Speech 450


Propaganda Techniques
(Institute for Propaganda Analysis, 1937-41)



a. Name Calling--giving an idea a bad label--is used to make us reject and condemn without examining the evidence


Koehler and Ancona, "This Is the Enemy," 1942 (winner of U.S. "Artists for Victory" competition for 1942)



George Grosz, "Swamp-Flowers of Capitalism," 1921 (Lewis: "The vampire prostitute, the syphilitic beggar, and the crude profiteer")


O. Caniche, "Behind the Power of the Enemy,--The Jew," 1943



Ben Shahn, "This Is Nazi Brutality," 1943




b. Glittering Generality--associating something with a "virtue word"--is used to make us accept and approve the thing without examining the evidence.

Campaign cartoon, ca. 1829


Devil (left)--"Take any, my dear Friend, they will all help you to grind the workies"
    Merchant (center left)--"My Old Friend, give me one of your favourites-Tammany--Sentinel, or Journal,or the poor will get their rights. I'll pay all."
    Box (bottom left)--"This contains the cause of all the misery and distress of the human family."
    Worker (center right)--"Now for a noble effort for Rights, Liberties, and Comforts, equal to any in the land. No more grinding the poor--But Liberty and the Rights of men."
    [Pro-labor candidates listed in upper right, with identification as to occupation--Baker, Machinist, Typesetter, etc.]


R. Gerhard Zill, "Adolf Hitler Is Victory," 1943



Ben Shahn, "McCarthy--Peace," 1968



Lyndon Johnson campaign poster, 1936

Note the positive words: Big, Young, Dynamic, First Class, Ablest, Stands with the President and for the People, etc.

1990 GOPAC Memo on Language


Article on G.O.P. list of 133 words


Marcer Mercer on "Newtspeak"



c. Transfer carries the authority, sanction, and prestige of something respected and revered over to something else in order to make the latter acceptable; or it carries authority, sanction, and disapproval to cause us to reject and disapprove something the propagandist would have us reject and disapprove.


Frank Newbould, "Your Britain--Fight for It Now," 1942



James Montgomery Flagg, "I Want You for U.S. Army," 1917



"Honk! If You Want To Keep Our Canal at Panama" (Florida Conservative Union)



Vietnam-era satire, showing skeleton



I Want Out


Contemporary greeting card



"Tropical Blend for the Savage Tan" (U.T. Daily Beacon, 5 May 1976)



"Torada Tequila" (The Drummer [Knoxville], 4-10 Nov. 1982)



"Miss Levi's," 1971


University Nautilus Grand Opening (U.T. Daily Beacon, 5 Oct. 1984)



Adv. for "Lambswool Underblanket"


The Bare XT Turbo System




d. Testimonial consists in having some respected or hated person say that a given idea or program or product or person is good or bad.


Alfred Leete, Lord Kitchener saying "Your Country Needs You," Sept. 1914



Leete (another version)



"On Behalf of Our Great Leader Mao, Fight Gloriously. On Behalf of the Great Socialist Bloc, Fight Gloriously," 1970



"Day of the Heroic Guerrilla [Che]," 1969




e. Plain Folks is the method by which a speaker attempts to convince the audience that he and his ideas are good because they are "of the people," the "plain folks."


"Together" (British), 1940



"Together with McGovern," 1972



R. Martinez, "Cuba"



Norman Rockwell, "Ours ... To Fight For--Freedom of Speech, ... of Worship, ... from Want, ... from fear," WWII




f. Card Stacking involves the selection and use of facts or falsehoods, illustrations or distractions, and logical or illogical statements in order to give the best or the worst possible case for an idea, program, person, or product.


Fred Spear, "Enlist"


--publ. in June 1915 by the Boston Committee of Public Safety, after the sinking of the Lusitania by a German U-boat attack. More than a thousand civilians were lost, 128 of them American.



C. J. Patterson, "New Names in Canadian History ... Enlist!," 1917



James Montgomery Flagg, "Travel? Adventure? Answer--Join the Marines!," ca. 1918



"Europe's Victory [Is] Your Prosperity," WWII




g. Band Wagon has as its theme, "Everybody--at least all of us--is doing it"; with it, the propagandist attempts to convince us that all members of a group to which we belong are accepting his program and that we must therefore follow our crowd and "jump on the band wagon."


"The Entire People Says (on April 10) Yes!"
(connected with the April 1938 vote by Austria to join Germany)