propaganda posters now

PRINT Magazine

Now and Then: American Propaganda and Protest Posters

Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
Copy this page's address to your clipboard Link copied to clipboard

As a history nerd, I simply cannot resist going down the rabbit hole of the history behind great design. I found myself studying advertising design in HOW U’s online course , which discusses the history of advertising during the World War I era—which in turn piqued my interest. I decided to dig further into this era of advertising. One thing struck me during my research: Propaganda ads and protest art from a hundred years ago portray the same themes that we still see in today’s political climate.

In this week’s Print design education post, I will take a look at some world war one advertisements, particularly those themed on similar issues that we face today. What can we learn from the past advertisements and the public’s rallying cries from a century ago? That is a question I will leave you to answer. For now, let’s look at the graphic design of that era dealing with these issues.

For modern time posters, I grabbed protest poster designs from this article by Ellen Shapiro. I located vintage propaganda art and ads, and a few protest signs, from the Library of Congress website to create a contrast and compare of now and then. While these posters do not fully reflectthe sentiments of the times, they do provide glimpses into our American ancestors and their values. While common themes exist between then and now, the messages and tones contrast significantly. Let’s see how things have changed in the past century.

Below, we examine the artwork from 100 years ago and compare it to current designs based on the following issues: Nationalism, Immigration, Liberty and Justice, Humanitarian Fundraising, Jobs & the Economy, Women’s Advertising & Rights, and Health Insurance. Please feel free to share your thoughts and/or research in the comment section below.

A Century Later: American Propaganda Art and Posters

Nationalism:.

Title: Forward America! / Carroll Kelly 1917 ; Wright Henry Worth Inc. Creator(s): Kelly, Carroll, artist Date Created/Published: 1917. Medium: 1 print (poster) : lithograph, color ; 57 x 39 cm. Summary: Poster showing a figure of Columbia, brandishing an American flag and a shield, riding an eagle as she leads a large squadron of airplanes.

Title: Wake up America Day – April 19, 1917 / James Montgomery Flagg. Creator(s): Flagg, James Montgomery, 1877-1960, artist Date Created/Published: 1917. Medium: 1 print (poster) : lithograph, color ; 101 x 67.7 cm. Summary: Poster showing a woman, possibly Jean Earl Moehle (Möhle), dressed as Paul Revere carrying lantern and American flag. Moehle reenacted Paul Revere’s ride for the Wake Up America Patriot’s Day celebration in New York City. (Source: Flickr Commons project, 2015 and The New York Times, April 19, 1917)

immigration

Title: Remember your first thrill of American liberty Your duty – Buy United States government bonds–2nd Liberty Loan of 1917 / / Sackett & Wilhelms Corp. N.Y. Creator(s): United States. Department of the Treasury, funder/sponsor Date Created/Published: 1917.

Liberty & Justice:

Title: Liberty, freed, humanity’s need! / Alex. O. Levy. Creator(s): Levy, Alexander Oscar, 1881-1934, artist Date Created/Published: 1918. Medium: 1 print (poster) : lithograph, color. Summary: Allegory showing the figure of Liberty, arms outspread with broken chains hanging from her wrists, gathering children to her sides.

Title: That liberty shall not perish from the earth – Buy liberty bonds Fourth Liberty Loan / / Ioseph Pennell del. ; Heywood Strasser & Voigt Litho. Co. N.Y., imp. Creator(s): Pennell, Joseph, 1857-1926, artist Date Created/Published: [1918] Medium: 1 print (poster) : lithograph, color ; 104.2 x 71.6 cm. Summary: Poster showing the Statue of Liberty in ruins, and the New York skyline in flames.

Women Advertising & Rights:

View more protest signs from the Women’s March here .

TRUMP INTERNATIONAL HOTEL – COLUMBUS CIRCLE, NEW YORK, NY, UNITED STATES – 2017/01/15: Hundreds of activists and allies from the newly-formed anti-Trump group Rise & Resist staged a peaceful protest at Trump International Hotel and Tower in New York City, to fight against the radical changes to the American healthcare system proposed by the Trump Administration and Republicans. (Photo by Erik McGregor/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Title: Hold on to Uncle Sam’s insurance, the strongest, safest and cheapest insurance in the world – Keep it up after you are back in civil life / James Montgomery Flagg ; Forbes Boston. Creator(s): Flagg, James Montgomery, 1877-1960, artist Date Created/Published: 1918.

CPAC attending helps herself to a free “Repeal ObamaCare” at the 2013 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center at National Harbor MD on March 14, 2013. (Photo by Jeff Malet) (Newscom TagID: jmpphotos015623.jpg) [Photo via Newscom]

Learn more about advertising design in this online design course, Principles of Advertising Design.

These World War II Propaganda Posters Rallied the Home Front

By: Madison Horne

Updated: August 10, 2023 | Original: October 12, 2018

When Britain and France went to war with Germany in 1939, Americans were divided over whether to join the war effort. It wouldn't be until the surprise attacks on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 that the United States would be thrust into World War II . Once U.S. troops were sent to the front lines, hundreds of artists were put to work to create posters that would rally support on the home front .

Citizens were invited to purchase war bonds and take on factory jobs to support production needs for the military. As men were sent to battlefields, women were asked to branch out and take on jobs as riveters, welders and electricians.

To preserve resources for the war effort, posters championed carpooling to save on gas, warned against wasting food and urged people to collect scrap metal to recycle into military materials. In the spring of 1942, rationing programs were implemented that set limits on everyday purchases.

While many posters touted positive patriotic messages, some tapped fear to rally support for the Allied side and caution against leaking information to spies. "Loose lips sink ships" became a famous saying. Meanwhile, graphic images depicted a blood-thirsty Adolph Hitler and racist imagery of Japanese people with sinister, exaggerated features.

Today, the posters a offer a glimpse into the nation's climate during World War II and how propaganda was used to link the home front to the front lines.

Sign up for Inside History

Get HISTORY’s most fascinating stories delivered to your inbox three times a week.

By submitting your information, you agree to receive emails from HISTORY and A+E Networks. You can opt out at any time. You must be 16 years or older and a resident of the United States.

More details : Privacy Notice | Terms of Use | Contact Us

Argument: Propaganda’s Progression

Create an FP account to save articles to read later and in the FP mobile app.

ALREADY AN FP SUBSCRIBER? LOGIN

World Brief

Editors’ Picks
Africa Brief

China Brief

Latin America Brief

South Asia Brief

Situation report.

Flash Points
War in Ukraine
Israel and Hamas
U.S.-China competition
Biden's foreign policy
Trade and economics
Artificial intelligence
Asia & the Pacific
Middle East & Africa

Reimagining Globalization

Fareed zakaria on an age of revolutions, ones and tooze, foreign policy live.

Spring 2024 Issue

Print Archive

FP Analytics

In-depth Special Reports
Issue Briefs
Power Maps and Interactive Microsites
FP Simulations & PeaceGames
Graphics Database

From Resistance to Resilience

The atlantic & pacific forum, redefining multilateralism, principles of humanity under pressure, fp global health forum 2024.

By submitting your email, you agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use and to receive email correspondence from us. You may opt out at any time.

Your guide to the most important world stories of the day

Essential analysis of the stories shaping geopolitics on the continent

The latest news, analysis, and data from the country each week

Weekly update on what’s driving U.S. national security policy

Evening roundup with our editors’ favorite stories of the day

One-stop digest of politics, economics, and culture

Weekly update on developments in India and its neighbors

A curated selection of our very best long reads

Propaganda’s Progression

Over the years, misinformation campaigns have changed. here’s why the latest are so difficult to stamp out..

United States

In the last few years, propaganda has taken on a new character, and the effects will reverberate far into the future. To understand how, it is worth looking at influences over time.

In World Wars I and II, propaganda was used to shape public opinion through print. Especially during the first war, books, newspapers, cartoons, slogans, theatre, and even postage stamps were common vehicles on both sides to promulgate favorable information. The propaganda kept publics on-side and boosted the ranks and morale of the armies . By the second World War, propaganda had changed, though, and movies in particular were used to incite fear. There were still the usual posters to mobilize soldiers, but they were negative rather than positive. “Stop this Monster that Stops at Nothing,” read one.

In 1947, a publisher in St. Paul, Minnesota released a red-scare comic book titled: “Is This Tomorrow; America Under Communism!” The animated cover displays the American flag engulfed in red flames as a backdrop of Black and white U.S. soldiers being brutally attacked by Communist soldiers. In this case, propaganda crossed racial lines to ensure that all Americans, regardless of color, could identify with the need to support and join soldiers in the fight against communism at all cost. It galvanized the public through symbolism and general personalities, like the soldier, in which all citizens respected and could relate to.

By the Cold War, propaganda mixed both methods: the promotion of ideologies and the demonization of personalities. In Cuba in 1956, the social revolution and propaganda strategy turned the collective consciousness of the Cuban people towards the personality of Fidel Castro . Castro was born to wealth but hated the elite, a welcome sentiment among those struggling for a decent living. Castro personally represented the struggle. Like other revolutionary leaders in history, i.e. Lenin and Trotsky, Mao, Haiti’s Louverture, Algeria’s Fanon, and the Mexican Emiliano Zapata, the U.S. propaganda used images and caricatures of Castro to demonize all that he stood for. However, the propaganda backfired, as Castro’s ideologies struck a chord with Black America in terms of injustice and socioeconomic inequality. Moreover, his appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1959 added an unexpected appeal as a victorious rebel with an attractive guerilla sidekick in Che Guevara. Ideological propaganda and the demonization of personalities as tools were losing ground. Citizens were beginning to use their own intelligence to determine what and who was to be avoided in foreign affairs.

The Arab Spring rebellions from 2010 to 2015 mark the boom in the use of the internet for propaganda . However, instead of strategic positioning by a war office, images and videos were posted by average citizens. Different than previous propaganda, the focus was on the populist struggle. People were tired of being oppressed by poverty and inequality, as exemplified by Mohamed Bouazizi, aged 26, who set himself on fire publicly in Tunisia as the ultimate protest against poverty . Following his act, which spurred the rebellions, citizens took the promotion of propaganda into their own hands through social media. As such, the propaganda of the Arab Spring movement intended to communicate inequities and the rise of populism.

On the heels of the Arab Spring came the rise of the Islamic State, and with it another iteration of propaganda, this one with a clear vision to stamp out Western values with Islam. A major shift in vehicles for promotion differentiates this propaganda from all past years. The dawn of social media with worldwide access became the primary propaganda tool for the Islamic State. Platforms like Facebook and YouTube were used to send highly effective videos, both taped and real-time, that infiltrate the psyche visually, auditorily, and intellectually. This level of propaganda serves as a cognitive manipulation , often not recognized until one is faced with dire consequences from nefarious actions, or until there is a change in one’s own identity . More effective than posters, stamps, and movies with hired actors, cyber-propaganda is today’s most dangerous form of guerilla warfare.

Russia’s cyber-propaganda in the United States over the past four years has helped to divide the country ideologically to the point of an insurrection by radical Trump supporters. Indeed, its misinformation, promoted easily through social media in the form of advertisements, YouTube videos, and Twitter chats has stoked hate and conspiracy theories. This reaches millions of Americans.

As it relates to revolutionary movements, the author Jeff Goodwin offers a fundamental reason as to why small numbers of rebels can be successful in their missions: “One possible explanation is that insurgencies that are ‘racial’ or ethnic in nature as well as rooted in class or socioeconomic grievances are likely to be particularly intractable, whereas rebellions that are merely class-based will be easily defeated or co-opted.” Russian propaganda in the United States included messages that preyed upon multiple ideological differences within the fabric of the nation. They promoted messages of fear about losing jobs to immigrants, and Second Amendment rights being stripped. They pushed misinformation about federal overreach, and the need for more policing to stop crime.

Given real problems that underlie those messages—the economic decline of white people in states that in the past profited from the free labor of Black slaves , coupled with a new industrial revolution that left their industries behind—and you’ve got a high likelihood that Trump supporters will continue to mobilize. Russia use of the age-old power of propaganda might have set the scene for the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, but quelling the intra-state discord is up to America.

Angela R. Pashayan is a Ph.D. student in political science at Howard University.

The Capitol Coup Attempt Was the Far-Right’s Opening Shot

Jan. 6 was a classic example of propaganda by the deed—a revolutionary approach favored by everyone from 19th-century anarchists to Osama bin Laden.

What Can Insurance Tell Us About the Capitol Mob?

And how Biden can use economic theory to stave off more riots.

The Capitol Invasion Was a Coup From Below

Trump borrowed from the playbook of his favorite dictator, Egypt’s Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, by inciting a mob to launch an insurrection.

Sign up for Editors' Picks

A curated selection of fp’s must-read stories..

You’re on the list! More ways to stay updated on global news:

How Joe Biden Sabotaged the ‘Rules-Based Order’

Panama picks a new president, are campus protesters heroes or hypocrites, biden proposes new asylum system policies, biden draws a red(ish) line on israel, editors’ picks.

1 Are Campus Protesters Heroes or Hypocrites?
2 Why Won't More Feminists Speak Up For Israeli Victims of Sexual Violence?
3 In the New Cold War, Deindustrialization Means Disarmament
4 What Does America Want in Ukraine?
5 Becoming Indian
6 What America’s Palestine Protesters Should and Shouldn’t Do

Panama Presidential Election: Mulino Wins With Martinelli's Blessing

Biden proposes new asylum eligibility timeline at u.s.-mexico border, israel-hamas war: biden pauses some military aid to israel over rafah plans, more from foreign policy, nobody is competing with the u.s. to begin with.

Conflicts with China and Russia are about local issues that Washington can’t win anyway.

The Very Real Limits of the Russia-China ‘No Limits’ Partnership

Intense military cooperation between Moscow and Beijing is a problem for the West. Their bilateral trade is not.

What Do Russians Really Think About Putin’s War?

Polling has gotten harder as autocracy has tightened.

Can Xi Win Back Europe?

The Chinese leader’s visit follows weeks of escalating tensions between China and the continent.

What Does America Want in Ukraine?

Germany is now spying on its own top spy, saudi arabia is on the way to becoming the next egypt, becoming indian.

FP’s flagship evening newsletter guiding you through the most important world stories of the day, written by Alexandra Sharp . Delivered weekdays.

A group of angry people rallying in front of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

We are all propagandists now

Professor of Communication, Texas A&M University

Disclosure statement

Jennifer Mercieca does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Texas A&M University provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation US.

View all partners

The U.S. is in an information war with itself. The public sphere, where Americans discuss public issues, is broken . There’s little discussion – and lots of fighting.

One reason why: Persuasion is difficult, slow and time-consuming – it doesn’t make good television or social media content – and so there aren’t a lot of good examples of it in our public discourse.

What’s worse, a new form of propaganda has emerged – and it’s enlisted us all as propagandists.

Persuasion versus propaganda

I teach classes on political communication and propaganda in America. Here’s the difference between the two:

Political communication is persuasion used in politics. It helps to facilitate the democratic process.

Propaganda is communication as force; it’s designed for warfare. Propaganda is anti-democratic because it influences while using strategies like fear appeals, disinformation, conspiracy theory and more.

Since there are few examples of persuasion in our public sphere these days, it is difficult to know the difference between persuasion and propaganda. That’s worrisome because politics is not war, so political communication isn’t – and shouldn’t be – the same as propaganda.

The manufacture of consent

Mass propaganda techniques emerged with mass communication technologies like posters , pictures and movies during the first World War.

That old propaganda model was designed by political elites to “ manufacture consent ” at home so that citizens would support the war, and to demoralize the enemy abroad.

According to linguist and social critic Noam Chomsky , the manufacture of consent was believed by elites to be necessary because they thought “the mass of the public are just too stupid to be able to understand things…We have to tame the bewildered herd, not allow the bewildered herd to rage and trample and destroy things.”

During World War I, George Creel’s Committee on Public Information , a federal agency, oversaw the production of pro-war films like the 1918 silent film “ America’s Answer .” When Americans went to see the film in theaters, they would often encounter a speech from one of the “ Four Minute Men ” – the local citizens whom Creel enlisted to give patriotic speeches during the four minutes it took to change the movie reels.

After World War I, according to Herman and Chomsky , all sorts of elites turned to propaganda to “tame the bewildered herd.” The old propaganda was good at taming citizens. But there was a nasty side effect that played out over almost a century of its use: disengagement. Political communication scholars in the 1990s and early 2000s worried about what they saw as the crisis in democracy, which was civic disengagement characterized by low voter turnout, low political party affiliation and rising distrust, cynicism and disinterest in politics.

The manufacture of dissent

The elite-controlled old vertical propaganda model couldn’t withstand the changes in communication brought on by the new participatory media – first talk radio, then cable, email, blogs, chats, texts, video and social media.

According to recent Pew research, 93% of Americans are connected to the internet and 82% of Americans are connected to social media . We now all have direct access to communicate in the public sphere – and, if we choose, to create, circulate and amplify propaganda.

A lot of people use their social media connections and platforms to knowingly and unknowingly spread misinformation, disinformation, conspiracy and partisan talking points – all forms of propaganda. We’re all propagandists now.

Rather than the elite manufacturing consent, a new propaganda model has emerged in the 21st century: what I call the “manufacture of dissent.”

New crisis in democracy

The “manufacture of dissent” model takes advantage of our individual abilities to produce, circulate and amplify propaganda. It sets us in motion to, in Chomsky’s words, “rage and trample and destroy things.”

The new propaganda can emerge from anyone, anywhere – and it is designed to create chaos so no one knows whom to trust or what is true.

Now we have a new crisis in democracy.

Citizens are called upon and trained by political parties, media, advocacy organizations, platforms, corporations – and more – to become propagandists, even without realizing it. Though both sides of the political spectrum can and have used the new propaganda, it has been embraced more on the right, largely to counter the old manufacture of consent model embraced by the mainstream.

For example, the slogan topping daily emails sent by ConservativeHQ , a longstanding and influential conservative news blog, says, “The home for grassroots conservatives leading the battle to educate and mobilize family, friends, neighbors, and others to defeat the anti-God, anti-America, Marxist New Democrats.”

From this perspective, politics is a “battle,” it’s warfare and ConservativeHQ’s readers can fight by educating and mobilizing – by spreading ConservativeHQ’s propaganda.

Likewise, the conspiracy website InfoWars tells its audience “there’s a war on for your mind.”

Social media platforms train users to communicate as propagandists: Recent research shows that platform users learn to express polarizing emotions like outrage through “social learning.” Social media users are taught through app feedback – positive reinforcement through notifications – and peer-learning – what they see others do – to post outrage even if they don’t feel outraged and they don’t want to spread outrage.

The more outrage we see, the more outrage we post.

A screenshot of ConservativeHQ's home page, where they describe themselves as '...leading the battle to educate and mobilize family, friends, neighbors, and others to defeat the anti-God, anti-America, Marxist New Democrats'

Dissent and distrust

Today’s new model of propaganda has dangerous consequences.

The Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection was a direct result of the manufacture of dissent. Right-wing politicians, citizens and media used disinformation, misinformation, conspiracy, fear appeals and outrage circulated via the old and new propaganda to cast doubt on the nation’s electoral process.

President Trump primed his followers to believe that the election would be “ rigged ,” which led people to look for and circulate so-called “evidence ” of fraud.

Courts and election officials certified the integrity of the election . Conspiracists saw that as further evidence of the “plot” and supported Trump’s Big Lie that the election had been stolen.

Trump’s supporters amplified the conspiracy via posts on social media, videos, text messages, emails and secret groups – spreading doubt about the election to their friends, neighbors and audiences.

When Trump told people to march on the Capitol to defend their freedom, they did.

Politics is war

But the Big Lie that led to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection was merely part of an even bigger lie.

Since the 1990s and the emergence of the manufacture of dissent, right-wing propaganda’s major premise has been that “politics is war and the enemy cheats.” Every news story from that perspective is an elaboration on that theme, including those about the 2020 election.

When politics is seen as war and the enemy can’t be trusted, then every election is seen as dire and the electoral process that denies your side victory is seen as unfair. According to a recent Monmouth University poll , 30% of Americans still believe Trump’s Big Lie.

The legitimacy of the American political system requires the actual consent of the governed, and its vitality and health requires we allow actual dissent. But our broken public sphere has neither.

Both come from persuasion, not propaganda.

This isn’t about nostalgia for traditional propaganda. Both the old propaganda and the new propaganda are anti-democratic. The old propaganda manufactured Americans’ consent, using communication as force to keep people disengaged and compliant.

The new propaganda manufactures dissent. It uses communication as force to keep people engaged and outraged – and it sets us in motion to trample and destroy things.

[ The Conversation’s most important politics headlines, in our Politics Weekly newsletter . ]

Social media
Noam Chomsky
Political communication
Donald Trump

Events and Communications Coordinator

Assistant Editor - 1 year cadetship

Executive Dean, Faculty of Health

Lecturer/Senior Lecturer, Earth System Science (School of Science)

Sydney Horizon Educators (Identified)

We Are All Propagandists Now

large group of trump supporters gathered on steps in front of u.s. capitol building

The U.S. is in an information war with itself. The public sphere, where Americans discuss public issues, is broken . There’s little discussion – and lots of fighting.

What’s worse, a new form of propaganda has emerged – and it’s enlisted us all as propagandists.

Persuasion Versus Propaganda

I teach classes on political communication and propaganda in America. Here’s the difference between the two:

Political communication is persuasion used in politics. It helps to facilitate the democratic process.

The Manufacture Of Consent

Mass propaganda techniques emerged with mass communication technologies like posters , pictures and movies during the first World War.

That old propaganda model was designed by political elites to “ manufacture consent ” at home so that citizens would support the war, and to demoralize the enemy abroad.

The Manufacture Of Dissent

Rather than the elite manufacturing consent, a new propaganda model has emerged in the 21st century: what I call the “manufacture of dissent.”

New Crisis In Democracy

The new propaganda can emerge from anyone, anywhere – and it is designed to create chaos so no one knows whom to trust or what is true.

Now we have a new crisis in democracy.

From this perspective, politics is a “battle,” it’s warfare and ConservativeHQ’s readers can fight by educating and mobilizing – by spreading ConservativeHQ’s propaganda.

Likewise, the conspiracy website InfoWars tells its audience “there’s a war on for your mind.”

The more outrage we see, the more outrage we post.

Dissent And Distrust

Today’s new model of propaganda has dangerous consequences.

President Trump primed his followers to believe that the election would be “ rigged ,” which led people to look for and circulate so-called “evidence”* of fraud.

Courts and election officials certified the integrity of the election . Conspiracists saw that as further evidence of the “plot” and supported Trump’s Big Lie that the election had been stolen.

When Trump told people to march on the Capitol to defend their freedom, they did.

Politics Is War

But the Big Lie that led to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection was merely part of an even bigger lie.

The legitimacy of the American political system requires the actual consent of the governed, and its vitality and health requires we allow actual dissent. But our broken public sphere has neither.

Both come from persuasion, not propaganda.

The new propaganda manufactures dissent. It uses communication as force to keep people engaged and outraged – and it sets us in motion to trample and destroy things.

* This link is no longer active and has been removed.

This article by Jennifer Mercieca originally appeared on The Conversation .

Polls Have Value, Even When They Are Wrong

A Texas A&M expert explains how a pollster reads a poll.

An aerial view of downtown Taiwan at sunset

First U.S. Ambassador To Visit Taiwan In Four Decades Reflects On Tensions With China

Texas A&M Professor John T. Hennessey-Niland, former ambassador to Palau, visited Taiwan in 2021, a first since diplomatic ties were ended.

Black and white portrait of jimmy carter

How Will We Remember Jimmy Carter?

Texas A&M professors of history, politics, government and philanthropy reflect on the 39th president’s legacy.

Recent Stories

Texas A&M Corps of Cadets To Commission Largest Class Of Military Officers In Nearly 40 Years

Friday afternoon's commencement ceremony will see 165 officers commissioned into the U.S. armed forces.

Aggie students walk near the Academic Building on the Texas A&M campus

Students Recognized For Embodiment Of Texas A&M Core Values

Aggies were honored this week for displaying characteristics comparable to the awards' outstanding namesakes.

Car in flooded waters as people on golf cart look on.

Recovery Resources Available For Texas Livestock Producers, Individuals Affected By Floods

Texas A&M AgriLife Extension disaster recovery experts are urging rural homeowners to test well water before using it for drinking, cooking or brushing teeth.

Subscribe to the Texas A&M Today newsletter for the latest news and stories every week.

clock This article was published more than 5 years ago

Why propaganda is more dangerous in the digital age

The techniques are the same, but now anyone can go viral.

On July 6, 1916, a poster depicting Uncle Sam beckoning viewers to enlist in the U.S. Army appeared in an issue of Leslie’s Weekly, a popular U.S. magazine. The poster’s creator, James Montgomery Flagg, had no idea just how popular his creation would become. Working without a model or concept in a narrow window of time before publication, Flagg scrambled to embody the urgency of American participation in the Great War.

Despite the rush, Flagg created a masterpiece. It would go on to be reprinted more than 4 million times by 1918 and become a permanent part of American culture. Even though propaganda posters have been phased out in favor of more modern, effective means of communication, the same psychological techniques of manipulation that made Flagg’s masterpiece so effective continue to pervade our society.

Today, propaganda posters have been replaced by digital visuals, such as the meme, that are easily produced, mass-disseminated and politically pointed, with the potential to do even greater damage to American politics and society than propaganda posters did a century ago.

Partially because of the popularity of Flagg’s Uncle Sam rendering, posters quickly became a wildly popular medium for disseminating information. They were relatively cheap to produce and could be plastered just about everywhere, from post offices to schools to sides of buildings. The government used emotional imagery to draw thousands of volunteers to the armed services and create broad support for the war effort at home. Officials zeroed in on increasing morale, encouraging conservation, reducing errors at work, promoting workplace safety and urging viewers to buy U.S. bonds to help fund the war.

Flagg, a veteran artist and contributor to publications such as Life magazine, ended up creating almost 50 designs on behalf of the Committee on Public Information, the U.S. propaganda and intelligence arm, by the end of World War I.

Flagg’s most iconic poster depicted the figure of a gallantly dressed Uncle Sam with the prominent text, “I Want You for the U.S. Army.” Flagg found inspiration in Alfred Leete’s image of Lord Kitchener urging Brits to join the war cause. In an effort to save money by not hiring a model, Flagg used his own face (adding a goatee) to create Uncle Sam, a move later lauded by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. While Uncle Sam dated to the War of 1812, Flagg brought it to life, giving the character an air of purpose that has itself become iconic.

The poster, officially adopted by the Army in 1917, became an effective recruitment tool to swell the ranks of the military. It was such a resounding success that it would be reprinted during World War II and pops up again and again in popular culture today.

These results explain why the propaganda poster became so popular with government officials: It was immensely effective. So effective, in fact, that coinciding with the publication of the original Kitchener recruitment poster in September 1914, the British army saw the highest number of volunteers enlist for the entire duration of the war. In the United States, striking visuals and simple slogans drove home patriotic ideals and nostalgic themes that stuck with people.

Many posters sought to tug at Americans’ heartstrings with depictions of soldiers and their families, while others appealed to the population’s sense of outrage by reminding viewers of the brutality of the enemy. Some even aimed to generate a sense of guilt. In one World War I poster, a man is playing with his children as they ask him, “Daddy, what did YOU do during the Great War?”

This messages reflected one element of why wartime posters were so effective: In the words of William Bird and Harry Rubenstein, propaganda posters were an “agent for making the war aims the personal mission of every citizen.” The posters also capitalized on the ability of psychological messages inherent in visual art to alter the subconscious. Edward Bernays, called the “father of public relations,” named his 1928 book “Propaganda,” arguing that “engineering consent” through such means was vital for the survival of democracy. The truth is, modern advertising owes much of its existence to visual propaganda methods.

Posters remained a popular form of government communication in the interwar years. For instance, public wellness programs used posters to encourage exercise and conservation and promote national parks.

The popularity and effectiveness of Flagg’s creation led the U.S. military to bring back the poster format during World War II, when some 200,000 designs were used. These posters featured such iconic characters as Rosie the Riveter saying “We Can Do It,” as well as others calling citizens to arms, reminding people about conservation and recycling and fomenting political and societal unity.

There was an occasional dark side to these posters as well: Many expressed racist, xenophobic and bigoted messages in an effort to demonize the enemy. While this was more common in countries such as Nazi Germany, where Hitler’s brutal regime used propaganda to demonize the Jewish population, American posters were not above stereotypes and bigoted messages, sometimes depicting foes as barbarian brutes with racist depictions of their leaders.

Today, the poster has largely been relegated to college dorm rooms and movie theaters. But many of the principles that were at play in propaganda posters during World Wars I and II have evolved as methods of manipulation. The digital age has ushered in a new form of artistic expression: the meme.

While memes originally had a comedic purpose, they invaded the political realm in a far more sinister manner during the 2016 presidential campaign. Like the propaganda posters from the world wars, politically pointed memes employed a striking visual coupled with effective communication intended to alter the mind frame or subconscious of a viewer. In many cases, they also aimed to dehumanize the opposition and to personalize the political cause in question.

The alt-right in particular weaponized the meme format to spread disinformation through social media. Members of the alt-right turned characters such as Pepe the Frog into symbols for their virulently racist movement, building awareness of and even support for their cause. The meme propaganda came from foreign sources, too, as reports of Russian bots spreading disunity surfaced.

Most worryingly, the new political art format has far greater viral potential than the posters of yesteryear. Instead of just government-commissioned posters, any figure, domestic or international, with a political agenda can reach a mass audience with weaponized symbols, images and digital art to advance a political cause.

Ultimately, propaganda posters can teach us a great deal about the psychological effects of politically pointed art. While memes may seem like the silly clutter of Internet culture, studies of advertising and the way we consume information have shown that such images can alter our subconscious , often in ways we do not understand. Or as one Garfield meme put it, “You are not immune to propaganda.” And the longevity of propaganda is readily apparent — Flagg’s own creation of Uncle Sam pointing a finger at us has long outlasted its original intent. In many ways, it has become a staple of Americana.

The danger with memes is that the visuals are no longer centrally orchestrated pieces, designed to advance the public good. They spread in real time, seemingly from the depths of the Internet, and virtually anybody can achieve virality through the power of mass replication. Discerning facts from fiction has become the real challenge with this latest incarnation of visual propaganda. Time will tell if memes will become a permanent part of our political history, but for now, we are still experiencing their unpredictable effects.

Visual Persuasion in World War I

National wwi museum and memorial.

Back Our Girls Over There - Poster (1918) by Clarence F. Underwood National WWI Museum and Memorial

The Power of Images

In World War I, the poster, previously the successful medium of commercial advertising, was recognized as a means of spreading national propaganda with near unlimited possibilities. Its value was increasingly appreciated; the poster could impress an idea quickly, vividly and lastingly.

"I Want You For the U.S. Army" (1917/1917) by James Montgomery Flagg National WWI Museum and Memorial

Some posters during the war relied on the viewers' sense of duty to convey a message, appealing to a person's desire to take direct action in the conflict. In 1917, James Montgomery Flagg created one of the most recognizable American poster from the war, a painting of Uncle Sam in his own likeness. Posters like this encouraged men and women on all sides of the war to serve their countries.

Vaterlandspende - German WWI Poster (1918) by Louis Oppenheim National WWI Museum and Memorial

Sentimentality

Other posters appealed to the viewers' emotions: their national pride, honor or sentimentality, speaking to their desire to help their fellow citizens and families.

Enlist - Poster (1915-06) by Fred Spear, Boston Public Safety Committee, and Sackett and Wilhelms Corp., NY National WWI Museum and Memorial

Other posters capitalized on more violent emotions, especially fear and anger at the enemy. In the United States, posters began to make their appeals to the “American sense of right and wrong” long before the country officially entered the war in April 1917. Posters urged the country to prepare and, after the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915, to enlist.

"5 1/2% Military Loan" Russian WWI Poster (1916) National WWI Museum and Memorial

“Posters literally deluged the country,” said one American observer.

“On every city street, along the rural highways, the posters were to be found repeating their insistent messages day and night.” British historian Martin Hardie also wrote in 1920 that “it was inevitable that posters should be among the first munitions of war.”

All Content: National WWI Museum and Memorial Curator of Education: Lora Vogt Digital Content Manager: Liesl Christman Senior Curator: Doran Cart Registrar: Stacie Petersen Director, Archives and Edward Jones Research Center: Jonathan Casey Made possible in part by the generous support of the William T. Kemper Foundation, the Regnier Family Foundation and the David T. Beals, III Charitable Trust. theworldwar.org

Curator's Tour

Architectural tour, 11 | 11 | 18, introduction to the museum and memorial, make way for democracy, kansas citians in the war, the kansas city spirit, the allies in kansas city.

Please enter at least 3 characters

World War II Propaganda Posters

Created by everyone from Norman Rockwell to the Stetson Hat Company, World War II propaganda posters played a crucial role in motivating Americans.

This article appears in: October 2002

By Eric H. Roth

Military posters played a crucial role in motivating Americans to do their best and make sacrifices—of all kinds—during World War II. The War Department, Red Cross, General Electric, Stetson Hat Company, and dozens of other organizations created thousands of patriotic posters to mobilize public support. Poignant, colorful images on paper were created and distributed to

build support for avenging Pearl Harbor, protecting American families, selling war bonds, conserving fuel, increasing factory production, promoting democratic ideals, growing vegetables, expanding the workforce, and keeping secrets.

The propaganda war, before television and the Internet, looked—and maybe worked—best on posters. Wartime posters, often printed in runs of 10,000, were designed to be used once, understood in 20 seconds, displayed for a few months, and thrown away. The few remaining posters, often created by skilled artists and illustrators, have become historical artifacts. Museums, scholars, collectors, veterans—and, increasingly, baby boomers—are celebrating these wartime images for their sociological, aesthetic, and historical value. World War II posters have become hot commodities and very collectible items.

“The Posters That Won the War,” a cyber exhibition at www. posterny. com by the Chisholm-Larsson Gallery, tells the story and highlights 50 original WWII posters: “The production, recruiting, and War Bond posters of WWII were ‘America’s weapons on the wall.’ Millions of posters of hundreds of unique designs cascaded off the presses and onto the American landscape, raising hopes in the dark days after Pearl Harbor and convincing folks on the homefront that their efforts were the key to victory. Today, the relatively few posters that remain are a colorful, nostalgic, and highly collectible snapshot of America at war.”

Robert Chisholm, the owner of Chisholm-Larsson Gallery in New York City, counts 627 different original WWII posters in his collection of 24,000-plus posters. “Whatever your budget, you can find a WWII poster,” says Chisholm. “Ninety percent are $400 or less.”

A Nazi poster by German artist Ludwig Hohlwein is among those that command the highest prices among collectors.

The gold standard for collectors’ WWII vintage posters, however, remains the Meehan Military Posters catalog. “The only organization in the world,” according to the company’s literature, “devoted to providing original, vintage posters of the two World Wars and Spanish Civil War to collectors, museums, decorators, and investors.” Meehan Military Posters divides WWII posters into nine distinct categories: pilots/planes, recruitment, conservation, espionage, nurses, foreign aid, war production, morale, and foreign on its searchable Web site.

Each color catalog, published twice a year, contains thumbnail-sized reproductions of hundreds of original military posters from “nearly all combatants in both World Wars.” A concise description gives the background of each poster, noting the artist, year of publication, size, condition, and price. The catalog costs $15, but many collectors and dealers consider it an essential investment. “His prices are very good, very fair,” observes a West Coast competitor, Burt Blum, owner of the Trading Post in Santa Monica and a lifelong dealer in vintage magazines and posters.

Fair should not be confused with cheap. “Today an expensive WWII poster can command as much as $4,000 or $5,000,” declares Meehan. “A German poster designed and drawn by the great German poster artist Ludwig Hohlwein could easily be in that range.” Meehan Catalog #36 features many rare, expensive, and fascinating posters. A pair designed by Melbourne Brindle graces the front and back covers. The first haunting image shows a sinking ship, printed by Stetson Hat Company. It warns: “Loose Talk Can Cost Lives! … Keep it under your STETSON.” The second dramatic poster of a sunken Merchant Marine ship beneath a German U-Boat, with the words “Careless talk did this … Keep it under Your Stetson,” sells for $2,750.

The pricey Stetson poster illuminates a common theme of many World War II posters: the dangers of espionage and careless talk. “Silence—means security. Be careful what you say or write,” by illustrator Jes Wilhelm Schlaikjer in 1945 shows a night-patrol infantryman walking somewhere in the Pacific. Meehan sells it for $325. Other military posters, more available and by less well-known artists, such as the 1943 “This Man May Die If You Talk Too Much,” featuring a handsome sailor looking through a porthole, and the 1944 “We Caught Hell!—someone must have talked” sell for $145 in the poster catalog. These poignant posters place clear responsibility for the safety of sailors and soldiers on the silence of civilians and fellow servicemen.

Almost the entire “Loose lips sink ships” poster series has become quite collectible. An excellent example, according to veteran poster dealer Gail Chisholm (Robert’s sister, neighbor, and friendly rival poster gallery owner), shows a hissing snake surrounded by the words “Less Dangerous Than Careless Talk”—she sells it for $330. The easy-to-use Chisholm Gallery Web site includes a wide selection of World War II posters. “There are also a lot of great and amusing posters against careless talk,” such as “Keep Mum, She’s Not So Dumb,” observes Robert Chisholm.

“Powers of Persuasion: Poster Art of World War II,” a popular exhibit at the National Archives Building in Washington DC from May 1994 to February 1995, emphasized the two psychological approaches used to motivate Americans: pride and fear. “Words are ammunition,” said a Government Information Manual issued by the Office of War Information in the exhibit. “Each word an American utters either helps or hurts the war effort. He must stop rumors. He must challenge the cynic and the appeaser. He must not speak recklessly. He must remember that the enemy is listening.” An online exhibit culled from the museum show features 33 posters, one sound file, and some background historical information.

James Montgomery Flagg painted this determined Uncle Sam in 1944. Note the wrench in his right hand.

Across the country at an outdoor flea market in Santa Monica, dealer Garrison Dover has found WWII military posters to be a hot topic. “When I get WWII posters, they tend to move fast,” said Dover, the owner of Pacific Posters International. “Sometimes a guy will ask if we have any WWII posters. You show him two or three, and he buys them all. Somebody who collects WWII posters will buy anything in stock … under the right circumstances.”

Price might be one of those circumstances. “Wartime posters go for $20 to $2,000,” continues Dover, with most posters going for around $200. “Anything selling for more than $2,000 is a one of a kind.” The significant price tag for those two Stetson Hat posters also reflects a general principle in collecting—the more unusual the item, the higher the price. “Most posters were government issues, but there are some from General Electric, General Motors, and other companies,” notes Robert Chisholm. “They are more collectible because they had a smaller circulation.”

“We are currently advertising posters printed in a series for the Kroger Baking Company of Cincinnati, Ohio, which they placed in their grocery store windows during the war,” says Meehan. “They are now selling for several thousand dollars each. Privately printed posters like these had very small print runs compared to government posters.” Yet some dealers consider it a mistake to confuse the initial print run with the number of surviving copies.

“People always want to know how many posters were printed, and you don’t know,” confesses Gail Chisholm. “The number printed has nothing to do with the number surviving. It wasn’t a successful (advertising) campaign if it wasn’t on the street.” Location can also be a factor in the perception of rarity and poster prices. Dover sells original vintage posters at antique malls, flea markets, and vintage poster shows, and only opens his Santa Barbara gallery for private appointments. His web site also leads to some sales.

Sometimes rarity and historical importance are not the most critical factors. Occasionally even relatively rare posters can be bought for under $250—especially if the image is something that few people would want to look at in their home. A somber 1942 poster of a dead sailor in the surf above the words “A Careless Word … A Needless Loss” is listed for $235 in the Meehan Military Posters Catalog #36.

A few posters have become celebrated American icons. James Montgomery Flagg’s 1941 version of Uncle Sam pointing, with the caption “I Want You for the U.S. Army,” consistently sells for well over $1,000. The Meehan Catalog lists the price as $1,500. This classic WWII poster, based on the infamous World War I poster, deliberately evokes the patriotic imagery from the “war to end all wars.”

An amusing British "loose lips" poster by G. Lacoste warned against female spies, both at home and abroad.

Most WWII posters, however, look quite different from WWI propaganda posters. “WWI posters were primarily designed by illustrators who volunteered their efforts,” says Sarah Stocking, president of the Independent Vintage Poster Dealers Association and owner of Sarah Stocking Fine Vintage Posters. “They mostly appeal to patriotism.” Stocking specializes in commercial European posters from the 1920s and 1930s.

Gail Chisholm makes a related point. “World War I posters are from a more innocent and naive society,” she says. “Obviously, it’s called the Great War. It was enough to have a pretty woman with a furling flag to convince young men to enlist and risk their lives.”

“Perhaps more importantly,” concludes Stocking, “WWI posters are not brutal.” Stocking carries posters on WWI, WWII, the Spanish Civil War, and propaganda. She “prefers” WWI posters because there is less text.

By contrast, American posters from WWII were often realistic, intense, and evocative of both positive and negative emotions.

“WWII posters were often made about fear and the enemy,” says Stocking. “The world had really changed in 20 years, and had gotten smaller because the government was worried about spying.” Radio broadcasts, airplanes, and increased tourism brought Europe “closer” to the United States. “World War II posters are much more aggressive,” concurs Gail Chisholm. The widely distributed poster showing a bomb, labeled “War Production,” targeted at the Rising Sun and Nazi swastika is an example. “Some also have ugly caricatures of Japanese and Germans—but especially Japanese.” Institutional collectors tend to be the major purchasers of the more controversial and/or foreign posters. American propaganda posters, however, appear politically correct in comparison to the vicious images in Axis propaganda posters. “I have a phenomenal Italian one—even away from the perspective of the war,” says Gail Chisholm. “It has an ugly, leering, black American soldier pulling down a Venus De Milo sculpture.” The harsh image, designed to inflame Italian fears about an American invasion, emphasizes racial hatreds. “Some patrons have gotten very upset by the image,” she says. She considers the disturbing image “a peek into history.” The controversial Italian poster, designed by Gino Boccasile in 1944, brings up another aspect of collecting historical posters. “Taking things out of context changes your perception,” observes Gail Chisholm. “You can have different interpretations. At the time, everybody understood a poster’s context, but now it is less clear.”

A few American posters, among the most sought after by institutional collectors, attempted to build relations between racial groups. A widely distributed poster, “United We Win,” shows steelworkers, a black man and a white man, working together under a giant American flag. “Those posters tend to be quite valuable,” says Gail Chisholm.

Patriotic imagery pervades many WWII posters and draws upon the nation’s rich heritage of patriotic symbols. “Americans Will Always Fight for Freedom,” by George Perlin, shows “America’s well-equipped infantry troops of 1943 passing in review in front of the ragged Continental troops of Valley Forge who also fought for freedom during the bleak and desperate winter of 1777-1778 some 166 years earlier,” explains Meehan. Price? $385. “Perhaps what made the American posters of World War II unique was that they equated patriotism with democracy,” wrote scholar G.H. Gregory, editor and compiler of the book, Posters of World War II. “They rallied the nation’s pride by recalling the marvel of the country’s institutions and its great tradition of freedom and democracy—its flag, its enduring documents, its national monuments, its political heroes, its historic heritage of fighting for liberty.”

Admiral King urged hard work on the home front in this navy poster.

The condition of vintage posters, like most collectibles, also affects value. Almost all WWII posters were sent by mail. Says Gail Chisholm, “WWII posters have folds. It goes with the territory. Small irregularities are expected. A missing corner doesn’t really matter, but a hand missing is more problematic.”

What else adds value to a particular WWII image? Beyond rarity, condition, and subject matter, vintage poster experts emphasize the importance of the artist and artwork. The illustrator’s name and reputation certainly affect the price. Artists Norman Rockwell, Ben Shahn, Jes Wilhelm Schlaikjer, James Montgomery Flagg, Arthur Szyk, and N.C. Wyeth all contributed their skills, creativity, and intelligence to the war effort. Their wartime propaganda efforts are now collectible items. Some popular artists’ works continue to dominate sales. Rockwell remains the most famous American artist to create wartime posters. The great Saturday Evening Post illustrator’s “Four Freedoms” paintings, inspired by President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1941 State of the Union address, were made into immensely popular posters during the war to sell war bonds and inspire patriotism. The most valuable poster, Rockwell’s 1943 “Freedom from Want,” showing three generations of a family eating a Thanksgiving meal, sells for $400 to $750. The other posters in the freedom series, “Freedom of Speech,” “Freedom of Worship,” and “Freedom from Fear” are slightly less expensive.

Schlaikjer, a Danish-born illustrator, developed a reputation for effective, inspiring posters. He created powerful recruitment posters for the U.S. War Department that feature heroic, handsome figures in dramatic poses in combat situations. A refugee from Denmark in 1940, Schlaikjer became America’s “official war artist” from 1942 to 1944. His 1942 recruitment posters for the Military Police, the Signal Corps, the Army Air Corps, Women’s Air Corps, and the Corps of Engineers sell for between $500 and $1,250.

Arthur Szyk, a Polish-born immigrant, also has loyal collectors. Szyk drew patriotic posters for U.S. Treasury war bonds, designed wartime postage stamps, and had his posters displayed by the USO at five hundred U.S. Army recreation centers. Szyk’s provocative caricatures, mocking cartoons, and biting satirical illustrations filled the magazine covers of Collier’s, Esquire, and Time. The U.S. Holocaust Museum is hosting an exhibit called “ The Art and Politics of Arthur Szyk “, until October 14, 2002.

Despite the near-universal recognition of his Uncle Sam “I Want You” poster, Flagg never really achieved the celebrity status that would guarantee top dollars. For example, Flagg created a few other World War II images, including a hatless, grim-faced Uncle Sam providing consumer advice: “You Can Lick Runaway Prices” by buying war bonds and paying taxes willingly. This Flagg poster sells for under $200.

The iconic Rosie the Riveter posters, which are practically impossible to buy these days, represent another common theme in WWII: the patriotic duties of women. These posters, sometimes exhorting women to join the workplace, have dramatically increased in value over the past 20 years. These “women do your part” posters have sociological significance that resonates with many contemporary consumers.

The U.S. Army Nurse Corps recruitment posters are equally distinctive, with photographs of wounded soldiers and concise testimonials. The kicker reads in large block letters: MORE NURSES ARE NEEDED—U.S. ARMY NURSE CORPS. “Sometimes people come in and say ‘I want such and such poster. My mom was the model,’” says Gail Chisholm. “‘Or my mom was a WAC.’ That’s always exciting.”

Seagram Distillers contributed this classic, colorful poster to the war effort in 1942.

Many WWII posters told civilian Americans to sacrifice in everyday activities—save tin cans, recycle paper, eat leftovers, grow vegetables, drive less to save gasoline and rubber, and even conserve waste fats. “Food conservation posters are also popular,” says Stocking. “The themes are also timeless. ‘Grow Your Vegetables’ can go in anyone’s kitchen.” Conservation posters often made a direct link to the military effort. “Can All You Can—It’s a Real War Job” placed a jar against colorful vegetables. Another poster featured a smiling woman carrying a load of food, proclaiming, “Of Course I Can! I’m as patriotic as can be—and rationing won’t worry me.” “Do with less—so they’ll have enough!” urged another poster featuring a smiling soldier in a helmet sipping coffee.

War bond posters remain probably the most affordable, diverse, and prevalent type on the market today. “It’s much easier to find a war bond poster,” says Robert Chisholm. “Giving money is easier than actually signing up and joining the military,” Stocking adds.

“Recruiting posters printed in America are rarer than war bond ones.” Some collectors, often veterans, focus on one service. Haddon H. Sundblom’s pithy recruitment poster, “Ready—Join U.S. Marines,” showcases a marine officer with movie-star good looks. “Marines have been so gung-ho and enthusiastic,” says Robert Chisholm. “Once a Marine, always a Marine.”

“Marine recruiting posters are certainly the most heavily collected American recruiting posters of all,” says Meehan. “The Marines are an elite, all-volunteer force whose members are typically proud of their service and enjoy reminding themselves and others of it.”

All the dealers emphasize the importance of taking proper care of posters. Some tips include: never do anything to paper that can’t be undone (no permanent adhesion, no Scotch tape, no masking tape, no dry mounting); use archival linen backing with water soluble glue; use acid-free paper; keep them out of the sunlight; and “treat them as an investment.” The relative fragility of paper, ironically, makes posters increasingly collectible. “People are becoming more aware of posters’ rarity and value,” says Robert Chisholm. “But don’t buy a poster as an investment. Buy it for visual, historical, or aesthetic reasons—and usually it will increase in value.” His sibling, Gail, agrees. “Buy because you love it and it appeals to you. It’s a nice bonus if the poster goes up in value.”

“Prices have gone way up,” says Dover. “It used to be that nobody much appreciated WWII posters. Ten, 15, 20 years ago, most people just weren’t interested” unless it was of a national icon (Rosie the Riveter) or by a national icon (Rockwell). These days Dover credits the longing for national unity for the posters’ appreciation. “Do you remember that feeling after 9/11?” he asks. “We all felt we were Americans and in it together. The posters of WWII are a reflection of when America pulled together like never before.”

Eric Roth has written about media, history, and public education for several publications. He currently teaches English at Santa Monica College and UCLA Extension.

Back to the issue this appears in

Join The Conversation

Share This Article

via= " class="share-btn twitter">

The central figure from Band of Brothers, Richard Winters passed into history.

General Patton signs an autograph for war correspondent Ernie Pyle.

George S. Patton: A Life Shaped by Dyslexia

The Duke of Windsor, fourth from right, accompanies the Viscount Gort and a contingent of British Army officers during an inspection of troops in France early in World War II.

The Duke and Duchess of Windsor: A Dark Royal Secret?

The Generals’ Battle: British War Minister Leslie Hore-Belisha

From around the network.

Military History

Byzantine Spies in the Byzantine–Sassanid Wars

The Concrete Fleet of WWII

Cadets of the Virginia Military Institute urge their horses across a wintry stream.

The U.S. Cavalry: Boots, Saddles & Tanks

The Battle of Arracourt: Patton’s Third Army vs Manteuffel’s Panzers

World War I: 100 Years Later

A Smithsonian magazine special report

The Posters That Sold World War I to the American Public

A vehemently isolationist nation needed enticement to join the European war effort. These advertisements were part of the campaign to do just that

Jia-Rui Cook

On July 28, 1914, World War I officially began when Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. In Europe and beyond, country after country was drawn into the war by a web of alliances. It took three years, but on April 2, 1917, the U.S. entered the fray when Congress declared war on Germany.

The government didn’t have time to waste while its citizens made up their minds about joining the fight. How could ordinary Americans be convinced to participate in the war “ Over There ,” as one of the most popular songs of the era described it?

Posters—which were so well designed and illustrated that people collected and displayed them in fine art galleries—possessed both visual appeal and ease of reproduction. They could be pasted on the sides of buildings, put in the windows of homes, tacked up in workplaces, and resized to appear above cable car windows and in magazines. And they could easily be reprinted in a variety of languages.

To merge this popular form of advertising with key messages about the war, the U.S. government’s public information committee formed a Division of Pictorial Publicity in 1917. The chairman, George Creel, asked Charles Dana Gibson, one of most famous American illustrators of the period, to be his partner in the effort. Gibson, who was president of the Society of Illustrators, reached out to the country’s best illustrators and encouraged them to volunteer their creativity to the war effort.

These illustrators produced some indelible images, including one of the most iconic American images ever made: James Montgomery Flagg’s stern image of Uncle Sam pointing to the viewer above the words, “I Want You for U.S. Army.” (Flagg’s inspiration came from an image of the British Secretary of State for War , Lord Kitchener, designed by Alfred Leete.) The illustrators used advertising strategies and graphic design to engage the casual passerby and elicit emotional responses. How could you avoid the pointing finger of Uncle Sam or Lady Liberty? How could you stand by and do nothing when you saw starving children and a (fictional) attack on New York City?

“Posters sold the war,” said David H. Mihaly, the curator of graphic arts and social history at the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California, where 55 of these posters will go on view August 2. “These posters inspired you to enlist, to pick up the flag and support your country. They made you in some cases fear an enemy or created a fear you didn’t know you had. Nations needed to convince their citizens that this war was just, and we needed to participate and not sit and watch.” There were certainly propaganda posters before 1917, but the organization and mass distribution of World War I posters distinguished them from previous printings, Mihaly said.

Despite the passage of 100 years—as well as many wars and disillusionment about them—these posters retain their power to make you stare. Good and evil are clearly delineated. The suffering is hard to ignore. The posters tell you how to help, and the look in the eyes of Uncle Sam makes sure you do.

“ Your Country Calls!: Posters of the First World War ” will be on view at the Huntington from August 2 to November 3, 2014. Jia-Rui Cook wrote this for Zocalo Public Square .

Get the latest History stories in your inbox?

Click to visit our Privacy Statement .

Painting of a young white woman from the neck up. She has short brown hair and wears a crown of rays similar to the Statue of Liberty.

Arts & Culture

The Poster: Visual Persuasion in WWI

In WWI, the poster, previously a successful medium for commercial advertising, was recognized as a means of spreading national propaganda with near unlimited possibilities. Learn more about posters, and their use during the war, with this digital exhibition.

Enter Exhibition

View more content by the Museum and Memorial on Google Arts & Culture

Famous propaganda posters from the last 100 years

Propaganda is defined as thoughts, ideas, or facts that are disseminated in order to further a cause or movement—or hinder an opposing one. The history of propaganda is rich, dating all the way back to the 15th century. However, it didn't become mainstream, at least in the U.S., until 1914 at the start of World War I.

A couple of propaganda posters that have really stuck to the wall include the image of the woman commonly mistaken for Rosie the Riveter, which came out in the 40s but later took on a feminist connotation, and the iconic image of Che Guevara that has been associated with so many famous protests. These posters have stood the test of time and remain woven into our society, some of them more than 100 years after their initial creation.

Stacker highlighted 50 famous propaganda posters associated with major wars and political movements throughout history, including those from different countries and time periods. Read on to see the origins of Uncle Sam, and where the phrase "loose lips sink ships" came from.

You may also like: D efining historical moments from the year you were born

I Want You for US Army

This American poster is widely regarded as the most famous poster in the world , although it was inspired by a British poster bearing a similar slogan. It made its debut on the cover of the publication Leslie’s Weekly in 1916, depicting “Uncle Sam” urging Americans to enlist in the army as America entered World War I.

Rosie the Riveter

On the heels of a cultural phenomenon (including a popular song of the same name ), Norman Rockwell created this image of “Rosie the Riveter” in 1943 to represent American women working in munitions factories during World War II.

This poster of former President Obama is largely associated with his 2008 election campaign, and also exists in different versions with words like “Change” and “Progress” beneath the same image. It has been the subject of legal controversy when it was revealed that its creator, Shepard Fairey, was accused of usurping the image of Obama from a former Associated Press photographer. Nonetheless, the poster is entwined with Obama’s campaign message at the time.

We Can Do It

This iconic poster from 1943—often confused with the original Rosie the Riveter—made quite a splash in the U.S., but not necessarily during World War II. Though widely associated with the feminist movement, its original intention was to improve morale for the female employees of Westinghouse Electric . It resurfaced in the early '80s, at which point it gained popularity and acquired its woman-power connotation.

Destroy this Mad Brute, Enlist

Printed in 1918, this WWI-era image depicts German militarism embodied by a ferocious gorilla standing on the ground (labeled “America”) carrying a bloodied club as well as a young woman. The poster served as another call for American men to fight in the war.

"Guerillero Heroico"

Alberto Korda took this iconic photo-turned poster of Argentine Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara in 1960. The image gained substantial cultural traction by the end of the '60s when Irish artist Jim Fitzpatrick used it to create a poster. It first appeared in the U.S. in 1968 on New York City billboards and has come to symbolize rebellion on a large scale. The image title means “Heroic Guerilla Fighter.”

Handicapped

One of the most popular symbols of the British Suffragette Movement , this poster depicts a woman struggling to get by in a rowboat, while a man sails smoothly in his sailboat—symbolizing women’s struggle to achieve the right to vote.

Britons Wants You: Join Your Country's Army

This poster featuring British war minister Lord Kitchener —pointing for the sake of military recruitment—served as the inspiration for the American version, which reads “I want you for the U.S. Army.” It was first printed for the cover of the London Opinion magazine in 1914, but came out as a poster shortly after. However, there isn’t much photographic evidence of it having been hung up in public.

Daddy, What did You do in the Great War?

Britain’s army was relatively small at the start of WWI because there was no mandatory enlistment, so the Parliamentary Recruitment Committee was in charge of recruiting the general public to join the army. This was one of their more famous posters, created around 1914 to 1915. The obligation for men to earn money to support their families dissuaded many of them from volunteering, but the PRC used that angle to suggest that children would think that their father’s duty in the army was a more noble calling.

Kultur-Terror

It was not uncommon for Nazi propaganda posters to incorporate the likeness of the monster , which typically symbolized nationalities and philosophical beliefs that deviated from Nazi ideology. This particular poster depicts a monster that represents different aspects of American culture as a whole through its different body parts—one arm holds a money bag, symbolizing greed, and a KKK hood on its head represents nationalism and extremism.

Kep Calm and Carry On

This now-ubiquitous poster originated as a slogan printed by the British government in 1939 to increase morale among the British people at the onset of WWII. It was one of three similar posters with the same design scheme and different wording, all of which incorporated the Tudor Crown. Though it wasn’t necessarily popular in its time, it resurfaced about 15 years ago free of its previous connotation; its slogan was reproduced and parodied on posters, notebooks, and other commodities.

Stamp out the Axis

Dating to 1941, this image of a giant stamp hovering over a Nazi swastika quite literally conveys the U.S. military’s intention of wiping out the Germans in WWII.

Workers of the World Unite!

This Dimitri Moor poster from around 1920 calls for Russian workers to unite against imperialism, juxtaposing the enemy against the bold protagonist. Moor’s classic red and black palette pervades the poster.

Women of Britain Come into the Factories

The U.K. saw many posters encouraging women to take on factory jobs during both World Wars. This 1941 poster calls for women to join the workforce during World War II, in consideration of the men serving in the army who had left their jobs available.

Emancipation of Russian Women

Women appeared prominently on Soviet socialist posters in the early 20th century. Promoting women’s liberation through the lense of socialism, this 1926 poster reads “Emancipated woman—build up socialism.” These words imply that communism cannot thrive without equality among men and women—the woman’s masculinized appearance further symbolizes gender equality.

Become a Nurse: Your Country Needs You

The need for military nurses was high during wartime, so women were widely encouraged to take up the profession. This 1942 image of a young American woman receiving a nursing cap intended to beckon all American women to serve their country by helping wounded soldiers.

Loose Lips Might Sink Ships

The American War Advertising Council created this phrase during WWII, which took the form of a 1945 poster designed to discourage American citizens from talking about sensitive information that could be leaked to war enemies. The image of the sinking ship was the most common pictorial accompaniment to the phrase, which was initially produced for the Seagram Distillers Corporation as an aid to the war effort.

'Kick out the Americans the Unite the Fatherland'

This Korean War-era poster depicts a North Korean soldier literally punching away American soldiers, urging them to pull out of his country.

Help Keep Your School All-American

This Superman-centric poster was distributed in the ‘50s by a version of the Anti-Defamation League for the purpose of advocating for racial and religious tolerance. The poster is dated 1956, but a 2008 auction listing on the Hakes Americana & Collectibles website indicated the copyright is from 1949. It had a small resurgence in the American news a few years ago when Muslims and other minorities were experiencing fairly widespread racism among politicians, corporations and the general public.

It's Our Flag: Fight for it, Work for it

The British Parliamentary Recruiting Committee produced this poster in 1915. The message is pretty clear—it’s a call for men to join the British army at the start of WWI, using patriotic language in conjunction with the Union Jack.

Mao Zedong Cultural Revolution poster

This pro-Mao Zedong poster from the Chinese Cultural Revolution translates to “Long live! Long live Chairman Mao, the reddest and the reddest sun in our hearts!”

Let's Catch Him with his Panzers Down

Dating back to around 1942 , this WWII-era poster depicts a cartoonish version of Hitler in his swastika-print boxers, a literal interpretation of the poster’s slogan. Needless to say, it seeks to inform the American public that the U.S. intends to defeat Germany in the war.

'Did You Volunteer'

This 1920 poster from the Russian Revolution calls for Russian citizens to volunteer for the Red Army , as Lenin had not yet installed a formal military. It is based on the British poster calling for enlistment in the army during WWI. The artist, Dimitri Moor, incorporated a lot of black and red into his work, and typically used red to connote socialist images like flags.

He's Watching You

This 1942 American poster was created to let the public know that the Nazis were watching them. However, some of the public misinterpreted the poster , thinking that the soldier’s helmet symbolized the Liberty Bell. Some factory workers thought that the “he” of the poster represented to be “the boss.”

Step into Your Place

The British Parliamentary Recruiting Committee certainly generated a lot of propaganda posters during both world wars. This one from 1915 communicates a clear message—men are strongly encouraged to join the army to serve their country.

This poster came out in Ireland in 2004 in response to George W. Bush’s move to invade Iraq. It called for a protest attended by Mary Black, Christy Moore, and Damien Rice.

I Want You for the Navy

Just like men, women were needed to serve in the military during the major wars. This WWI poster calls for women to enlist in the U.S. Navy .

Don't Let that Shadow Touch Them, Buy War Bonds

During World War II, war bonds and war savings stamps provided a source of income for the U.S. government, and Americans were encouraged to purchase them. Buying war bonds also boosted morale among the public. This 1942 poster was particularly emotionally powerful because it depicts children playing in the path of the Nazi swastika. One of the young boys holds a miniature American flag and the other holds an American fighter plane, further symbols of patriotism.

Save the Wheat and Help the Fleet

During WWI, the British public was encouraged to seek out white bread substitutes so the wheat crop could be used to make bread for the soldiers. In America and Britain, much of the public resorted to bread with wheat substitutes, like corn or barley. This was taken so seriously that eating white flour was likened to helping the enemy.

'To Defend USSR'

Valentina Kulagina was one of few female propaganda artists of the 20th century. Translating to “ To defend USSR ,” this 1930 cubism-esque design depicts the larger-than-life Red Army leaving the factories to fight in the war. The white royalist airplanes flying around them seem not to deter them at all.

For Your Country's Sake Today, for Your Own Sake Tomorrow

Throughout WWII, American women were strongly encouraged to become involved in the war effort. This poster from the early to mid 1940s shows four women dressed in uniforms of the four armed forces units in which they were able to serve: the Women’s Army Corps, the Navy Women’s Reserve, the Marine Corps Women’s Reserve, and the Coast Guard Women’s Reserve.

Women of Britain Say—Go

This 1914 poster advocated for British women to contribute to the overall war effort. Women’s traditional roles became blurred during wartime, as they started to work in munitions factories or in various roles at the front.

We the People are Greater Than Fear

Shepard Fairey, who created the iconic posters for Obama’s 2008 campaign, also created a set of three posters to coincide with Donald Trump’s 2017 presidential inauguration. This image of a Muslim-American woman wearing a hijab printed with the American flag, in conjunction with the text, represents a powerful message that “We the people” includes individuals of all races and religions. The other two posters in the set feature Latina and African American women with similarly inspiring phrases.

Together We Win

James Montgomery Flagg designed about 46 posters for the U.S. government during WWI. Here’s one from 1917 aimed at instilling patriotism and positivity in the American public. His posters encouraged men to enlist in the Army, women to join the Red Cross, and members of the general public to make sacrifices for the sake of the war effort.

All Power to the People

Douglas Emory, who helped with the layout of the Black Panther newspaper , created this 1970 poster. The party frequently used the slogan “All power to the people.” This phrase also famously accompanied images of the raised fist, which has mainly symbolized African American rights.

Women in the War: We Can't Win Without Them

Another poster geared toward American women during WWII , this piece dates back to 1942. It bears the image of a female worker riveting a weapon, and calls for women to take up jobs in munitions factories during the war.

Recycle Nixon

This anti-Nixon poster from the Vietnam War era was made as part of Berkeley’s Political Poster Workshop between 1968 and 1973.

Dig on for victory

Dating back to 1941, this poster was created by the British Ministry of Agriculture , whose “Dig on for Victory” campaign encouraged citizens to grow their own crops during wartime rationing. Many public spaces, like parks and public gardens, were allotted as vegetable patches during that time.

'Your Father Is in Danger: Register!'

This German poster from WWI translates to “Your father is in danger, register,” and came out shortly after the war ended. It calls for German citizens to join the Garde-Kavallerie-Schutzen-Division, or Horse Guards Rifle Division , one of the post-defeat units that offered military stability after soldiers returned from the war.

Free Labor Will Win

Printed in 1942, this poster of a welder standing in front of an American flag promotes free labor in the U.S.—as opposed to the slave labor used by its fascist enemies.

Girls Say Yes to Boys Who Say No

Folk singer Joan Baez and her sisters Paulien and Mimi are at the heart of this anti-draft poster from 1968. Baez was very active politically in the '60s, and openly encouraged men to avoid the draft at her shows. Larry Gates created the poster to debunk the notion that resisting the draft was unmanly, and to raise money for the Draft Resistance Movement.

If the Cap Fits, Wear It

Like so many other World War propaganda posters, this one from WWII calls for citizens to join the Canadian Army .

Of Course I Can! I'm patriotic as can be—and ration points don't worry me!

During WWII, the U.S. government initiated rationing of food to ensure soldiers had enough supplies (and that civilians had equal access to scant resources). This 1944 poster serves to remind Americans not to waste food during the war.

American Red Cross: Our boys need sox, knit your bit

This American Red Cross poster from around 1918 calls for citizens to donate knitted items to U.S. soldiers for when they entered France. Knitters eagerly responded to this call, though they had to adhere to knitting patterns that followed Army and Navy regulations.

Is This Tomorrow? America under Communism

This design serves as the cover of a 1947 comic book written to teach the public about communism’s inflammatory nature. The text on the opening page reads, “Is this Tomorrow is published for one purpose—to make you think! To make you more alert to the menace of Communism.”

Free All Political Prisoners

This famous image depicting the raised fist with a loose chain is another product of the Political Poster Workshop at Berkeley. It clearly opposes the unjust imprisonment of civil rights activists and other American political martyrs.

Save Bones for Aircraft Production

Similar to posters urging citizens not to waste food, this WWII poster encourages the British public to save bones and scraps , which could be used in the production of military planes and ammunition.

Andre the Giant Has a Posse

Here’s another iconic design by Shepard Fairey, who created the Andre the Giant has a Posse sticker campaign somewhat haphazardly in 1989. It later transformed into simply “Obey the Giant.” While neither design has any inherent meaning, Shepard intended them to be a study in phenomenology, inspiring people to react and question the world around them. Both images have been widely disseminated throughout the world.

'Freedom for Angela Davis'

Angela Davis was a prominent voice in the late 1960s and early '70s protest movement in America, having actively participated in the Black Panther and Communist parties . This famous poster sprang up when Davis was wanted by the FBI for a crime she did not commit. After her arrest, grassroots organizations started popping up both in America and abroad to fight for her release.

United We Stand Divided We Fall

This famous phrase has roots with the ancient Greeks, but it appeared on this U.S. WWII propaganda poster in 1942. Fundamentally, the phrase denotes the idea that if members of a group with cohesive beliefs work individually instead of as a team, they are destined for failure. This concept certainly applies to the American army’s fight to defeat the Nazis during the war.

Trending Now

50 best colleges on the east coast.

A Saybrook College building at Yale University.

100 best 'SNL' episodes

Gilda Radner with Laraine Newman and Sissy Spacek on 'Saturday Night Live' in 1977.

100 best films of the 21st century, according to critics

Kate Hudson at the premiere of 'Almost Famous' in Sept. 2000.

Best sitcoms of all time

The Propaganda Archive

A project by Propagandopolis to create the internet’s largest archive of propaganda posters, postcards, pamphlets, stamps and other ephemera.

This archive is currently a work in progress. New content and features will be added over the coming months. If you would like to learn about or support the project, you can do so below:

What is the Propaganda Archive?

The Propaganda Archive aspires to be the internet’s largest and most accurate archive of propaganda for use by researchers, teachers, collectors and enthusiasts. The archive is a work in progress and will – hopefully – be massively expanded over the coming months and include regular blogs, articles, podcasts and more.

I research every piece of propaganda as thoroughly as I can. I claim no copyright on any of the images reproduced here – they come from hundreds of sources, ranging from museum archives to auction websites to my own collections. If you would like me to remove an image, please send an email through the form below. Translations, dates, publisher, creator and source will be given where possible.

How to support The Propaganda Archive

Next week I will be launching a Buy Me a Coffee, which will includes a number of perks (depending on the tier). You can also buy a print from the shop, you can submit propaganda through the form below, or you can simply spread the word!

25 Most Powerful Propaganda Posters That Made All The Difference

These propaganda were an influential attitude change initiative. They were powerful reminders of reality and our responsibility towards society. From war to welfare to social issues and plain sanity…these posters made all the difference.

1. “Daddy, what did you do in the Great War?”, (1915).

In 1915 British illustrator Savile Lumley designed this famous guilt – inducing poster. Paul Gunn later explained the background to the poster: “One night my father came home very worried about the war situation and discussed with my mother whether he should volunteer. He happened to come in to where I was asleep and quite casually said to my mother, If I don’t join the forces whatever will I say to Paul if he turns round to me and says, What did you do in the Great War, Daddy? He suddenly turned round to my mother and said that would make a marvellous slogan for a recruiting poster. He shot off to see one of his pet artists, Savile Lumley, had a sketch drawn straight away, based on the theme projected about five years hence, although by the time it had taken shape the questioner had become one of my sisters.” This poster was produced before conscription was introduced in 1916 and aimed to encourage men to join the armed forces through emotional blackmail. Depending on your opinion of the “great war” itself, this could also be viewed as a positive use of the powers of propaganda.

2. “Barbarism vs. Civilization”, (1900).

This poster depicts of the The Boxer Rebellion or Boxer Uprising which was a violent anti-foreign and anti-Christian movement which took place in China towards the end of the Qing dynasty between 1898 and 1900. It was initiated by the Militia United in Righteousness (Yihetuan), known in English as the “Boxers”, and was motivated by proto-nationalist sentiments and opposition to foreign imperialism and Christianity. The Great Powers intervened and defeated Chinese forces.

3. Anti – Smoking Propaganda.

A very simple, yet powerful anti-smoking poster. Sometimes dubbed as one of the most clever anti-smoking advertisement ever.

4. “You Can Be Someone’s Superhero!”, Hellenic Association Of Blood Donors, (2013).

A very creative and appealing ad to attract blood donors towards needs for donation. Advertising Agency: Spot JWT, Athens, Greece Creative Director / Illustrator: Alexandros Tsoutis Art Director: Alexis Alifragkis Copywriter: Anastasios Lessis Published: January 2013

5. “I Want You”, (1917).

Originally published as the cover for the July 6, 1916, issue of Leslie’s Weekly with the title “What Are You Doing for Preparedness?” this portrait of “Uncle Sam” went on to become–according to its creator, James Montgomery Flagg–”the most famous poster in the world.” Over four million copies were printed between 1917 and 1918, as the United States entered World War I and began sending troops and material into war zones.

6. Fate of Ukraine, (2014).

The unfair colonization of Ukraine by the Russian troops and the decision of Crimea being shifted under Russian control describes the fate of Ukraine and how it has just become a hanging nation in between Asia and Europe. This propaganda poster truly depicts of the Ukrainian pain and violence that has been going on a while now.

7. “Help Keep Your School All American”, (1940s – 50s).

This anti- racism, superhero oriented poster came around in a children’s comic series and proved to be very powerful in conveying its true social message. With racism being at its peak in America that time, there was a dire need of an attitude change and this poster was a great example of a powerful initiative by making it “Un-American” to be racist.

8. “We Can Do It”, (1942).

We Can Do It! is a WW II era American wartime propoganda poster produced by J. Howard Miller in 1943 for Westinghouse Electric as a tool to boost worker morale. Surprisingly, the poster did not enjoy wide popularity during World War II. It was rediscovered in the early 1980s and widely reproduced in many forms, often called “We Can Do It!” but also mistakenly called “Rosie the Riveter” after the iconic figure of a strong female war production worker. The “We Can Do It!” image was used to promote feminism and other political issues beginning in the 1980?s. After its rediscovery, people often assumed that the image was always meant to be a call to inspire women workers to join the war effort. However, during the war the image was strictly internal to Westinghouse, displayed only during February 1943, and was not for recruitment but to inspire already-hired women to work harder.

9. “Thief!”, (1920s-30s).

“The worst thief is he who steals the playtime of children” A very very powerful propaganda poster against then prevalent child labor. More and more children were forced to work in factories that were equipped with heavy, dangerous machinery and they were forced to work for hours at a stretch, thus stealing away their innocence and anytime they had for playing and other wonderful stuff that children do.

10. “Sex is No Accident”, MTV.

An initiative from MTV to encourage the use of condoms for safe sex through these strips were a smart propaganda. With increase in the number of teen pregnancies in America, it has become evident to bring about awareness regarding protection measures during sex and the hazards of avoiding them. Another important factor was the spread of AIDS and other STD’s through unprotected sex which has infact become a widespread concern worldwide. This ad takes a strong attitude makeover initiative to encourage the use of condoms and prevent any sexually transmitted diseases and their after effects on population.

11. Che Guevara, (1968).

Jim Fitzpatrick was a well-known Irish Celtic artist of his time, but he is probably best known for his iconic 1968 Che Guevara poster. It is said that Fitzpatrick took the death of the revolutionary personally. He had once met Guevara when the revolutionary flew into Ireland in 1963 and checked into the Marine Hotel pub in Kilkee. Fitzpatrick was only a teenager at the time and had been working there over the summer. The poster became globally famous during the anti-Vietnam war protests and is now the symbol of F.A.R.C. in Columbia, a Marxist-Leninist revolutionary guerrilla organization, which is involved in the ongoing Colombian armed conflict. Zapatista Army of National Liberation (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, EZLN), a revolutionary group based in Chiapas, the southernmost state of Mexico, uses this symbol as well. The image was also used during the violent Paris student riots in 1968. Across the rest of the West, the Marxist Che Guevara image is overused by any kid suffering from teenage angst.

12. “The Guarantee of German Military Strength”, (1932).

In Germany in the 1930s, propaganda was in full swing and being used by Hitler’s advisers to call the German people to arms and spread lies about the Jews. One of the most famous artists behind Nazi propaganda was Hans Schweitzer, known as “Mjolnir.” This poster by Hans Schweitzer shows the typical pro-Nazi theme of the German army’s strength, depicting an S.A. man standing next to a solider. The text reads, “The guarantee of German military strength!”

13. Ning Hao: China, (1954).

Seemingly along the lines of Rosie the Riveter, this Ning Hao piece reflects women being asked to work in the factories alongside men, partially to support their emancipation, but mostly to increase the labor force in China.

14. “Workers of The World Unite!”, (1920?).

Dimitri Moor (or Dmitry Stakhievich Orlov) changed the face of graphic design in Soviet Russia back in 1918. His work dominated both the Bolshevik Era (1917–1921) and the New Economic Policy (1921–1927). The main theme of Moor’s work is the stark contrast between the oppressive evil and the heroic allies. A lot of pressure was put on Russian workers to rise up against imperialism.

15. Pyramid of Capitalist System, (1911).

The Pyramid of Capitalist System is a common name of a 1911 American cartoon caricature critical of capitalism. The graphic focus is on social stratification by social class and economic inequality. The picture shows a literal “social pyramid” or hierarchy, with the wealthy few on the top, and the impoverished masses at the bottom. Crowned with a money bag representing capitalism, the top layer, “we rule you”, is occupied by the royalty and state leaders. Underneath them are the clergy (“we fool you”), followed by the military (“we shoot you”), and the bourgeoisie (“we eat for you”). The bottom of the pyramid is held by the workers (“we work for all… we feed all”). The basic message of the image is the critique of the capitalist system, with its hierarchy of power and wealth. It also illustrates that the working class is supporting all others, and if it would withdraw their support from the system it could, literally, topple the existing social order. This type of criticism of capitalism is attributed to the French socialist Louis Blanc. The work has been described as “famous”, “well-known and widely reproduced”.

16. “Open Trap, Make Happy Jap”, (1940?).

Reflecting the ugly racism of the times, many US produced propaganda posters from World War II would typecast the Japanese as goofy and cartoonish stereotypes. Buck teeth, big ears and an exaggeration on the eyes were recurring features. This incredibly racist image reflects our powerful need to dehumanize the enemy before we slaughter them, making the carnage not seem so evil.

17. Xu Ling: China, (1950).

Details about Chinese artists are hard to come by, but we can focus on what they intended to convey with their artwork. This piece is a caricature of the American commander in Korea at that time, General Douglas MacArthur. It shows the US as an abhorrent evil, and MacArthur is shown stabbing a Korean mother and child. Bombs labeled US are being dropped on cities in China in the background as the US invades Korea.

18. “Beat Back The Hun”, (1918).

This intense, frightening presence featuring the head of a “Hun” with blood-stained fingers and bayonet, is the work of Frederick or F. Strothmann. The poster was meant to literally scare Americans into buying the war bonds known as “Liberty Bonds” during WW I as a patriotic duty. These bonds are debt securities issued by the American government for the purpose of financing military operations. The creation of this capital not only helped to control inflation during war time, it also gave the public who invested their money in the bonds a feeling of involvement in the war without having to serve in the military. They were available in a wide range of denominations, and thus affordable to most citizens.

19. “Liberators”, (1944).

The Nazi’s had a very imaginative approach when it came to producing posters during the Second World War. Designed by Norwegian cartoonist Harald Damsleth, this particularly famous image depicts the Americans as a domineering force and characterizes many of their supposedly negative aspects, such as being money grabbing, racist, over-sexualized and all-empowering.

20. “American Invaders Will Be Defeated!”, (1951).

Completed at the height of the Cold War, this poster depicts two People’s Liberation Army soldiers holding two books. The left book read “Soviet Army Defeated 1,200,000 German Nazi, Italian, Japanese and other countries’ soldiers during World War Two” and the right reads “Chinese People’s Liberation Army defeated 8 million soldiers from American Imperialist sponsored Chiang Kai-Chek’s army. At the bottom, defeated Americans hold dollar sign flags, and in writing it says “Next year we can accumulate 3 million soldiers”.

21. Rosie The Riveter, (1943).

Based on a familiar song of the time, this is Norman Rockwell’s famous Rosie the Riveter poster. Unlike the “we can do it” poster this image actually represents the American women who worked in the munitions and war supplies factories during World War II.This was a call to arms for the women of America to become strong capable females and support the war effort. Rockwell often found himself at odds with the more conservative the politics of the Saturday Evening Post, so in his later years, he took up the controversial subject of racism in America. He became respected as a painter for these hard-hitting pieces of American culture, much more so than for his work for the Saturday Evening Post.

22. Huey P. Newton, Minister of Defense, (1968).

Huey P. Newton, Minister of Defence, done by an unidentified artist, 1968. When organizers of the Black Panther Party set up this scene for a photographer in 1967—enthroning the young “minister of defence” Huey Newton in a wicker chair and arming him a rifle and spear, they showed their determination to follow Malcolm X creed, “by any means necessary”. And the poster of course, transforms Newton into a larger than life, king-like figure.

23. “To Defend USSR”, (1930).

Valentina Kulagina was one of the few female poster artists to emerge from the 20th century. This poster, called “To Defend USSR” was created by Kulagina in 1930. It takes a cubist perspective in its multi-dimensional shapes, and it shows the Red army as huge almost robotic figures, marching from the factories to fight the war. They are surrounded by the tiny white airplanes of the royalists, which appear to have no effect on them at all and in fact seem to be flying through the figures. Chilling!

24. “Lest We Forget” : UK, (2010).

The artist behind this one could not be identified, but this had to be included for its clever use of old Tory values and the play on the Scooby-Doo gang’s unveiling of the monster. This poster shows the lack of faith in Prime Minister David Cameron’s promise to be a force for change and not just another Margaret Thatcher clone.

25. Unusual, rare anti-Nazi propaganda postcard from 1934

40 Most Powerful Social Issue Ads That'll Wake You…
49 Most Powerful, Rare and Intoxicating Images From The Past
Russian Mother Picked Up "Feelings" For Photography…
23 Nostalgic Things You Grew Up With That Are…
29 of The Most Influential Images of All Time
38 Most Inciting and Inspirational Romantic Photos…
What’s the Difference Between 2D and 3D Animation
What’s The Difference Between Braces and Veneers? -…
Cremation vs. Memorial Jewelry: What's the Difference?
What's The Difference Between Vaping And Smoking Weed?

26 Photos That Captured Ghosts By Mistake And They Will Not Let You Sleep Tonight

35 completely useless facts you need to know right now, related articles.

Advantages of Acquiring a US Immigrant Visa – 2024 Guide

14 Prettiest Things Girls Do That Completely Steal Your Heart

Presenting Your Photos After a Photo Walk – 2024 Guide

Can Tattoos Be Removed Completely? – 2024 Guide

Source Criticism
Interpretation
Propaganda Posters

How to interpret propaganda posters

Interpreting a visual source , like a propaganda poster, is very different to interpreting words on a page, which is the case with written sources .

Therefore, you need to develop a different set of skills.

What is a 'propaganda poster'?

Propaganda is an attempt to inﬂuence peoples’ opinions or behaviour through the use of specific images and words.

It usually gives limited information which is heavily biased in its presentation. Propaganda typically achieves its aims by generating an emotional reaction in the viewer.

For much of the twentieth century, public posters were a common way for governments to use propaganda to persuade their citizens.

They often relied upon simple images in order to manipulate people through fear or guilt.

Further information

Propaganda in the First World War:

Propaganda in the Second World War:

How do I understand the meaning of a propaganda poster?

Understanding what a historical propaganda poster means can be difficult for us because we did not live through the events that inspired them.

However, many propaganda posters rely upon a limited number of elements to persuade their audience . Once we learn those elements, we can begin to understand the specific message of a particular poster.

Propaganda Poster Elements

1 . Stereotypes

It was common for posters to represent a particular group of people (usually in a very racist way) using stereotypes. A stereotype is an over-simpliﬁcation of what a particular racial group looks like. For example, Chinese people in the 19th century were drawn with a long pony-tail in their hair. Propaganda uses stereotypes so that audiences can readily identify which people group is the target of the poster. Getting to know common stereotypes can be quite confronting for us, since they can be very racist in nature. However, once you become familiar with common forms of stereotyping, you can identify the appropriate people group being targeted in a particular poster.

Common Stereotypes:

People Group:

Australians

Jewish People

Exaggerated Features:

Pickelhaube (the spiked helmet), gorilla-like body

Long pony-tail, narrow eyes, thin moustache, traditional Chinese clothes and hat, two large front teeth

Circular glasses, narrow eyes, toothy grin

Slouch hat, clean-shaven, khaki clothes

Large nose, kippah (Jewish prayer cap)

2 . Symbolism

Just like political cartoons , propaganda posters use simple objects, or symbols, that the general public would be familiar with. These symbols are used to represent important concepts or ideas. For example, using a ‘skull and crossbones’ could represent ‘death’ or ‘danger’. While you’re interpreting a poster, identify any symbols and try to work out what concept the image is meant to represent.

Here are some common symbols used in propaganda, along with their common meanings:

Posters will often include short sections of information: either statistics or statements. This information is meant to provide the audience with just enough data for them to draw the conclusion the creator wanted them to make. When you are looking at the poster, it is worth asking whether the information provided is completely accurate or what other information has been left out. Finally, try to work out why the propaganda wanted the audience to know about the specific information they have presented. For example, how does this information help persuade the audience?

Posters will try to connect directly with their audiences though a number of techniques. They will either use the second person pronoun "you" in the text, ask a rhetorical question that the audience is meant to think about, or it will have people in the poster looking directly at the viewer. Propaganda does this in order to make the audience feel like they need to respond in some way.

Propaganda will try to play on a person's emotions in order to prompt them to respond. The most frequent emotional responses posters try to generate are:

guilt (e.g., making the audience feel like they have failed),
patriotism (e.g., appealing to the love of their country),
fear (e.g., that if they don't act, something bad will happen),
or shame (e.g., that they are weak, cowardly or selfish).

6 . Call to Action

Almost every propaganda poster has a statement about what their audience should do after seeing the poster. For example: 'Enlist Today!' or 'Buy War Bonds'. The call to action is often the best way to determine the poster's purpose and intended audience .

How do I write an interpretation?

Once you have deconstructed the poster, you can start creating your explanation. To do so, answer the following questions:

Who or what is represented by the stereotypes and symbols?
What information is provided by the text in the poster?
How does the poster try and connect directly with the audience? (Using "you", asking a question, or by 'looking at the audience'?)
What does the 'call to action' say?
What emotion is the viewer supposed to feel? (e.g. Shame, guilt, patriotism, etc.)

Once you have answered these questions, you are ready to answer the final one:

What did the propaganda want their audience to believe and do?

What do I do with my interpretation?

Identifying the message of a propaganda poster shows that you understand the primary source, which means that you can use it as an indirect quote in your historical writing.

Your interpretation can also help you in your analysis and evaluation of the source. For example, identifying the source's message can help you ascertain:

The purpose of the propaganda
The intended audience of the poster
The accuracy of the information presented in the image

Parliamentary Recruiting Committee. (1915). 'Daddy, what did YOU do in the Great War?'. London. © IWM (Art.IWM PST 0311). Source: https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/17053

Demonstrating interpretation of propaganda posters in your writing:

This propaganda poster produced by the British government in 1915 sought to persuade British citizens to enlist for military service. It does this by employing a range of propaganda techniques. First of all, the main character is an idealised middle class British family man. The use of this stereotypical character is an attempt to connect with British middle-class men who had not yet joined the war effort. Secondly, the poster uses the symbolism of the toy soldiers, which the young boy is depicted as playing with. The fact that the man's son is more impressed with symbols of war than his own father begins to play on the audience's emotions. Thirdly, the text that accompanies the image, which is spoken by the daughter, inquires about the man's role in the war. The use of the second person pronoun of "you" is a clear attempt to engage personally with the audience. This is reinforced by the fact that the man's eyes are looking directly at the viewer. Therefore, although the girl is talking to her father, the poster intends to directly address the viewer. The clear intent is to make the audience the target of the question so that they will wonder what role they will play in the contemporary conflict. All of these techniques combine with the intention of generating the feelings of shame and guilt in the viewer. The propaganda hopes that young men will feel embarrassed to admit to their future children that they were 'too cowardly' to join the war effort. Even though there is no explicit 'call to action' for the viewer on the poster, the tacit expectation is that the guilt would result in young men enlisting to fight in the hopes of being able to allay the shame produced by the picture. The overall message produced by the propaganda poster is that real men will enlist in the war effort in the belief that their future children will be proud to know that their fathers did their part.

What do you need help with?

Download ready-to-use digital learning resources.

Contact via email

Watching the watchdogs: How US media weaponised campus protests coverage

Mainstream media has joined US power elites in demonising pro-Palestinian encampments on campuses.

A great, novel experiment in political physics is under way in the United States, as the unstoppable moral force of youth-led protests against Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza runs into the immovable object of the American power elite’s support for it.

In this clash, two critical forces have been weaponised: the US mainstream media that heavily disseminates Israeli propaganda and shapes many local, state and national policies, and the scourge of anti-Semitism that has been unfairly used to demonise and silence Palestinians and shift attention away from the US-enabled Israeli genocide in Gaza.

Keep reading

Are us graduation ceremonies the latest battleground for gaza protests, us police break up gaza protest encampment at george washington university, arizona professor on leave after harassment of muslim woman, pro-palestine protests: how some universities reached deals with students.

Since Israel launched its assault on Gaza, President Joe Biden’s steadfast support for it has galvanised young Americans and pushed them to mobilise.

They have formed decisive coalitions with Muslim and Arab Americans, Jewish, Black, Hispanic and Native communities, labour unions and churches. They have given notice that if the US continues to support the war, they will abandon Democratic candidates in the November elections, which would likely be fatal for the party.

The American power elite largely ignored the initial criticisms of the young and the marginalised, until student encampments started springing up at universities across the country three weeks ago. The students demanded an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, a halt to US government financial and military aid to Israel, and the divestment of university investments from military industries that enable the Israeli genocide.

The mainstream media’s coverage of the campus encampments and the violence against them has exposed it as a central actor in the power elite that sustains Israel’s war and simultaneously tries to silence Palestinians and criminalise anyone who supports them.

As I closely followed US media outlets in recent weeks, I was shocked to see reporters, commentators and hosts use the exact same words and phrases that Biden and US and Israeli officials have used to smear the protesters. The mainstream media gives the impression of circling the wagons with Israeli and American officialdom to prevent at all costs an open, honest, comprehensive and contextualised public discussion on Israel’s behaviour while trying instead to focus public attention on spurious accusations.

The mainstream media has widely condemned students and accused them of using “hate speech and hate symbols” (in the words of the US president), endorsing terrorism, advocating for Israel’s destruction, resorting to anti-Semitic slurs and threatening and frightening Jewish students. Everywhere they look in the student protest encampments, the media oracles have seen “terrorists” in training, “anti-Semites” at work, “Jew-haters” being groomed, universities collapsing, and “Nazi mobs” in the making.

Prominent TV hosts have unleashed passionate, vicious diatribes against the students who have camped out to demand an end to America’s role in Israel’s genocide against Gaza, and peace and justice for all in Palestine.

MSNBC’s Morning Joe show – reportedly a Biden favourite – is one glaring example of systematically biased TV programming that sometimes veers into incitement against the student protests and the university administrators. One of its hosts, Joe Scarborough, has claimed that students want “to wipe out all Jews”, “they are Hamas on college campuses”, and they are “not helping those of us who want to fight fascism in America”. His co-host Mika Brzezinski has said that the campus protests “look like January 6”, referring to the riot by Donald Trump supporters on Capitol Hill in January 2021.

Such unsubstantiated allegations against the protesters are common to varying degrees across all the major networks, including ABC, CNN and NBC.

Most of the “expert” analysts I have heard on mainstream TV in the last few weeks commenting on the protests have been former US government or security officials, or people close to the Israeli viewpoint, including former Israeli officials. They have also offered variations on the themes of terrorism, radicalisation and anti-Semitism.

Except for some interviews I have seen on MSNBC, networks have avoided inviting Palestinians and knowledgeable Americans who could explain the actual meaning of expressions that the media and officialdom find offensive or threatening, and could address the actual nature and extent of the fears of those Jews who sincerely worry about how the protests impact them.

Unsurprisingly, most media outlets have covered US officials’ statements against peaceful protesters on campuses without much scrutiny as well.

This was apparent, for example, when Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and heads of several key congressional committees gave a press conference on April 30 where they threatened universities for allegedly allowing anti-Semitism to thrive on campus.

“We will not allow anti-Semitism to thrive on campus, and we will hold these universities accountable for their failure to protect Jewish students on campus,” Johnson said.

By reporting the many accusations against the protesters without seriously questioning or verifying them, the mainstream media itself appears to adopt the conflation of anti-Semitism with valid criticism of Israeli policies, which many scholars have warned is a dangerous practice. Israeli policies that warrant criticism include patently illegal ones that contravene international law, like expanding settlements, laying siege to Palestinian territories, and carrying out the genocidal attack on Gaza.

While mainstream media has struggled with its biases in covering the campus protests, there have been reports and commentaries by serious and knowledgeable people who actually have spent time among the defiant students, understood their motivations and their cause, and have not been beholden to domestic or foreign lobbies. Everyone I encountered – in person at universities or in the more honest, independent and progressive media outlets that do not see their job as supporting the power elites’ war-making frenzies – has reported calm, harmonious, often joyous gatherings of many faiths, aiming for a common goal of equal justice for all.

The alignment of mainstream media with the American political elites’ stance and all the exaggeration, misinterpretation, hysteria, lies and hallucination is unprecedented. It begs the question, why American officials and media leaders who traditionally parroted the Israeli line and simply ignored Palestinian voices are all up in arms now? Why would a gentle old man like Biden knowingly transform the Arabic word “intifada” (uprising) into what he calls “tragic and dangerous hate speech”?

I suspect this fanatical rhetoric reflects the power elite’s fear of being challenged in the domestic political arena for the first time ever by an issue related to Palestinian rights that also exposes and opposes Israel’s military extremism and genocide. They fear the growing coalition of Americans who are not afraid to challenge the falsehoods and distortions of staunch Israel supporters or ignore biased media offerings. They should worry, as a CNN poll last week suggested that 81 percent of Americans aged 18-35 disapprove of the American-backed Israeli war policy in Gaza.

Many young protesters have spoken of the US-enabled genocide in Gaza as “the moral issue of our age”. They feel they cannot stay silent in the face of Israeli-made starvation and American-made bombs ravaging Gaza.

But when this principled stance is distorted by the US mainstream media into an “anti-Semitic” and “pro-terrorist” frenzy, then it becomes clear that the commitment to truth-telling in large swaths of the media is far weaker than their desire to be close to the imperial seats of war-making power in the US and the Middle East.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Warfare History

6 WWI Propaganda Posters That Rallied People to Fight

When it came to the first great war of the 20th century, people were scared and many did not want to get involved. In the United States ,people did not know why they should get involved with a war that was on the other side of the world. Even in Germany it was hard to rally people to join the war effort and fight. But that was where propaganda came in. World War I produced such stunning propaganda posters that they continue to hang in homes and art museums to this day. They also helped rally people to fight for their countries.

The Hun and the Home

When it became clear to the British government that war was happening, propaganda was one of the first orders of business. A war always needed men on the front and women at home to support the war effort in any way possible. To do this, Wellington House was established in 1914 and was responsible for propaganda about German activities until 1915. There was a lack of coordination between the various departments responsible for propaganda, so the Foreign Office was created in 1916.

In 1917 propaganda was still not as strong as it needed to be so Lloyd George created the Department of State to handle propaganda. Problems still existed and so finally the Ministry of Information was created in 1918 and handled propaganda until a few weeks after the war. Once the Ministry of Information was dissolved, anything left of the propaganda department went back to the Foreign Office.

This poster was printed in 1914 and it served the same purpose as many American propaganda posters would. The war in Belgium seemed far away for the people of Britain. Therefore, initial propaganda focused on British loyalty to Belgium and the suffering of her people. This poster refers to the Germans as Huns, and acknowledges the difference between the current lives of the people in Britain and the people in Belgium.

The poster shows that British women and children are safe and their homes intact. It contrasts it with a Belgium where women are murdered or worse, children are dead or slaves. The poster gives the sense that Belgium tried to remain neutral and is now suffering. Britain was the guarantor of that neutrality and it now becomes the duty of Britain to rise up and protect themselves and their Belgian brothers.

NEXT >>

Will You Fight Now Or Wait for This?

Australia was in somewhat of a unique position during World War I. They were involved in the war and they needed manpower, but despite two attempts to introduce conscription in 1916 and 1917, participation in the Australian armed forced remained voluntary throughout all of World War I. Conscription in one form did exist beginning in 1911, but a conscripted force could not be used for a foreign war. So not only did the Australian government have to convince men to sign up for a war that was across the ocean but they also could not compel men to fight when they ran low on manpower.

Propaganda in Australia was two-fold, convincing men to volunteer for the war and to stifle any opposition to the war. Compared to the British propaganda operation, the Australian propaganda machine was a decentralized mess. For a period, propaganda was regulated at the state level. As time went on and it became apparent conscription was never going to happen, the propaganda took on a much more deliberate and persuasive tone.

This poster was made in 1918 and shows the desperation of the Australian government for manpower. The poster depicts a man surrounded by Germans. An elderly man has been shot, a woman is pleading for mercy, and in the background a woman is half undressed and being restrained by German soldiers. It depicts a worst-case scenario and one that was deemed highly unlikely.

There was little chance that the German army would make a move on Australia when they had much bigger fish to fry throughout Europe and even the United States. But desperate times called for desperate measures, and the propaganda officials in Australia were willing to put the fear of German invasion into the minds of its populace in order to get men to fight in its armies.

<< Previous

Arch-Enemy Kaiser Wilhelm II

Russia was known for being slow to mobilize. In fact, Germany planned on it. For Russia, the drawback to having a massive army was the fact that it took so long to get the army organized and to the front lines. The good thing was that with a massive population there was never a need for conscription, and the army was supplied with men mainly through volunteers. Even with a large army fighting the war, there were still enough men at home to keep things working, at least for a while.

This meant that there was not as big of a need for propaganda in Russia as there was for other countries. Nicolas II did put out some pamphlets and posters that were geared toward getting people to buy war bonds which would fund the war effort. There was propaganda at the time being put out by the Communist Party that was geared toward encouraging people to fight not the Germans, but the Czar and his family. Thus came the Russian revolution of 1917.

Among the few pieces of Russian propaganda that was put out during World War I was this image of Kaiser Wilhelm II being depicted as the arch-enemy of Russia. Kaiser Wilhelm II was the person blamed for the start of the war in Russia. In this image the Kaiser is portrayed with a devil tail, horns, and cloven hooves.

With two skulls in his hands he looks like a figure of absolute evil. The skulls were used as symbols of greed, evil, and brutality. It was posters like this that kept men volunteering for the war even as losses on the front mounted. It was not until after the revolution that Russia finally accepted defeat and signed a surrender with Germany.

This is How it Would Look in German Lands

Propaganda in Germany near the start of the war focused on convincing the public that violating Belgian neutrality was necessary in order to get to France. There was a three-pronged approach to propaganda in Germany. They censored their own press so that no negative reports on the war would reach the public, they presented favorable information and publicity about the war to news reporters and agencies, and finally they worked to prevent the home front from being infiltrated with propaganda from the enemy.

The government would supply press releases to journalists who were not permitted to edit the reports. This meant that there was no diversity of information among newspapers and it caused the public to generally distrust the press. Propaganda in Germany toward the second half of the war took a very different turn as the need for money rose. It started playing on the fear of the people and the need for money and men at the front.

This poster from 1918 focuses on the need to for the Rhineland to remain German. The text says “This is how it would look in German lands if the French reached the Rhine.” The Rhineland made up a border with France and it was important to both sides because of that. The Germans wanted to keep France out of the Rhineland not only to keep the front in French territory, but because the Rhineland was a large industrial sector for the country.

The poster depicts French howitzers firing on German towns with buildings on fire. It was supposed to scare the public into continued support for the war. Nationalism in Germany had people willing to support the war in the beginning but now support for the war was as scarce as food so the propaganda started to shift toward that of fear.

Why Don’t They Come?

Canada during World War I was not given much choice as to whether or not to join the war. Once Britain entered the war, Canada was obligated to because they were still a British dominion, and therefore Canada’s foreign policy decisions were made by British Parliament. The war caused a rift in Canada as British Canadians were much more willing to support the war effort, while French Canadians were less willing to get involved in British affairs. For the first part of the war Canada’s force was voluntary, but people of color and different ethnicities were not allowed to volunteer. They were told “this is a white man’s war.”

Propaganda was therefore focused on shaming or guilting men to sign up and fight the war. There was not a lot of propaganda that focused on fear because few believed that the war would ever reach Canada. Propaganda was also geared toward donations to the Canadian Patriotic Fund which helped support the war effort and the families left behind as their men were fighting.

This propaganda poster worked on a number of levels. It played to the guilt of a man who saw it. How could he sit by and watch hockey while a soldier was in desperate need of help? It also suggested that a man who had not volunteered for the war was not really a man because he wasn’t playing a man’s part. Not only did it speak to the men eligible to fight in the war but for those that were not.

The poster gave the sense that any man who did not volunteer for the war was someone who should be shamed for not being a real man and doing his part. The poster is done in yellow because that color gives a sense of warning or immediacy, men are needed now to volunteer because the poor chap in the photo won’t last very long. Posters like this were also meant to help convince the French Canadians that the war was necessary.

Destroy This Mad Brute

The United States never had a large standing army, and that meant that when war came they had to quickly mobilize and get public support for the war. President Wilson created the Committee on Public Information whose job it was to put forth propaganda towards the war. Wilson chose George Creel to head the organization largely because Creel had a unique approach to propaganda that Wilson agreed with. Creel did not want to censor information, which was contrary to most propaganda initiatives at the time. He would allow the papers to publish what they wanted as long as they did not print enemy propaganda or lies about the war.

Since the United States had not quite reached the age of mass media, Creel focused most of his attention on posters. Some of the posters that were created through his department remain as iconic images to U.S. culture today, such as the Uncle Sam “I Want You” poster. Creel partnered with advertising agencies and put his posters everywhere. They were on subways, bus stops, billboards, barns, and anywhere else an American might walk. Creel also hired 75,000 men to travel and deliver hundreds of patriotic speeches to rally people to the war effort. Creel’s operation was considered one of the most successful to date as his efforts even reached Europe and Germany.

Some of the propaganda took a less patriotic turn and focused on defeating a barbaric enemy. This poster shows a large brutish ape carrying a woman away and leaving destruction behind him. He carries a club that says “Kultur” which was representative of German culture. It also shows the brute making his way across the ocean and stepping onto American shores as a way to instill fear into the hearts of Americans that the German menace could reach them.

This sort of propaganda was effective but it also put numerous German-Americans at risk. They faced persecution for being associated with the Germans, despite their families having lived in the United States for generations.

Transcript: Read Biden’s Remarks at a Holocaust Remembrance Ceremony

Here is the president’s complete speech, which lasted about 16 minutes.

Share full article

President Biden gesturing and standing at a lectern.

By The New York Times

May 7, 2024

President Biden delivered these remarks on Tuesday at the Capitol for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Days of Remembrance.

Thank you, Stu, for that introduction, for your leadership of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. You’re a true scholar and statesman and a dear friend. Speaker Johnson, Leader Jeffries, members of Congress and especially the survivors of the Holocaust. If my mother were here, she’d look at you and say, “God love you all. God love you all.”

Abe Foxman and all of the survivors who embody absolute courage and dignity and grace are here as well. During these sacred days of remembrance, we grieve. We give voice to the six million Jews who were systematically targeted and murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators during World War II. We honor the memory of victims, the pain of survivors, the bravery of heroes who stood up to Hitler’s unspeakable evil. And we recommit to heading and heeding the lessons of one of the darkest chapters in human history, to revitalize and realize the responsibility of never again.

Never again, simply translated for me, means never forget. Never forget. Never forgetting means we must keep telling the story, must keep teaching the truth, must keep teaching our children and our grandchildren. The truth is, we are at risk of people not knowing the truth. That’s why growing up, my dad taught me and my siblings about the horrors of the Shoah at our family dinner table. That’s why I visited Yad Vashem with my family as a senator, as vice president, as president. And that’s why I took my grandchildren to Dachau, so they could see and bear witness to the perils of indifference, the complicity of silence, in the face of evil they knew was happening.

Germany 1933, Hitler and his Nazi Party’s rise to power by rekindling one of the oldest forms of prejudice and hate: antisemitism. His role didn’t begin with mass murder; it started slowly across economic, political, social and cultural life. Propaganda demonizing Jews. Boycotts of Jewish businesses. Synagogues defaced with swastikas. Harassment of Jews in the street and the schools, antisemitic demonstrations, pogroms, organized riots. With the indifference of the world, Hitler knew he could expand his reign of terror by eliminating Jews from Germany, to annihilate Jews across Europe through genocide, the Nazis called the final solution. Concentration camps, gas chambers, mass shootings. By the time the war ended, six million Jews — one of every three Jews in the entire world — were murdered.

This ancient hatred of Jews didn’t begin with the Holocaust. It didn’t end with the Holocaust either. Or after — even after our victory in World War II. This hatred continues to lie deep in the hearts of too many people in the world and requires our continued vigilance and outspokenness. That hatred was brought to life on October 7th of 2023. On the sacred Jewish holiday, the terrorist group Hamas unleashed the deadliest day of the Jewish people since the Holocaust. Driven by ancient desire to wipe out the Jewish people off the face of the Earth, over 1,200 innocent people, babies, parents, grandparents, slaughtered in a kibbutz, massacred at a music festival, brutally raped, mutilated and sexually assaulted.

Thousands more carrying wounds, bullets and shrapnel from a memory of that terrible day they endured. Hundreds taken hostage, including survivors of the Shoah. Now here we are, not 75 years later, but just seven and half months later and people are already forgetting. They are already forgetting. That Hamas unleashed this terror. It was Hamas that brutalized Israelis. It was Hamas who took and continues to hold hostages. I have not forgotten nor have you. And we will not forget.

As Jews around the world still cope with the atrocity and the trauma of that day and its aftermath, we have seen a ferocious surge of antisemitism in America and around the world. Vicious propaganda on social media. Jews forced to keep their — hide their kippahs under baseball hats, tuck their Jewish stars into their shirts. On college campuses, Jewish students blocked, harassed, attacked while walking to class. Antisemitism, antisemitic posters, slogans, calling for the annihilation of Israel, the world’s only Jewish state.

Too many people denying, downplaying, rationalizing, ignoring the horrors of the Holocaust and October 7th, including Hamas’s appalling use of sexual violence to torture and terrorize Jews. It’s absolutely despicable, and it must stop. Silence and denial can hide much, but it can erase nothing. Some injustices are so heinous, so horrific, so grievous, they cannot be married — buried — no matter how hard people try.

In my view, a major lesson of the Holocaust is, as mentioned earlier, it is not — was not — inevitable. We know hate never goes away; it only hides. Given a little oxygen, it comes out from under the rocks. We also know what stops hate. One thing: All of us. The late Rabbi Jonathan Sachs described antisemitism as a virus that has survived and mutated over time. Together, we cannot continue to let that happen. We have to remember our basic principle as a nation.

We have an obligation, an obligation to learn the lessons of history so we don’t surrender our future to the horrors of the past. We must give hate no safe harbor against anyone. Anyone. From the very founding, our very founding, Jewish Americans represented only about 2 percent of the U.S. population and helped lead the cause of freedom for everyone in our nation. From that experience, we know scapegoating and demonizing any minority is a threat to every minority and the very foundation of our democracy.

It’s in moments like this we have to put these principles that we’re talking about into action. I understand people have strong beliefs and deep convictions about the world. In America, we respect and protect the fundamental right to free speech. To debate, disagree, to protest peacefully, make our voices heard. I understand, that’s America. But there is no place on any campus in America — any place in America — for antisemitism or hate speech or threats of violence of any kind. Whether against Jews or anyone else. Violent attacks, destroying property is not peaceful protest. It’s against the law. And we are not a lawless country. We’re a civil society. We uphold the rule of law, and no one should have to hide or be brave just to be themselves.

The Jewish community, I want you to know: I see your fear, your hurt, your pain. Let me reassure you, as your president, you’re not alone. You belong. You always have and you always will. And my commitment to the safety of the Jewish people, security of Israel, and its right to exist as an independent Jewish state is ironclad even when we disagree.

My administration is working around the clock to free remaining hostages. Just so we have freed hostages already. And we will not rest until we bring them all home. My administration, with our second gentleman’s leadership, has launched our nation’s first national strategy to counter antisemitism that’s mobilizing the full force of the federal government to protect Jewish community, but we know it’s not the work of government alone or Jews alone.

That’s why I’m calling on all Americans to stand united against antisemitism and hate in all its forms. My dear friend, he became a friend, the late Elie Wiesel said, quote: “One person of integrity can make a difference.” We have to remember that now more than ever. Here in the Emancipation Hall of the U.S. Capitol, among the towering statues of history, is a bronze bust of Raoul Wallenberg. Born in Sweden, as a Lutheran, he was a businessman and a diplomat. While stationed in Hungary during World War II, he used diplomatic cover to hide and rescue about 100,000 Jews over a six-month period.

Among them was a 16-year-old Jewish boy who escaped a Nazi labor camp. After the war ended, that boy received a scholarship from the Hillel Foundation to study in America. He came to New York City penniless but determined to turn his pain into purpose, along with his wife, also a Holocaust survivor. He became a renowned economist and foreign policy thinker, eventually making his way to this very Capitol on the staff of a first-term senator.

That Jewish refugee was Tom Lantos, and that senator was me. Tom and his wife, Annette, and their family became dear friends to me and my family. Tom would go on to become the only Holocaust survivor ever elected to Congress, where he became a leading voice on civil rights and human rights around the world. Tom never met Raoul, who was taken prisoner by the Soviets, never to be heard from again. But through Tom’s efforts, Raoul’s bust is here in the Capitol. He was also given honorary U.S. citizenship, only the second person ever after Winston Churchill.

The Holocaust Museum here in Washington is located on a roll — road — in Raoul’s name. The story of the power of a single person to put aside our differences, to see our common humanity, to stand up to hate and its ancient story of resilience from immense pain, persecution, to find hope, purpose and meaning in life we try to live and share with one another. That story endures.

Let me close with this. I know these days of remembrance fall on difficult times. We all do well to remember these days also fall during the month we celebrate Jewish American heritage. A heritage that stretches from our earliest days to enrich every single part of American life today. Great American — great Jewish American — Tom Lantos used the phrase the veneer of civilization is paper-thin. We are its guardians, and we can never rest.

My fellow Americans, we must, we must be those guardians. We must never rest. We must rise against hate, meet across the divide, see our common humanity. And God bless the victims and survivors of the Shoah. May the resilient hearts, courageous spirit and eternal flame of faith of the Jewish people shine their light on America and all around the world. Praise God. Thank you all.

Jewish families say anti-Israel messaging in Bay Area classrooms is making schools unsafe

Protesters hold flags bearing the Star of David.

Show more sharing options
Copy Link URL Copied!

In the weeks after Hamas’ deadly cross-border attacks on Israeli border towns and Israel’s ensuing bombardment of Gaza, a seventh-grade Jewish student at Roosevelt Middle School in San Francisco grew accustomed to seeing her classmates display their support for Palestinians.

Students wore shirts that read “Free Palestine” and “All eyes on Gaza.” But it was more of a background hum until spring, when things took a sharper turn.

During a school assembly, a classmate spoke out against the war, equating it to genocide. Then, one teacher asked students to create a “propaganda poster” that would “persuade your audience” on an issue important to them. Many students used the opportunity to create public service announcements for cleaner oceans or against food waste and texting while driving. A handful called for an end to the war in Gaza.

One poster, prominently displayed by the teacher, caught the seventh-grader’s attention. A student had drawn an image of a Star of David exuding thick chains shackling what appeared to be an outline of Israel and the Palestinian territories. Beneath the image, written in red and all capitals, was the phrase “from the river to the sea” — a slogan many Jewish people consider a call for the expulsion and genocide of Israeli Jews. Inside the star was the word “Zionism,” the student said.

“It felt really unsafe. I couldn’t be in there anymore, because there was hate against my religion up on the wall,” said the student, whose parents requested The Times not identify her by name because of concerns she would face retribution from classmates and teachers.

Her parents scheduled a meeting with school officials and said they came away startled at how little the administrators knew about the history of Israel and the region — and why Jewish families would consider the poster offensive. They said it took hours of discussion before school leaders agreed to ask the teacher to take it down.

“This is antisemitic propaganda,” the girl’s mother said. “This would not be acceptable for any other group.”

The family is hoping to transfer their daughter to a new school next year.

The incident is emblematic of what many Jewish families in Bay Area communities say is an undercurrent of antisemitism that has emerged unchecked in K-12 schools amid the divisive national debates spawned by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In San Francisco, Viviane Safrin is serving as a point person for Jewish families who want to report concerns about school lessons and activities they perceive as antisemitic.

“It often feels like I’m a triage nurse or ER doctor,” said Safrin, who sent two of her children to San Francisco public schools and overall had a positive experience. “My phone is dinging from the time I wake up until I go to bed with different photos from different things that have happened at school, or a lesson plan, or this and that was said to a student by peers.”

Disagreement over how the war in Gaza should be taught in K-12 schools has fractured a region that harbors some of the nation’s most progressive and antiwar communities. It’s also raised challenging questions about the line between free speech and hurtful bias, and what obligation public schools have to ensure all students feel welcome in their classrooms, regardless of their opinions on the conflict.

Many of the families who spoke with The Times have personal ties to Israel, whether through birth or because close family members live there. As Jewish Americans, all were raised to respect and embrace Israel as the Jewish homeland.

Some did not consider themselves overtly Zionist before the war — and disagree with some of Israel’s politics. But they believe without question that Israel has a right to exist as the world’s only Jewish state and because of that belief suddenly find themselves labeled as racists and genocide enablers.

Worse, for many parents, is watching as their children are somehow held accountable for a government on the other side of the world.

According to a 2020 survey by the Pew Research Center, 82% of Jewish people said caring about Israel was an important part of their Jewish identity . More than a quarter had lived in Israel or visited multiple times, and 45% had visited at least once.

The Bay Area is home to an estimated 350,000 Jewish people, according to a 2021 report led by the Jewish Community Federation and Endowment Fund. They encompass a diverse spectrum of opinions on Israel and its government, including pro-Palestinian Jewish organizations such as Jewish Voice for Peace, which was founded in the Bay Area in the 1990s.

Rabbi Adam Naftalin-Kelman, the Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation executive director of the Hillel Jewish Student Center at UC Berkeley, sent his three sons through Berkeley schools. Naftalin-Kelman, who said he was speaking as a Berkeley parent and not in his official capacity at the student center, said it’s incumbent on K-12 educators to consider all of the experiences of young students and their families when considering how lesson plans affect their sense of belonging.

“There’s a heaviness that exists since Oct. 7 for Jewish families, families that have a connection to Israel, Zionists, Israelis,” Naftalin-Kelman said. And many now have a thudding sense that some of their teachers, classmates and colleagues have “no understanding of who they are.”

“Unfortunately, what I think is happening now is we are stuck with simple slogans that put people in camps, that remove all nuance and complexity in what is one of the most complex conversations around religion, identity, politics and nationhood,” he said. “I think there are sometimes mistakes and administrators can do more. But it doesn’t mean there is mal-intent.”

Los Angeles, CA - April 29: Graffiti at the Powell Library on the UCLA campus where pro-Palestinian demonstrators erected an encampment on the on Monday, April 29, 2024 in Los Angeles, CA. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

‘Are you a Zionist?’ Checkpoints at UCLA encampment provoked fear, debate among Jews

At UCLA, the legacy of the encampment remains an issue of much debate, particularly among Jewish students.

May 9, 2024

Jewish families across the Bay Area have raised a range of concerns about what they perceive as antisemitism in K-12 classrooms, including teachers displaying pro-Palestinian posters and adopting lesson plans that portray Israel as a white colonialist aggressor. Some said their children have been accused of supporting genocide because they won’t renounce Israel’s right to exist.

Some of the complaints have spawned federal investigations.

In February, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and the Anti-Defamation League filed a federal complaint with the Department of Education over “severe and persistent” harassment and discrimination against Jewish kids in Berkeley schools.

On Wednesday, Berkeley Supt. Enikia Ford Morthel was called before a Republican-led congressional subcommittee investigating allegations of “pervasive antisemitism” in K-12 schools. Ford Morthel forcefully rejected accusations that Berkeley schools had become a breeding ground for antisemitism, saying educators were working hard to ensure all students feel welcome.

“There have been incidents of antisemitism in Berkeley Unified School District,” she said. “And every single time that we are aware of such an incident, we take action and follow up.”

The teachers union in Oakland Unified endorsed an unsanctioned pro-Palestinian “teach-in” in December, prompting a civil rights probe by the Department of Education. The union also provided teachers with pro-Palestinian lessons to use in place of district-provided curriculum, drawing a stern warning from Oakland’s superintendent,

The division has pushed some parents, like Shira Avoth, to pull their kids out of Oakland schools .

Avoth, who was born in Tel Aviv and moved to the U.S. at age 11, said she has requested a “safety transfer” for her son, a seventh-grader, to a school in neighboring Piedmont.

Avoth said one of her son’s teachers put “End genocide now” posters up in the classroom and assigned homework that was “politically charged” even before Oct. 7. Eventually, she said, her son transferred out of that classroom. But he then spent a month working on assignments in a room by himself during that class period.

Several families spoke of a pervasive sense that pro-Israel voices are not welcome in classrooms.

A senior at Galileo Academy of Science and Technology in San Francisco, who asked that his name not be used for fear of reprisals, said he had an open mind, at first, to criticism of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. But he couldn’t understand why some of his friends wouldn’t condemn the Hamas attacks that prompted Israel’s retaliation.

“I felt so ostracized,” he said.

He said those feelings only deepened when a pro-Palestinian group was brought in to speak about the war in one of his classes, and when posters advertising meetings of the Jewish Student Union were torn down.

“I’ve been bullied, but the main issue is the classroom — the intrusion of this anti-Israel ideology into the classroom,” he said. “If you just say ‘Zionist,’ you can say anything against the Jews. It’s like politically correct.”

Julia David, an English teacher at George Washington High in San Francisco, said she also has felt more estranged in recent months. David has family in Israel and became the sponsor of her school’s Jewish Student Union this year. The club was started to create a community for students to safely discuss the Jewish-American experience and how they feel about the conflict.

David said the group will talk about what it feels like to hear “Free Palestine” in the hallway or when they see anti-Israel graffiti on bathroom walls.

“When I was teaching, I had never worn a Jewish Star of David necklace before. I do every day now,” David said. “And I wear it proudly, and I make sure it is seen.”

In a January letter to San Francisco families, Supt. Matt Wayne assured families the district would not tolerate bullying and harassment.

“We are aware of these allegations and take them very seriously,” a spokesperson wrote in an email to The Times. “Due to our obligation to protect student and staff privacy, we cannot share details of completed or ongoing investigations.”

The issue of how and whether to teach about the conflict has also divided Jewish families, most notably in Berkeley, where some residents reject claims of unchecked antisemitism and consider the federal complaint a bogus effort to keep Muslim and Arab voices silenced.

Soon after Berkeley’s superintendent finished testifying before Congress, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and Council on American-Islamic Relations responded by filing a federal complaint alleging “severe and pervasive anti-Palestinian racism” in Berkeley schools.

“Some [teachers] have been teaching for decades; they have never been silenced on political speech,” said Sahar Habib Ghazi, the mother of a sixth-grader and a member of Berkeley Families For Collective Liberation. “We are a political city. ... People don’t move to Berkeley to be apolitical.”

Ghazi said the war isn’t just of global significance for many students but also of deeply personal importance for their families.

“They are very aware that the war is being funded by U.S. tax dollars, and that’s the same money that’s funding their schools,” Ghazi said. “They don’t see it as a global issue. They see it as a local issue.”

Berkeley schools chief grilled by Congress on claims of rampant antisemitism in K-12 classrooms

May 8, 2024

Los Angeles, CA - April 25: Pro-Palestine protesters gather at an encampment on the campus of UCLA at UCLA Thursday, April 25, 2024 in Los Angeles, CA. (Ringo Chiu / For The Times)

Opinion: Do campus protests show Americans’ support for Palestinians has reached a turning point?

Los Angeles, CA - May 02: Demonstrators occupy a Pro-Palestinian encampment at UCLA as authorities breach and break up the encampment on Thursday, May 2, 2024 in Los Angeles, CA. (Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Ali: Mocking Gaza protesters as ‘gluten-free warriors’ was fun — until a mob at UCLA attacked them

May 3, 2024

Start your day right

Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week.

You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.

Hannah Wiley covers the Bay Area and North Coast for the Los Angeles Times. She previously worked with The Times’ Sacramento bureau as a state politics reporter, covering the Legislature and pivotal policy issues including homelessness and housing, mental health, addiction, gun control and the state judicial system. Before coming to The Times, she covered state politics for the Sacramento Bee. Wiley has a bachelor’s degree from St. Louis University and a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University. She is based in San Francisco.

More From the Los Angeles Times

Palestinians mourn their relatives killed in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip, at a hospital in Rafah, Gaza, Friday, May 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Ismael Abu Dayyah)

World & Nation

Heavy fighting in Gaza keeps Rafah aid crossings closed as 100,000 civilians flee

LOS ANGELES, CA - APRIL 27, 2024 - USC graduates look over vacant chairs and tables in Alumni Park on the USC campus in Los Angeles on April 27, 2024. The marquee 65,000-attendee "main stage" commencement ceremony that, traditionally is held in Alumni Park, has been called off due to all the protest over students calling for the end of the war in Gaza and divestment in Israel. (Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

Opinion: The commencement USC students, and their parents, should have had

May 10, 2024

LOS ANGELES, CA - MAY 9, 2024: Fireworks go off at the "Trojan Family Graduate Celebration," at The Coliseum on May 9, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. The traditional main stage ceremony at Alumni Park was canceled due to campus unrest. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

Fireworks, drones, Travis Scott hats: USC hosts alternative graduation event. Feelings are mixed

Haim Saban speaks at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures' Unveiling of the Saban Building event at the Petersen Automotive Museum on Tuesday, Dec. 4, 2018, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Willy Sanjuan/Invision/AP)

Hollywood mega-donor Haim Saban slams Biden’s decision to halt weapons shipment to Israel

Many Indians Don’t Trust Their Elections Anymore

Modi rose from a level playing field that no longer exists.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi shows his ink-marked finger after casting his vote.

O n March 21 , a little less than a month before India’s national elections, the main opposition party, Congress, held a press conference to announce that its campaign was paralyzed. The government had earlier frozen the party’s bank accounts in connection with an alleged tax violation from the 1990s. Now the party was struggling to support its parliamentary candidates, and its ground organization had sputtered to a halt.

Later that evening, fewer than 10 miles away, cops and paramilitaries surrounded the official bungalow of Arvind Kejriwal, the chief minister of Delhi province and a member of another opposition party, seeking his arrest on corruption charges. His supporters began a spontaneous protest, and amid the frenzy, Kejriwal became the first sitting chief minister to be arrested in India’s history.

The events of March 21 are part of a pattern that has cast doubt on the legitimacy of India’s election. According to this year’s report by Freedom House, a bipartisan think tank that evaluates democracies across the world, Modi’s government “has selectively pursued anti-corruption investigations against opposition politicians while overlooking allegations against political allies.” Many of those politicians have then been cleared of the charges if they joined Modi’s party: Of 25 opposition leaders probed for corruption, 23 saw their charges dropped when they switched parties. These and other worrying developments are striking in a country that has long prided itself as the biggest and most unlikely modern democratic success story.

Ashoka Mody: Is India an autocracy?

India conducted its first election during the winter of 1951–2, a mammoth exercise that took five months to complete. For a nation that was overwhelmingly illiterate, poor, and racked by social divisions, the decision to adopt the universal adult franchise at one stroke was extraordinarily ambitious. Just preparing the country’s first electoral roll, enlisting 173 million voters, was a staggering undertaking—one actually completed before the constitution was even enacted in 1950. “Indians became voters before they were citizens,” the scholar Ornit Shani has written .

Indian elections have taken place, largely uninterrupted, ever since. Not only is this record rare among postcolonial nations; it is somewhat of a paradox within the context of India itself. Low indices for human development and shoddy public services testify to the country’s inefficiency on many counts, and yet, India has tended to organize the world’s largest elections with relative ease.

The country’s election commission is largely responsible for this success. The constitutional body has overseen 17 national elections and hundreds of provincial elections in states as large as European nations; today it caters to nearly 1 billion voters and marshals nearly 15 million workers to conduct a national election. The commission is led by a three-person panel whose chief, like a high-ranking judge, can be removed only if Parliament impeaches them. At least since the 1990s, chief election commissioners have been independent and powerful figures who inspire fear in politicians and their parties.

A policeman checks his phone during an Indian National Congress party

Narendra Modi has managed to undermine all that during his decade as prime minister. In December, his government passed a law amending the selection process for choosing election commissioners such that the executive branch would have the most say over the process. That he chose to interfere is little wonder. Independent election commissioners had posed an obstacle to Modi almost from the beginning of his political career.

When Modi was chief minister of the western state of Gujarat in 2002, a spasm of religious violence killed more than 1,000 people there, mostly Muslims. Modi dissolved the provincial assembly and called for elections six months ahead of schedule, likely hoping to capitalize on the climate of religious polarization that gripped the province. But J. M. Lyngdoh, then the chief election commissioner, visited Gujarat and concluded that local insecurity called for deferring elections until the winter. Modi responded by impugning Lyngdoh’s motivations and mocking his Christian identity.

By 2019, Modi had mostly taken care of this problem: He was ensconced as prime minister, and had rendered the election commission all but toothless, having filled the body with handpicked former bureaucrats closely allied with the Hindu right.

F or decades , a stringent code of conduct governed elections in India, and transgressions could result in public censure, bans from campaigning, and, in extreme cases, the disqualification of candidates. And yet, in 2019, the commission heard five complaints against Modi for violating the election code—by seeking votes in the name of the military, for example, and appealing to the electorate on religious grounds. It somehow contrived to clear Modi in all five cases.

Five years later, Modi is leading an even more incendiary and divisive campaign, and the commission appears to be comatose. On April 6, Modi described the Congress party’s manifesto as reflecting the mentality of the Muslim League, the separatist organization that led to the creation of Pakistan and is widely reviled in India, even though the manifesto made no reference to religion. Then, in an election rally on April 21, Modi told voters that the Congress party intended to seize their private wealth and distribute it among India’s 200 million Muslims, whom he characterized as infiltrators producing more than their share of children.

Modi’s speech almost certainly violated not only the election code but also Indian laws against hate speech and inciting religious discord. Perhaps even Modi realized he had gone too far: The transcripts of the speech uploaded to the prime minister’s website did not include the most offensive passages. Even so, his remarks caused an uproar in India. Political parties and more than 20,000 private citizens complained to the election commission, seeking its intervention. If the electoral body did not act, Sagarika Ghose, an opposition legislator wrote on X , “then let’s please wind up the Election Commission and forget about the Model Code of Conduct.”

The commission responded timidly, with a notice not to Modi but to the president of his Bharatiya Janata Party. In the past, the commission directly censured political leaders for their violations; today its reluctance to confront the prime minister surprises no one. Commissioners know that standing up to Modi can exact a heavy price. In 2019, Ashok Lavasa, one of the three election commissioners, recorded a formal dissent from the decision to exonerate the prime minister on the five complaints. Lavasa’s phone was placed on a surveillance list, while his family endured months of harassment, including tax raids and investigations into his son’s business. In 2020, Lavasa resigned. He had been due to take over as chief election commissioner the following year.

I reached out to several former election commissioners for comment for this story. Two spoke with me off the record, kept deferring the date for a formal interview, and eventually stopped taking calls or responding to texts. One, Om Prakash Rawat, who was chief election commissioner in 2018, dismissed concerns about the commission’s independence as media fictions and suggested that Western democracies had perpetuated them in order to undermine India. Rawat told me that he did not think Modi and his party had violated the election code in 2019 or in the present election. Modi’s speech branding the Congress manifesto as reflecting the mentality of the Muslim League was merely politics as usual, he said.

As the election season has worn on and the commission has kept quiet, Modi has doubled down on his rhetoric, describing the Muslim electorate as “jihadi votes,” and the BJP has put out animated videos portraying Muslims as crafty and predatory animals.

A rvind Kejriwal , the Delhi chief minister, was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate, a federal agency that investigates financial crimes. Since Modi came to power in 2014, the number of investigations the directorate has conducted against political leaders has more than quadrupled, to 121. Of the leaders under investigation, 115 of them—95 percent—belonged to opposition parties.

Kejriwal is the leader of the Aam Aadmi Party, an upstart populist outfit that has quickly risen to take charge of two northern provinces. A rousing orator, Kejriwal was known for his sarcastic and often humorous speeches critical of Modi. In the short term, arresting him served the BJP by eliminating a charismatic opposition politician from the campaign trail. In the long term, it dealt a blow to a rival who could one day become a national challenger.

Kejriwal was technically the first chief minister to be arrested in India’s history, but effectively, he was the second. In January, Hemant Soren, the chief minister of the eastern state of Jharkhand, had resigned a few hours before he was arrested by the directorate. Like Kejriwal, Soren had a commanding presence in a region where the BJP was markedly weak.

Few institutions have survived the democratic subversion of the Modi years. Soren and Kejriwal approached the courts, but an enfeebled judiciary is still vacillating on whether to grant them bail. Much of the mainstream news media purvey Hindu-nationalist propaganda, depicting Modi as the personification of the nation and his opponents as corrupt actors intent on destabilizing India. A recent analysis of six prominent networks from February through April, the months leading up to the election, found that 52 percent of their prime-time coverage attacked opposition parties; another 27 percent praised Modi and his government.

Under Modi, India has slipped 43 places down the World Press Freedom Index; it now ranks a dismal 159 out of 180 nations. Since 2021, Freedom House has categorized India as only “partly free” in its annual reports. That same year, the V-Dem Institute, an independent research organization based in Sweden, also reclassified India, observing that “the world’s largest democracy has turned into an electoral autocracy.”

T hese days in India , talk often swirls back to the Emergency, India’s previous era of authoritarian rule, in the 1970s under Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. The 1977 elections that ended the Emergency produced a staggering upset, with Gandhi losing her own parliamentary seat. But the Princeton professor Gyan Prakash, who wrote a book about the Emergency, told me that the analogy to the present moment was misleading. Gandhi freed opposition leaders from prison as elections approached; Modi has been doing the opposite.

“The 1977 elections were held fair and square,” Prakash told me. “One fears that is not going to be the case with 2024.”

In India’s stratified and deeply hierarchical society, elections have long been a great equalizer. During the campaign season, social boundaries between castes and classes seem momentarily to dissolve as passionate political debates break out in tea stalls and on crowded buses and subways. Candidates and parties produce festive road shows on city streets.

But Modi and his Hindu-nationalist juggernaut have quelled these energies. The current election feels sluggish. Most cities and towns have been bathed in the saffron hue of the BJP, and posters of Modi’s visage can be seen everywhere. Participation is correspondingly low; when voting began for more than 100 parliamentary seats on April 19, turnout was down more than three percentage points from five years ago.

Trust in the election commission is declining among voters; even fewer have confidence in the electronic machines used for voting. Making matters worse, this year’s turnout figures from the first round of voting were publicized a full 10 days later than normal, and they were expressed as percentages instead of whole numbers. Indian citizens rely on turnout data to assess the fairness of the vote. Now voters are openly voicing fears of sabotage; despite repeated appeals, the commission has not yet released the full figures.

The weakening of public faith in Indian elections is not surprising or accidental. The Hindu-nationalist movement has always been disdainful of Indian constitutionalism and democracy, seeing its participation in these processes as tactical accommodations on the path to its eventual goal of a centralized, authoritarian government. Commenting on India’s first election back in 1952, Organiser , the preeminent journal of the Hindu right, suggested that the country’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, “would live to confess the failure of universal adult franchise in India.” Prakash told me that the government’s more recent ploys to throttle the opposition were part of the “BJP’s single-minded and ruthless drive for a one-party state.”

On April 22, a BJP candidate was elected unopposed from the Surat constituency in Gujarat, two weeks before elections were scheduled in the city of 1.8 million voters. The Congress candidate for the parliamentary seat had been rejected on a technicality; when the party put forward an alternative candidate, he was rejected too. Under mysterious circumstances, the remaining eight non-BJP candidates simultaneously withdrew from the race, paving the way for the BJP to win without a vote.

Vaibhav Vats: Violence is the engine of Modi’s politics

On the evening of the Surat victory, Jitendra Chauhan, an independent candidate from Gandhinagar, the capital of Gujarat, alleged in a video posted online that associates of the city’s sitting MP were threatening him, and that he feared he might even be killed if he didn’t withdraw his nomination. (The Gandhinagar MP is Amit Shah, India’s home minister and widely considered the second-most-powerful person in the country. The BJP denies Chauhan’s claims.) Over the following days, 16 candidates, including Chauhan, withdrew; many said they had faced pressure from powerful BJP politicians and even the police. Around the same time, in Indore, a Congress candidate went to the polling office to withdraw his nomination; when he emerged, he had joined the BJP.

Such strong-arm maneuvers offer one among several possible means of securing a one-party future. In January, during a mayoral election in the northern city of Chandigarh, a polling officer belonging to the BJP was caught on camera spoiling opposition ballots. That case resulted in a rare intervention: The election was overturned by India’s supreme court.

Through his decade in power, Modi has plowed the level playing field from which he rose. In 2014, when Modi led his insurgent campaign against the Congress, the media were free to robustly criticize the government, democratic institutions such as the election commission and the courts asserted themselves, and dissent did not carry the threat of prison. Now the very bodies the public once relied on to safeguard the electoral process have seemingly abdicated their constitutional mandate and are helping make Modi’s third bid for prime minister into something resembling a coronation.

IMAGES

50 powerful examples of visual propaganda and the meanings behind them
how to create a propaganda poster Archives
I'm Counting on you in 2020
30 Political Propaganda Posters from Modern History
50 powerful examples of visual propaganda and the meanings behind them
World War II Propaganda Posters: Rare Posters From New Book

VIDEO

Soviet Propaganda Posters
What propaganda posters were circulated in world war 2? #shorts

COMMENTS

Now and Then: American Propaganda and Protest Posters
For now, let's look at the graphic design of that era dealing with these issues. For modern time posters, I grabbed protest poster designs from this article by Ellen Shapiro. ... A Century Later: American Propaganda Art and Posters Nationalism: Title: Forward America! / Carroll Kelly 1917 ; Wright Henry Worth Inc. Creator(s): Kelly, Carroll ...
These World War II Propaganda Posters Rallied the Home Front
Once U.S. troops were sent to the front lines, hundreds of artists were put to work to create posters that would rally support on the home front. Citizens were invited to purchase war bonds and ...
Propaganda Has Changed Over Time. Here's Why the Latest Are So
Mladen Antonov/AFP/Getty Images. February 1, 2021, 12:58 PM. In the last few years, propaganda has taken on a new character, and the effects will reverberate far into the future. To understand how ...
We are all propagandists now
We're all propagandists now. Rather than the elite manufacturing consent, a new propaganda model has emerged in the 21st century: what I call the "manufacture of dissent.". The ...
The Propaganda Posters That Won The U.S. Home Front
Posters were cheap, easily distributed, and fomented a sense of patriotism and duty. In World War II, the U.S. turned to artists once again in an attempt to influence the public on the home front.
Posters: Yanker Poster Collection
The Yanker Poster Collection includes more than 3,000 political, propaganda, and social issue posters and handbills, dating 1927-1980. Most posters are from the United States, but over 55 other countries and the United Nations are also represented. The materials were acquired by gift of Gary Yanker in 1975 and later.
We Are All Propagandists Now
We Are All Propagandists Now. A Texas A&M rhetoric expert says America's public sphere is broken because propaganda has replaced political communication. By Jennifer Mercieca for The Conversation July 22, 2021. A rally - fed by citizen-spread misinformation and disinformation - turned into the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection.
What North Korean propaganda posters reveal
One of 25 of the posters now on display at the University Museum and Art Gallery in Hong Kong. University Museum and Art Gallery, The University of Hong Kong "Let us do extensive fish-farming!"
Posters Worth A Thousand Words
Posters Worth A Thousand Words ... Propaganda posters encouraged citizens to enlist in the military ... The New Anzacs Pause Before Action in the Middle East / Join the AIF Now! ALLONS-Y. Man the guns Join the Navy United States. Navy. En Sus Puestos. Come On, Pal ... Enlist! On to Victory / Air Crews Wanted R.A.A.F. - Urgently! Helping on the ...
Why propaganda is more dangerous in the digital age
Like the propaganda posters from the world wars, politically pointed memes employed a striking visual coupled with effective communication intended to alter the mind frame or subconscious of a ...
THE POSTER
Duty. Some posters during the war relied on the viewers' sense of duty to convey a message, appealing to a person's desire to take direct action in the conflict. In 1917, James Montgomery Flagg created one of the most recognizable American poster from the war, a painting of Uncle Sam in his own likeness. Posters like this encouraged men and ...
World War II Propaganda Posters
The pricey Stetson poster illuminates a common theme of many World War II posters: the dangers of espionage and careless talk. "Silence—means security. Be careful what you say or write," by illustrator Jes Wilhelm Schlaikjer in 1945 shows a night-patrol infantryman walking somewhere in the Pacific. Meehan sells it for $325.
50 powerful examples of visual propaganda and the meanings ...
This propaganda poster, again from the era of the Second World War, warns of the risk of German spies infiltrating the civilian communities of the Allied Powers. ... This poster reads 'The world now knows that the Fascists have nothing to offer the youth but death.' It shows a skeleton removing a mask, which is the face of Hitler, and ...
The Posters That Sold World War I to the American Public
The posters tell you how to help, and the look in the eyes of Uncle Sam makes sure you do. " Your Country Calls!: Posters of the First World War " will be on view at the Huntington from August ...
How the Nazis used poster art as propaganda
His propaganda posters were so successful that after World War II, Hohlwein was banned from working for many years. But there were also some Bauhaus students involved in the designs, such as ...
The Poster: Visual Persuasion in WWI
In WWI, the poster, previously a successful medium for commercial advertising, was recognized as a means of spreading national propaganda with near unlimited possibilities. Learn more about posters, and their use during the war, with this digital exhibition. Enter Exhibition. View more content by the Museum and Memorial on Google Arts & Culture.
Castro's Revolution, Illustrated
On Jan. 8, 1959, after two years of fighting, Mr. Castro rode into Havana in a jeep to a " delirious welcome " from Cubans as their new leader. The 32-year-old looked "exhausted but happy ...
Famous Propaganda Posters From the Last 100 Years
These posters have stood the test of time and remain woven into our society, some of them more than 100 years after their initial creation. Stacker highlighted 50 famous propaganda posters associated with major wars and political movements throughout history, including those from different countries and time periods.
About
The Propaganda Archive. A project by Propagandopolis to create the internet's largest archive of propaganda posters, postcards, pamphlets, stamps and other ephemera. This archive is currently a work in progress. New content and features will be added over the coming months. If you would like to learn about or support the project, you can do ...
25 Most Powerful Propaganda Posters That Made All The Difference
The Great Powers intervened and defeated Chinese forces. 3. Anti - Smoking Propaganda. awesome-fun. A very simple, yet powerful anti-smoking poster. Sometimes dubbed as one of the most clever anti-smoking advertisement ever. 4. "You Can Be Someone's Superhero!", Hellenic Association Of Blood Donors, (2013).
How to interpret propaganda posters
Large nose, kippah (Jewish prayer cap) 2. Symbolism. Just like political cartoons, propaganda posters use simple objects, or symbols, that the general public would be familiar with. These symbols are used to represent important concepts or ideas. For example, using a 'skull and crossbones' could represent 'death' or 'danger'.
Watching the watchdogs: How US media weaponised campus protests
In this clash, two critical forces have been weaponised: the US mainstream media that heavily disseminates Israeli propaganda and shapes many local, state and national policies, and the scourge of ...
6 WWI Propaganda Posters That Rallied People to Fight
Among the few pieces of Russian propaganda that was put out during World War I was this image of Kaiser Wilhelm II being depicted as the arch-enemy of Russia. Kaiser Wilhelm II was the person blamed for the start of the war in Russia. In this image the Kaiser is portrayed with a devil tail, horns, and cloven hooves.
CNN Desert Storm
'Vietnam means death to the brothers' (American poster by unknown artist for Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Early in the war black soldiers represented about 10% of combatants but suffered around 20% of casualties. United States of America, ca. 1966).
Here's What Biden Said in His Speech at the Holocaust Remembrance
Vicious propaganda on social media. Jews forced to keep their — hide their kippahs under baseball hats, tuck their Jewish stars into their shirts. On college campuses, Jewish students blocked ...
Bay Area Jewish families say K-12 schools are fostering antisemitism
"This is antisemitic propaganda," the girl's mother said. ... Avoth said one of her son's teachers put "End genocide now" posters up in the classroom and assigned homework that was ...
Many Indians Don't Trust Their Elections Anymore
Under Modi, India has slipped 43 places down the World Press Freedom Index; it now ranks a dismal 159 out of 180 nations. Since 2021, Freedom House has categorized India as only "partly free ...