Propaganda

After conducting a class on advertising and its associated vocabulary (target group, product, slogan, jingle...), the natural follow-up step was a class on propaganda. I did some online research on American propaganda, and found some pretty wild things.

I imagine all Americans reading this, and probably a fair number of non-Yanks, recognize the quintessential US Army recruiting poster:

Conveniently, having done brief bios on both George Washington and Abe Lincoln last week, I noticed the nicely put together image of Uncle Sam, with Abe's top hat and beard (and no mustache), but George's facial features, hair color and age.

Some further research yielded this related one from the Vietnam War:

And there's these, from World War II:


When I studied modern US history (1945 on) in high school, my teacher mentioned that since the Cold War had recently ended (7 years or so), American propaganda was still slow to be declassified and released to the public. But similar stuff was even slower coming from the Soviet side. So I asked my students if they could find any propaganda from the Cold War which was produced on this side of the Iron Curtain.
They came up with some gems. (I've done my best - of course with outside help - to translate these)

American Lifestyle Official statistics of the USA: Every 44 minutes, a willful (premeditated?) murder. Every 9 minutes, someone is pickpocketed. Every 100 seconds, someone's home is broken into. Every 3 minutes, a car is stolen. Every 21 seconds there is a criminal act. In the lower left, the text reads: Every year people disappear without a trace (and you see the corresponding numbers for each city). This came out shortly after a plane carrying 60 Czechs was hijacked and taken to Munich. My student this morning pointed out the irony that those who were on the plane were probably thrilled to be outside of the Communist-controlled Czechoslovakia.

Clearly this is about the Berlin Wall. The text below roughly translates to "Can't get through!" to all imperialists living to the west of the wall. The irony here is that the wall was built to keep people in, not keep the westerners out. You can see the American on the left, looking all old and bumbling, especially compared to the happy, young Commie overlooking everything.

To emphasize the point of keeping people in, there was this image of someone trying to escape Czechoslovakia getting caught by the electified fence on the country's border with Germany. Not only was there the electified fence along the entire border, but there were armed guards at 100-meter intervals on 24-hour surveillance of the area, ordered to shoot anyone who came close to the border. These soldiers, upon successfully shooting and killing an innocent stranger, were treated to brand new watches, cars, and were celebrated by their peers and superiors.

This one simply says "With Communists to a better future." My friend Ryan recently quipped, "Communists are always looking toward the future. Especially in all pictures. They like saying, 'Don't look at what you got now, cause that's total crap. But some time, in the future, you'll be set. Stick with us.'"

I think I find this one the funniest of them all. It says "American agents (spies?) won't go through our village." I can't say I lived much during the Cold War, but I really don't think the US spent much time focusing its attention on the farmers in the middle of nowhere.

I'm not sure if you can make out the date written in the tear - is when the Soviet army rolled into town, and they ended up staying here until the mid-nineties. Certainly not the happiest of days in Czech history.

Two other Communist propaganda anecdotes I was told:
If you wanted a hobby outside of school or work, you had to belong to an organization. This organization, of course, was monitored by Communists, and was checked up on to be sure that no imperialist material was present which could possibly undermine Moscow's authority.
One student was very interested in amateur radios. He said he had no other hobbies - didn't drink, smoke, or chase girls. Just radios. As part of his membership in the amateur radio organization, he received a periodical dedicated to the inner workings of radios, complete with articles and schematic drawings. Great, right? Well, the first seven or eight pages of every issue was pure propoganda - articles on how great Mother Russia is, how the Imperialists are the devil and the like. This student said he never read the first few pages (as he just scanned through quickly until he got to the schematic drawings) until recently when he went through some of his old stuff, and he was pretty surprised, and amused, at the ridiculousness of it all.

The last bit of Czech Communist propaganda is probably my favorite piece of everything I've encountered. The USSR, for some reason or another, had little to no potato vegetation, and so potato farming was deemed part of Czechoslovakia's duty in the Communist world.
Apparently there's this beetle which eats the potatoes grown here. Farmers were constantly having to trap and kill the beetles, lest their crops destroyed. The beetle was cleverly nickamed the American beetle. "Make sure you get every last one! Kill them!!! All American beetles must die! They will RUIN not only everything you have worked for, but the entire Communist regime!" That was particularly well done, IMHO.

I am aware that some of the readers of this blog speak Czech pretty well. If I've made a pretty egregious error in my translations, or if you have any further insight to the images beyond my descriptions, I'd love to hear them.