers much better and had much better living conditions than the Germans did during the war. The end of the video shows Donald getting so overworked that he snaps out of his nightmare and then is so thankful to be an American and not have to deal with such horrible life conditions.
The effects of propaganda would affect lower class people more than upper class because parts of the upper class tend to work with the government to influence the lower class. This can include companies donating money to political candidates to get laws passed in those companies favor. Even if it may have a negative effect on the lower class or minorities. Because of propaganda, people in the United States had negative attitudes towards immigrants of Japanese descent that were never part of their original country of origin in the 40s. It would not have been as bad toward Germans because they would blend in better with Americans of the 40s much better than the Japanese would unless they had a German accent. This hatred toward the Japanese at the time could have never gone away for some Americans at the time and could have hated the Japanese or German races entirely for the rest of their lives. Luckily people don’t seem to think that way anymore from my life experiences. From what I have experienced, most people disagree with the enemy’s opposing ideologies, not the innocent people that just happen to be a part of that race of the country that has committed wrongdoings.
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