Propaganda Piece

"Become an expert marksman" they said.
"Impress your family back on Alderaan" they said.

"The propagandist is a man who canalises an already existing stream. In a land where there is no water, he digs in vain."

— Aldous Huxley

Propaganda is the art of influencing opinion.

Non-photographic ('eidetic') human memory is relatively poor, as almost every student can attest. Our memory is most egregious regarding information which contradicts, or simply fails to affirm, our beliefs (Confirmation Bias). To get around this shortcoming, we have evolved to form and maintain opinions instead: long after facts and reasoned arguments have faded from our memories, opinions and feelings of correctness about those opinions remain.

You might think that the easiest way to persuade someone is to use reasoned argument. It is not.^note In fact, in 2010 Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler proposed the idea of the Backfire Effect - that in response to being shown facts that disprove their theories, people are prone to minimising, disregarding or otherwise disposing of the inconvenient facts and reinforcing their original belief. Later research has called the Backfire Effect into question, but as if to prove that there is some merit in the idea, the notion retains serious traction in pop psychology. You can read more here.

The easiest way to persuade someone is through appealing to their emotions. If you pose an opinion as a way to (not) feel an emotion that they (don't) want to feel, they will instinctively want to adopt it. If they do so, they will then use their intelligence to 'rationalise' (create logical-sounding excuses to explain) the change. The more intelligent someone is, the more sophisticated their rationalisations are. The most potent emotions for these purposes are of course love, happiness, and fear.

In advertising and propaganda this approach boils down to associating products or policies with certain feelings:

• Showing attractive people, set to sensual/sexy music, with a product encourages the consumer to feel that the product is used by/will attract them (self-love/lust)
• Showing happy people, set to soothing/cheery music, with a product gives the impression that it makes people happy (happiness, obviously)
• Showing anxious people, set to ominous/unsettling music, with a product makes it seem suspicious (fear).

What distinguishes propaganda from advertising is "unity of message". Propaganda communicates a single, all-encompassing paradigm. Advertising communicates several, contradictory perspectives. Propaganda can be hamstrung through poor technique (e.g. North Korean propaganda), and advertising can succeed through coincidental unity (e.g. "you must buy things to be happy"), but by design propaganda has a much greater potential for influencing opinion. Also, virtually every piece of art, literature, music, or film that has a statement to make beyond Doing It for the Art can be considered propaganda, including works intended to condemn propaganda.

Historically, propaganda is a neutral word without any political connotations. The concept of propaganda is Older Than You'd Think, stemming back to antics in 5th Century Persia; for more information see its Wikipedia article. The word itself gained fashion around 1622, as the Catholic Church instituted a new department in its ministry to non-Catholics in new areas: Congregatio de Propaganda Fide in Latin, or "Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith." Since religions naturally choose to spread their news of their faith as part of its function, one shouldn't see this as a good thing nor use the otherwise neutral word as an accusation of that institution.

Overlaps with the Propaganda Machine, an organization that makes propaganda. Public Service Announcements are another area of overlap, as the same methods may be used to promote health and safety.

Supertrope to Attack of the Political Ad, Scare Campaign and Wartime Cartoon.

Compare with Poe's Law, Straw Man News Media, and War Is Glorious. Contrast with My Country Tis of Thee That I Sting and What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?. Compare and contrast Anvilicious and Author Tract. Many marketing techniques are applicable to both propaganda and advertising, for example, compare and contrast AstroTurf with Viral Marketing. See also Canned Orders over Loudspeaker, Edutainment Show, Malicious Libel, Newspeak, Newsreels, Patriotic Fervor, Subliminal Advertising, The War on Straw, and The Other Wiki's article on "Priming" in psychology.

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In-Universe Examples:

Anime & Manga

• FLAG has photographer Saeko taking a picture that happens to have a UN flag in the background, the image eventually becomes famous and is eventually as used propaganda by the UN.
• High School D×D portrays the Holy Bible itself as the greatest piece of propaganda that God ever created. The book itself really is holy, and any Devil who tries to read or recite it will experience pain for their troubles. However, the thing is that Devils really aren't evil. Most of them want to live normal lives like everyone else. Satan himself is a Reasonable Authority Figure, and Devils in general don't hold any ill intentions or preconceived notions about Angels. Angels and Fallen Angels maliciously attack Devils because "the good book" tells them to.
• The first two Lyrical Nanoha movies are In-Universe retellings of the first two seasons produced by the TSAB (partially as propaganda, and partially as training videos for aerial mages). Because of this, the second movie cuts out the whole "TSAB admiral tries to condemn an innocent girl to be frozen for eternity" subplot.
• Tenchi Muyo! GXP has a really bad Galaxy Police film, with things like Scoring Points and even a grabber-claw enticement offer.
• Fullmetal Alchemist has an unusual example of propaganda used by the heroes. After Mustang's coup begins he gets the Fuhrer's wife to go on the radio in support of him, crying for the loss of her husband and explaining that forces from Central Command had tried to kill her. This is all true but it becomes straight out propaganda when they make it seem like Central Command murdered the Furher and started a coup that Mustang is trying to put down, exactly the opposite of what really happened.
  • To really sell the story Mustang's allies arrange to have Ishvalan "travelers" arrive in the city who confirm his story about the Fuhrer's death. Since Mustang gained fame for genocide against the Ishvalans there's no reason to think they'd be supporting him.
  • Of course, they have no choice but to do this since Fuhrer King Bradley is beloved by the people, so they'd be undermining themselves and really play into this trope to absurd and unbelievable lengths if they revealed that he's actually a homunculus and part of the Ancient Conspiracy for his benefactor to absorb the souls of the entire country to become God.
• One Piece: Sora, Warrior of the Sea is a long running comic strip published by the World Economic Journal, the biggest newspaper in the setting featuring a Marine hero fighting an evil army. The events depicted by the comic are claimed in-universe to be based on the exploits of real Marine heroes, serving as propaganda to increase support for the Marine cause.
• In Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury, the majority of news networks are owned by wealthy spacians, and portray Earthian protesters in a negative light. In one case seen, the network describes how police used Mobile Suits to put down a violent riot consisting of someone throwing a molotov cocktail. Even if the riot was as violent as they claim, using mobile suits agains civilians is an absurd overreaction.

Comic Books

• The Transformers: Last Stand of the Wreckers: The Wreckers Declassified Data logs created by Ironfist were both a heroic and unintentional example. Ironfist idealized the Wreckers as the Autobots Strike Force that did the dirty jobs, and created the logs to pay tribute to them in his own fanboy way. The logs were faithful if dramatized and idealized, there were some blatant lies that covered up their more questionable actions but those were because high command covered up the incidents and not the author's fault. The logs became so popular that the Wreckers gained quite a bit of fame and respect and made them symbols of the elite rather than the dysfunctional gun thugs they were (one leader was a traitor, another went insane, the previous one executed prisoners, and one member may have started the entire war). Roadbuster came to regret the image they had, and how much was kept from the public eye.
• Strikeforce: Morituri had in-universe propaganda comics. Notable bits involving them included all the female characters noting that their propaganda versions had a certain specific feature, and a depiction of the very first mission of the programme that was later revealed to be seriously over-idealized.
• Über has in-universe propaganda posters as a specific Variant Cover series.
• The Boys has Victory Comics, a branch of Vought American created with the purpose of drumming support for the company's super hero program by whitewashing the (to put it mildly) less-than-heroic exploits of Vought's super teams to give the people "supes the way they wanted supes to be".

Fan Works

• In Incarnation of Legends, the plays Bell sees in Rakia tend to portray the leading adventurers of Rakia's rivals in an unflattering light. Finn Deimne, the Braver and the Captain of the Loki Familia, is treated as a sniveling coward. Bell also doubts that the Radiance would actually beg the Legiones for mercy.
• Iron Touch: Chicago IX is rampant with Dio propaganda, including one poster labeled DIO APPRECIATION DAY with a picture of him dressed up as the Statue of Liberty. What makes this especially interesting is that Mr. Williams, the owner of Chicago IX and the one responsible for all the Dio propaganda, never actually met Dio while he was alive and therefore lacks the Undying Loyalty that most of his remaining followers have (like Midler). Mr. Williams' goal is just to lure any vampire to the resort so that he can make his elderly pet cat immortal, he just uses Dio as a figurehead for the effort because of his existing legacy.

Films — Animation

• Planet 51 portrays the Human race as a monstrous group of aliens who want to enslave everything else. It's used as a scare tactic to the public much the same as actual sci-fi movies did back in the 1950's. Special mention that the scare tactics were being used before anyone even knew that life existed beyond their world.

Films — Live-Action

• Inglourious Basterds's plot revolves around a screening of a Nazi propaganda film about a young German sniper killing numerous US soldiers, the sniper himself is disturbed to see his actions glorified.
• All the viral messages in the Starship Troopers movies are a pastiche of propaganda recruitment tools. For example, the third movie has the song "It's a Good Day to Die!" sold by the Federation as the #1 hit single.
• Wag the Dog had the song "The American Dream" supporting the phony war in Albania.
• It Happened Here, an Alternate History film about a Britain that was conquered and occupied by the Germans in 1940, includes newsreels showing friendly comradeship between British and German soldiers.
• C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America: The Family Values Program is a series of propaganda films to brainwash slaves, keep women submissive, and root out homosexuals. In the movie's reality, American culture was pretty much nothing but propaganda.

• Captain America: The First Avenger. America's first Super-Soldier Steve Rogers finds himself on a corny stage act to shill war bonds, as well as appearing in propaganda movies of him fighting even though he's never seen combat (ironically, the Red Skull quite likes these movies). Later when Cap becomes a genuine war hero he's still used for propaganda, but via combat cameraman footage of the Howling Commandos in action.

Literature

• One of the main characters of The Bartimaeus Trilogy is a professional propaganda writer in the third book, against an alternate-history American Revolution. The resulting pamphlets are named things like Real War Stories, despite having almost no connection to reality, and practically nobody we see takes them seriously.
• The 'Propos' made by the rebels in The Hunger Games are basically these, used to turn the people against the Capitol.
• In The Machineries of Empire, Jedao has Cheris drop dozens of propaganda leaflets, drugs and alcohol to weaken the resolve of the Fortress' residents.
• In Poster Girl the main character Sonya Kantor served as the titular Poster Girl for the propaganda department of the Delegation, a tyrannical regime in a post collapse USA. The poster showing her alongside the Delegation`s slogan "WHAT’S RIGHT IS RIGHT". Even now 10 years after the Delegation was overthrown, most people still know Sonya as "The Poster Girl". The Poster is also depiced on most covers of the novel.
• Star Wars Propaganda: A History of Persuasive Art in the Galaxy contains fifty different propaganda posters from all sides of the original, prequel, and sequel eras, with accompanying in-universe analysis of their historical context. The page image is one such piece.
• The X-Wing Series:
  • Wedge's Gamble reveals that the Galactic Museum on the Imperial capital of Coruscant presents a skewed take on history, and is where a holographic Darth Vader recounts the late Emperor Palpatine's Heroic Sacrifice at the Battle of Endor, in which he managed to stop those dastardly Rebels from using the Planetary Ore Extractor for nefarious purposes. It also claims "outlaws and malcontents" have rendered Ewoks extinct.
  • Wraith Squadron's Garik "Face" Loran is a Former Child Star-turned snubfighter jockey who views his military service with the New Republic as a way of atoning for his past helping the Empire make propaganda. In one of his holo-dramas he played a loyal citizen who gets shot and dies in the Emperor's arms, begging Palpatine to destroy Rebels like his traitorous father. Another flick is mentioned concerning free-spirited tightrope walkers on Coruscant, who fall to their deaths as a lesson on the perils of individuality.
• Kiss of the Spider Woman: In-Universe, the Nazi film Molina is obsessed with naturally counts. It tars all Jews and French Resistance members as horrible people.
• Dungeon Crawler Carl: An interesting example. The fourth floor consists of a massive railway system with an ecology of monsters who are kept in check by drugs produced by the Krakaren and provided by the Pookas. The railway system itself is a metaphor for the galaxy and is a scale-model of the ancient Hyperspace Lanes. Carl is eventually told that the Krakaren and the Pookas are real creatures outside the dungeon—the Krakaren is a massive, consuming Hive Mind, and the species the Pookas are based on invented a proprietary communications technology that is part of the reason that Borant, the company that created the dungeon, is going bankrupt. The whole thing is a story based on an extremely racist conspiracy theory that the "Pookas" are actually in league with one of the most dangerous entities in the galaxy and will eventually feed everyone to her. The humans, of course, were completely ignorant of all this racist background material, though Carl does discover the final trap by realizing where the story is going.

Live Action TV

• Babylon 5:
  • In "The Illusion of Truth", an ISN news crew visits the station and through selective presentation and slanted commentary presents a hit piece supporting the Clark regime position that the station (which had rebelled against the dictatorship back home) was under malign alien influence.
  • In "Point of No Return", Londo dismisses Vir's attempt to describe alien cultures accurately and objectively and declares that his reports would be better received if he rewords them to suggest that aliens are decadent and immoral.
    Vir: I thought the purpose of filing these reports was to provide accurate intelligence.
    Londo: Vir, intelligence has nothing to do with politics!
• The Man in the High Castle: In an alternate universe where the Axis powers won WWII, Hudson Aberdeen made anti-Nazi propaganda to bolster the Resistance movement, which pretended that the Allies won. The films were so realistic, that mistakenly, Travelers started sending him real films of the Allies winning, sparking the plot. In a second example, he later gets coerced into hosting a TV show that is much like the original The Twilight Zone, with Nazi aesops such as "In an alternate universe, you might have a black boss!" This is specifically to discredit his previous work, which gets portrayed as another negative alternate universe story.

Tabletop Games

• The Cyrinishad from Forgotten Realms is this trope taken to its Logical Extreme: whoever reads the book becomes a devout worshiper of Cyric, and is convinced that he is the only true deity in existence in accordance to his Dogma. This works on pretty much everyone, including gods (and Cyric himself was not an exception). The text itself fits this trope, being a thorough explanation of why Cyric is the One True Way and how everyone who does not worship him can just crawl in a hole and die.
• The Voice of-papers in Eberron are intentionally characterised as the sort of chest-thumping nationalist rags. A few clippings are provided in Eberron: Rising from the Last War, displaying a lot of Deliberate Values Dissonance.
  • The Voice of Breland accuses king Boranel of being soft for allowing Droaam to secede, calling them a "ragtag 'army' of filthy ogres and mangy gnolls", and that's tame compared to the one that acts like all Cyran refugees are part of some grand conspiracy to invade and/or destroy Breland.
  • The Voice of Thrane takes the time in an otherwise impartial article to accuse Brelish soldiers of being evil cultists; another article, talking about the Lord of Blades, treats the warforged as soulless killing machines.
  • The Voice of Karrnath talks about the Mror Holds as a birthplace of abominations, accusing the dwarves of being at fault for the various daelkyr monsters that spring up from time to time.
• A meta-example: Propaganda is a game co-developed by the actor Lorne Greene that attempts to train the players in spotting and identifying various propaganda techniques.

Theatre

• Margin for Error'' is a 1939 play (later made into a 1943 movie) about the mysterious death of a Nazi diplomat in New York City, with said diplomat being involved in a sabotage plot against the United States and one of his aides' gradual disillusionment with Nazism being portrayed as a good thing.

Theme Parks

• The queue line of Doctor Doom's Fearfall at Universal's Islands of Adventure features a propaganda film, titled, "Latveria: Land of Enchantment", which portrays Doom as a glorious leader who's attempts at making the world a better place are always being foiled by the Fantastic Four.

Video Games

• The propaganda in Bioshock was prevalent enough, but in the sequel there's a whole theme park built on Andrew Ryan's orders to educate Rapture's children about the dangers of the surface world.
  • Bioshock Infinite: Comstock's image is plastered everywhere. The kinetographs (hand-cranked animated newsreels) typically explain the city's history in a positive light (which it shouldn't) and the Museum glorifies Comstock's participation in two wars (which were unjustified slaughters). The Duke and Dimwit theme park indoctrinates children into military service.
• Helldivers 2 opens with a propaganda "public service announcement" encouraging the viewer to join the Helldivers and protect Super Earth from the threats of their enemies while spreading "managed democracy" throughout the galaxy. It is every bit as hokey and hammy as the propaganda from Starship Troopers.
• Homefront features propaganda from the Great Korean Republic.
• In StarCraft: Brood War the United Earth Network warns us about ZERG! but we can all rest easy as their homeworld has been occupied. Even though there's another campaign as well as a sequel, doesn't necessarily mean the Zerg will be in either.
• XCOM 2 features snippets of ADVENT Administration broadcasts extolling the Elders and all they've done for humanity. The War of the Chosen expansion goes even further, so that Skyranger rides to the Avenger are accompanied by ADVENT news reports assuring citizens that any explosions or injuries they heard or saw were part of a planned military exercise, or trying to paint XCOM's assassination of an ADVENT officer as a terror attack on civilians. You can also get into it yourself with the new Photobooth feature, and make post-mission posters that you might come across in Resistance havens, or even the hearts of ADVENT-occupied citizens.
• As befitting an evil MegaCorp aiming for total monopolization of both a city and the music industry, NSR of No Straight Roads releases commercials for their artists' performances with all the glitz, glamour, and sympathetic portrayals, while removing all the abuses of power, hostile business practices, and said artists' less savoury characteristics.
• The Outer Worlds lets players see a work-in-progress propaganda piece by Chairman Rockwell, the leader of the Board, extolling the "Lifetime Employment Program", a scheme to basically put all of Halcyon's laborers in cryostasis so the rich can hoard all of the colony's dwindling supplies.
• In Xenogears the effects of propaganda are often implied/heard secondhand (the Aveh and Kislev child [NPCs playing war, anyone from Solaris speaking about the land dwellers or about anything ever, the references to the Solaris battle toy that has "Purge the Lambs!" as its script) but near the end of disc one while you're in Solaris, you get to see the Propaganda Machine in operation with a full propaganda speech and rally, which is both Shown Their Work and Harsher in Hindsight.

Visual Novels

• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice: The nation of Khura'in has a rebel faction looking to overthrow the monarchy. In response to this, the monarch has approved a children's TV show, "The Plumed Punisher", whose protagonist is an icon from the nation's culture and whose Big Bad is an unflattering portrayal of the rebellion's leader, Dhurke.

Webcomics

• One edition of Concerned has a Rebel newspaper report on Freeman's rampage through Nova Prospect. The Combine response? EVERYTHING IS FINE!
• Sunbird: How Pallas promotes the war effort. Salva and Andraz, who work for the rival continent of Serenthia, are amused.

Web Originals

• The Skywalker Paradigm is an analysis of Star Wars showing it as a rebel propaganda film, with propositions like Darth Vader being a hero and Obi-Wan as the main villain.
• The Fay'lia Empire in Entanglement went so far as to make a magical girl propaganda show.
• Goodbye Strangers: The fictional video game Zeroworld was created as a warning against exploiting the monsters known as strangers for profit. The Pokédex-like entries are written from the point of view of the strangers being mistreated by humans. It was not successful, and when it was rediscovered After the End, it became infamous for how prophetic it was.
• The Thrilling Adventure Hour segments featuring "Jefferson Reid, Ace American" and "Amelia Earhart, Fearless Flier" are portrayed as World War II Propoganda Pieces, framed as radio programs in which Jefferson and Amelia fight the Nazis for the good ol' U.S. of A.
• One particularly strange Memetic Mutation holds that any Japanese media featuring a nerdy protagonist either married or in a fulfilling relationship is "Japanese propaganda"/"Abenomics", i.e. government-backed works to get otakus to make babies to counter Japan's falling population. Series that usually get pegged under this meme include I Can't Understand What My Husband Is Saying and Wotakoi: Love is Hard for Otaku.
  • A variant of this meme exaggerates this to say that anime or manga featuring pregnancy, parenthood, or babies in any capacity, even as a throwaway detail, is part of this conspiracy.

Western Animation

• Avatar: The Last Airbender episode "The Ember Island Players" has a summation about the series up to that point, in the format of a Fire Nation propaganda theatre show.
• The entire episode "Mindset" of Exo Squad was dedicated to Neosapien propaganda and Terrans who collaborated with it.
• Futurama has a 50s B-Movie pastiche in Fear Of A Bot Planet, unsubtly warning teenage robots that they can never let their guard down even for a second because humans, with their terrifying squishy organs, might bite their heads off or breathe fire on them. Later, Fry threatens to breathe fire, and even the propagandists themselves are confused:
  Robot Elder: Can they really breathe fire, or did we make that up?
  Robot Elder 2: Gee, I can't remember anymore. Though it might just be from that stupid movie.
• The Legend of Korra: After the Northern Water Tribe invades the Southern Water Tribe, Varrick funds a series of films called The Adventures of Nuktuk: Hero of the South (with Bolin playing the titular character) and Unalaq is portrayed as a cartoonishly evil overlord with a Doomsday Device. Varrick doesn't know this, but while Unalaq's real plan isn't the same and not even close to his style, it is every bit monstrous as the one portrayed. The goal of the films are to get the public to side with the Southern Tribe so that president Raiko would send his forces to help them win the civil war (but in actuality, it's part of a greater plan for Varrick to create an even bigger war he can profit from, a war he started in the first place by assaulting Unalaq).
• An episode of Reboot focuses around Megabyte utilizing propaganda posters and a vocal activist to turn the public against Enzo, the new Guardian and thus the biggest obstacle to Megabyte's eventual conquest of Mainframe.
• The Simpsons has Mr. Burns' film entry for the Springfield Film Festival, titled A Burns for All Seasons, in the episode "A Star is Burns". The film was designed to help remake his public image, but ends up failing miserably when it receives a very negative reception at the festival.
• Wander over Yonder: "The Cartoon" is about Lord Hater getting the Watchdogs to make a propaganda cartoon about him. The end result is one giant Stylistic Suck-laden parody of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983).

Real Life Examples:

Anime

• Momotaro's Divine Sea Warriors (1945), which holds the distinction of being the very first feature-length anime ever made, tells the story of some adorable forest creatures who, under the tutelage of Momotarō, become paratroopers. In the end, they drop on a British-held island and defeat the cowardly British garrison.

Animation

• Wartime Cartoons have their own page.
• Make Mine Freedom is an anti-communism cartoon by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera featuring a Snake Oil Salesman selling "Ism" tonic to a group of people.
• As North Korea and the USA are still fighting for the decades, North Korea's educational anti-American propaganda animation Pencil Cannonball (Korean: 연필포탄) is a weird interesting example of this trope. And that's it. You can see it yourself.
• Squirrel and Hedgehog is an animated series from North Korea. The squirrels and hedgehogs are North Koreans (civilians and army, respectively) protecting their homeland against mice (South Koreans), weasels (Japanese), and wolves (Americans). And without much help from the drunken Bears (Russia).
• Zamba's Fantastic Trip to the Falkland Islands is an Argentinian short cartoon about a boy named Zamba time travelling to the Falklands War, complete with an Award-Bait Song about how the islands are always Argentinian too!

Comic Books

• Captain America started as a propaganda comic, intended to rally support against the Nazis at a time when America hadn't yet joined the war in Europe. The famous issue #1 cover shows Cap, decked in his red-white-and-blue costume, punching Adolf Hitler in the face. After WWII, Cap kept his propaganda status, now fighting Communists instead of Nazis. After he was reintroduced in the 60s, the level of propaganda was turned down somewhat.
  • The entire lineup of Timely Comics (Marvel's predecessor) went in for propaganda in a big way. Cap and other stateside heroes like the Human Torch spent most issues busting up spy rings and warning kids about the ever-present danger of the dreaded "Fifth Column" while Namor, who had previously been barely tolerant of any surface-dwellers, threw in with democracy and spent several years smashing U-boats. Sadly, this all got highly racist once Japan teamed up with Germany. Cap and friends used racial slurs against the Japanese with impunity; in contrast Captain America # 5 featured a full-length story about rescuing a family of loyal German-Americans from Nazi saboteurs.
• Superman also had his share of propaganda. An infamous example is the Action Comics #58 cover where Superman urges the reader to buy War Bonds while using a racist slur against the Japanese. In a different comic, Superman kidnapped both Hitler and Stalin, and brought them to the League of Nations court. He also fought the Ku Klux Klan in one of his radio adventures. And of course, one of the dude's catchphrases is "Truth, Justice and the American Way".
  • As a reminder that Tropes Are Not Bad, Superman's anti-KKK radio shows had a real positive impact. They made use of direct information from an undercover reporter to accurately depict both how hateful and how ridiculous the white supremacy group was, and historians credit the broadcasts with helping raise public awareness and turn it solidly against the KKK.
• Tintin began life in a hard-right Catholic newspaper in the 1920s, and early editions of the strip were commissioned to support the paper's ideology, which became something of an Old Shame.
  • Tintin - Tintin in the Land of the Soviets was written to warn against the godless Communists. Featuring many a Strawman Political and memorable scenes like Soviet officials pulling their guns out at a political meeting to ask if anyone was against the names of the candidates or false factories where straw is burned and metal sheets hammered to create the illusion of productivity to visiting British officials.
  • The later Tintin story, Tintin: The Shooting Star had shades of this due to being published around WWII during the occupation by Nazi Germany: the villains are obviously supposed to be Greedy Jews who manipulate events behind the scenes.
• Chick Tracts, created by Jack Chick, are free comics that were intended to be spread by volunteers to disseminate the author's rather radical view on Christianity and what he views as its enemies.
• The Saga of White Will, a white supremacist underground comic scripted by neo-Nazi William Luther Pierce, was intended to recruit members for Pierce's movement, the National Alliance.
• "Golden Eyes" and Her Hero "Bill" - written during World War I, the serial's heroine Golden Eyes is an American ambulance driver who enlists with the Red Cross to follow her sweetheart, a soldier fighting "the bosch" in France with the stated mission of "wiping the Hun-stain from the earth." Illustrations of Golden Eyes with her Canine Companion Uncle Sam were also used to sell war bonds, and even the chapter narrated by the dog described the German enemy as "that army who ravished the children—the women—the fruit trees—of God!"
• Unkept Promise is an extended rant against alcohol as a whole, first released in 1949—as in a good sixteen years after Prohibition was repealed. By showing a man's Descent into Addiction, it makes its point in the most hyperbolic way possible.

Films — Live-Action

• The Battleship Potemkin and Alexander Nevsky, both by Sergei Eisenstein, are Soviet propaganda films. Potemkin dramatizes The Mutiny aboard the titular battleship, which was one of the more memorable incidents of the 1905 Revolution. And Nevsky, despite being set in the 13th century, is a thinly disguised anti-Nazi film. The bad guys are German knights dressed in a heavy dose of Putting on the Reich.
• The Birth of a Nation, where the Ku Klux Klan apparently saved the USA. Thomas Dixon Junior, the author of the film's source novel, The Clansman, certainly wrote the story as one, and the film proved to be a massive hit, with an apocryphal endorsement from Woodrow Wilson fueling its racist message. However, the director D. W. Griffith denied that the film was racist propaganda. He responded to these accusations by directing his epic masterpiece Intolerance, which railed against intolerance of all forms (and was unsurprisingly not fully appreciated in its time).
• Nazis didn't do this all the time. Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels recognized that constant indoctrination would turn off audiences, so most Nazi cinema consisted of comedies and romances and other escapism. But they did use the film industry for political messaging. The Other Wiki has a list here. Notable Nazi propaganda films include:
  • Triumph of the Will, Leni Riefenstahl's documentary about the 1934 Nazi Party Congress in Uremberg. Considered a groundbreaker in the use of propaganda, and highly influential. Its most iconic visuals have become a stock reference, most famously in the medal scene that ends Star Wars.
  • Jew Süss (1940), an infamous antisemitic Period Piece.
  • The Eternal Jew (1940), a rabidly antisemitic Documentary of Lies.
  • The Great King (1942), a historical epic that also doubled as propaganda for the Führerprinzip (total obedience to Adolf Hitler).
  • Titanic (1943), based on the events of the sinking of the RMS Titanic, used for anti-British propaganda (adding a fictional German officer whose warnings were ignored by the greedy and arrogant British owner of the shipping line). It was shelved by the censors when it was realized that a film about a crowd of panicking people dying in helpless situation would remind the German populace, who were at that time subjected to almost nightly air raids by the Allies, of their own perilous situation (something some critics speculate the director-who was arrested and possibly murdered for criticizing the German military-did intentionally).
  • Kolberg (1945), a historical epic that was meant to boost the German population's morale in the face of the Western Allied and Soviet invasion (it only came out in two theaters in the end).
• 49th Parallel was made partially to encourage America to end its neutrality at the beginning of the war, and does show by showing a mostly scummy group of stranded Nazi sailors killing their way across Canada to seek political asylum in the U.S., while becoming a Dwindling Party thanks to the occasional unlikely Canadian hero.
• While often overshadowed by its other messages and virtues, Casablanca was made during World War II and shows the evil of the Nazis, the desperation of many innocent people fleeing them, and the heroism of those who resist them.
• Desperate Journey and One of Our Aircraft Is Missing were both made during the war and follow the struggles of Allied bomber crews who are shot down and flee back to their own lines with the help of La Résistance.
• The Fighting Seabees is a 1944 movie that follows American construction workers who are determined to do more for the war effort, gradually forming a serious military unit, while their sadistic Japanese adversaries get a highly unflattering portrayal.
• Hangmen Also Die! is a Film Noir following a noble resistance fighter trying to save himself and the civilians being threatened with retaliatory execution after killing Nazi leader Reinhard Heydrich. Heyrdich was a real person who really was assassinated by Resistance fighters, but few details were known about what had happened at the time (and resulted in a tragic ending for the assassins, unlike the inspiring and unambiguously pushy happy ending the film chose) and the filmmakers decided to move while the incident was fresh and make up their own story.
• Hitler, Dead or Alive is a 1942 movie about a hit squad going after a cowardly, Small Name, Big Ego version of Hitler.
• Victory at Sea is a 26 part series on WWII about naval warfare.
• Went the Day Well? (a partial inspiration for the postwar novel The Eagle Has Landed and its blockbuster film adaptation) tells a fictional story of a unit of German soldiers infiltrating England during World War II, instilling the Day of the Jackboot over a village they plan to use as a base, and getting their just deserts when the locals fight back. While the movie was made in 1942, the filmmakers were optimistic enough (or at least wanted their audiences to be) to include flash-forward scenes where one of the villagers recounts what happened at an unspecified future date after the Allies won the war.
• Why We Fight is a series of American propaganda films produced during World War II, directed by Frank Capra, which sought to explain to the troops why they were being sent far away from their families to fight and possibly die in Europe and Asia. Later, the films would be shown on the home front as well, though this was not the original intended audience. Capra brilliantly used previous Nazi and Japanese propaganda films in such a way as to flip them on their head and enrage Americans watching it.
• Hitler Lives! was a civilian-based reworking of Your Job in Germany. The latter was an Army information film, explaining to the troops that while the war was over, and Hitler was dead, Nazism had not been defeated, and so the Army (i.e. likely those watching the film) were going to have to stay as occupiers. The former took the same film, and reworked and slightly bowdlerized it, taking out content explicitly explaining directives for the troops (such as forbidding any interactions between US troops and German civilians) replacing them with an exhortation against race hatred and political extremism at home.
• The Green Berets, made during The Vietnam War, vilifies the North Vietnamese, while portraying the American soldiers as men who constantly die horribly but are accomplishing a greater purpose and deserve support that could turn the tide of the war. To its credit, the film at least portrays the Green Berets of the time more realistically, as primarily military advisors rather than Rambo-esque fighting machines.
• We've Never Been Licked follows a student enrolling in Texas A&M University during WWII, he eventually infiltrates a Japanese spy ring at the college and is part of the Battle of Midway.
• Ip Man, in addition to being an excellent action movie, is often considered to be borderline propaganda, demonizing foreigners and glorifying the Chinese. The film and its sequels also rewrite Ip Man's political stance to be more politically correct in modern China, ignoring his affiliation with the anti-communist Kuomintang and the fact that he fled to Hong Kong not to escape persecution by the Japanese, but by the Communist Party.
• I Am Cuba is a Soviet propaganda film from 1964 showing how capitalists and Americans victimized the poor people of Cuba, only for the people to rise up in revolution. The film flopped for being too stylish and making capitalism look fun, but was later appreciated by Hollywood directors for the same reason.

Literature

• The Aeneid: Emperor Octavian Caesar Augustus commissioned Virgil to write this Roman propaganda. More information here.
• Cudjo's Cave is a novel of The American Civil War written during the war itself by anti-slavery author John Townsend Towbridge. In the story, those who oppose secession and slavery in a small Tennessee community find themselves being victimized by those who favor it. An odd quartet of allies, two white and two black, find themselves hiding in a mountain cave as circumstances gradually give them a chance to rally some like-minded neighbors and strike a blow against the Confederacy.
• Uncle Tom's Cabin is a novel written by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1853, its purpose was to attack the institution of slavery and further the cause of abolitionism. It worked, in the North at least, while simultaneously making a lot of slave-holding Southerners really angry, spawning an entire genre of "Anti-Tom" novels by Southerners attempting to rebut its claims about slavery, portraying this as positive and often having a Northern abolitionist character who "sees the light", becoming a slavery supporter.
• The Turner Diaries, written by Neo-Nazi leader William Luther Pierce, is one of the most infamous white supremacist novels ever written, and has inspired numerous hate crimes and acts of domestic terrorism in the real world, up to and including the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995.

Live Action TV

• Dragnet was one of the very first (and most successful) cases of what has become known as "copaganda"; media that glorifies police and law enforcement while obscuring their negative qualities. Jack Webb worked directly with the LAPD, and most modern critics recognize that the show was direct LAPD propaganda.
• COPS (1989) was arguably Dragnet's Spiritual Successor for the 1980s-early 1990s, as its page and the Running From Cops podcast demonstrate - it served not to educate people about policing and crime, but instead to increase fear and boost the reputations of police regardless of their actions.

Music

• "Two Sessions" is a rap intended to influence people's opinion on the Two Sessions and China's development in terms of technology, poverty reduction, and the environment.
• Before and during World War II, novelty musician Spike Jones recorded a number of songs supporting the war effort in his own style, with "Der Fuehrer's Face" being the most renown. Other titles include "Little Bo Beep Has Lost Her Jeep", "48 Reasons Why", "Trailer Annie", and "You're a Sap Mister Jap".

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