It is well known that in war the first casualty is truth - that during any war truth is forsaken for propaganda.
One cannot wage war under present conditions without the support of public opinion which is tremendously molded by the press and other forms of propaganda.
The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact. Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity every crack in the common front against fascism.
To a considerable extent we are faced by a technology arms race with terrorists. The communications revolution has made it easier for terrorist groups to reach out to vulnerable individuals with their violent extremist ideology and propaganda. It has also facilitated fundraising recruitment and training.
But Big Oil and Big Coal have always been as skilled at propaganda as they are at mining and drilling. Like the tobacco industry before them their success depends on keeping Americans stupid.
Propaganda in the ordinary sense of the term plays a less important part in a consumer society where people greet all official pronouncements with suspicion.
The methods of peace propaganda which aim at establishing peace doctrine by argument and by creating a feeling favorable to peace in general seem to fall short of reaching the springs of human action and of dealing with the causes of the conduct which they seek to modify.
In fact because of this deep desire for peace the ruling class leaders of this land from 1945 on stepped up the hysteria and propaganda to drive into American minds the false notion that danger threatened them from the East.
Loud peace propaganda makes war seem imminent.
What can we put into the hands of people under oppressive regimes to help them? For me a big part of it is information knowledge - the ability to defeat propaganda by understanding it.