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It is absurd for anyone to think that Soviet "Marxism" is a correct application of the thought of Karl Marx. No doubt Soviet propaganda represented it this way. But who believes Soviet propaganda? It is remarkable (but maybe not so remarkable after all, when you consider their motives) that apologists for capitalism, who would not accept Soviet propaganda on any other point, are eager to agree with it on this point.
Allen W. WoodIn regard to propaganda the early advocates of universal literacy and a free press envisaged only two possibilities: the propaganda might be true, or the propaganda might be false. They did not foresee what in fact has happened, above all in our Western capitalist democracies - the development of a vast mass communications industry, concerned in the main neither with the true nor the false, but with the unreal, the more or less totally irrelevant. In a word, they failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions.
Aldous HuxleyPropaganda has a bad name, but its root meaning is simply to disseminate through a medium, and all writing therefore is propaganda for something. It's a seeding of the self in the consciousness of others.
Elizabeth DrewAnother touchy point: the inability of successive Israeli governments to deal with the propaganda war. Israel has a brilliant instrument in the IDF. We have a cyber-war unit which may become the best unit in the world to fight cyber problems. On the propaganda war...it is a large failure.
Manfred GerstenfeldThere was promulgation of false propaganda by the administration about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. There was promulgation of false propaganda about Iraq as a base for Al Qaeda.
Jimmy CarterContent without style is propaganda or adolescence. Style without content is decadence.
Rita Mae BrownWatch how the propaganda unfolds once the bombing is over and the Americans are running Baghdad and their spin machine. There will be the discovery of Saddam's secret arsenal, probably in the basement of one his palaces.
John PilgerAll was there-the programme of German resurrection, the technique of party propaganda; the plan for combating Marxism; the concept of a National-Socialist State; the rightful position of Germany at the summit ofthe world. Here was the new Koran of faith and war: turgid, verbose, shapeless, but pregnant with its message.
Winston ChurchillAsk yourself why totalitarian dictatorships find it necessary to pour money and effort into propaganda for their own helpless, chained, gagged slaves, who have no means of protest or defense. The answer is that even the humblest peasant or the lowest savage would rise in blind rebellion, were he to realize that he is being immolated, not to some incomprehensible noble purpose, but to plain, naked human evil.
Ayn RandThe thing that has disturbed me most about the Russian hacking episode is - and the thing that surprised me most has not been the fact of Russian hacking. The cyber world is full of information gathering, you know, propaganda, et cetera. I have been concerned about the degree to which, in some circles, you've seen people suggest that Vladimir Putin has more credibility than the U.S. government. I think that's something new.
Barack ObamaThe dominant propaganda systems have appropriated the term "globalization" to refer to the specific version of international economic integration that they favor, which privileges the rights of investors and lenders, those of people being incidental. In accord with this usage, those who favor a different form of international integration, which privileges the rights of human beings, become "anti-globalist."
Noam ChomskyAfter the fall of communism in Poland, we had a post-communist as president for two terms: Aleksander Kwasniewski. He was very good. He brought Poland into NATO and the European Union. The call to finally clean house is a propaganda tool of the right, which tolerates the leftists who it condemns. Kaczynski appointed a judge to the position of deputy justice minister who had once sentenced current President Bronislaw Komorowski to a prison term.
Adam MichnikBecause so many poets have chosen a political idiom right now in the US and so many poets have assigned value and inherent knowledge to their racial identity and used that as a form of argumentation, I'm thinking now's a good time to buy low for my own poems and write poems that are deeply in the interior and the psyche. There are plenty of people out there working on subjects of political poetry, partisan poetry, all the way through to crossing the threshold of propaganda. I start thinking now's a good time for me to start writing about the myths of my own psyche.
David BiespielThe Western public should learn and remember one essential thing about China: no matter what European and North American propaganda barks about the People's Republic, China is much more "democratic" than the West. It is democratic in its own way.
Andre Vltchekwhen the German propaganda tries to be winsome it is like a clown with homicidal mania - ludicrous and terrifying both at once.
Sylvia Townsend WarnerYou have to love that government, but hate the government that might work in your interest and that you could control. That's an interesting propaganda task, but it's been carried out very well.
Noam ChomskyNot since the days of the Hitler Youth have young people been subjected to more propaganda on more politically correct issues. At one time, educators boasted that their role was not to teach students what to think but how to think. Today, their role is far too often to teach students what to think on everything from immigration to global warming to the new sacred trinity of 'race, class and gender.'
Thomas SowellPopular culture bombards us with examples of animals being humanized for all sorts of purposes, ranging from education to entertainment to satire to propaganda. Walt Disney, for example, made us forget that Mickey is a mouse, and Donald a duck. George Orwell laid a cover of human societal ills over a population of livestock.
Frans de WaalIf one were to claim that the U.S. occupation forces in Iraq have been provided with "keys to heaven" by the Pentagon, would that need historical research to be disproved or would you just say, "That's just propaganda"? Indeed, how can you disprove the claim that U.S. soldiers have such keys? Or why should you disprove such ridiculous claims? It is the accusers who must provide the evidence.
Mohammad MarandiIn fact, because of this deep desire for peace, the ruling class leaders of this land, from 1945 on, stepped up the hysteria and propaganda to drive into American minds the false notion that danger threatened them from the East.
Paul RobesonWriting detective stories is about writing light literature, for entertainment. It isn't primarily a question of writing propaganda or classical literature.
Steig LarssonWe South Vietnamese, we are very concerned about the ah, the fact that the communists are - were very shrewd in trying to take advantage of the American presence in South Vietnam to make the propaganda that they were the only one who fought for the independence of the country and against the, only foreigners, first the French and after that the Americans.
Bui DiemEven with the help of anti-Russian propaganda in the mass media, Germany has not succeeded in damaging this sympathy.
Vladimir PutinThe four cornerstones of the American political psyche are 1) emotion substituted for thought, 2) fear, 3) ignorance and 4) propaganda
Joe BageantI was caught up in the hysteria during the Vietnam era, which was brought about through Marxist propaganda underlying the so-called peace movement.
Jon VoightAmericans are poorly served by their media, you know, for the war machine and propaganda machine and the global empire and they're poorly served by what they are being told is representative government.
Henry RollinsI don't feel that as an artist my job is to offer PR propaganda, whether for the good or for the bad.
Ayad AkhtarThe American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact. Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity, every crack in the common front against fascism.
Henry A. WallaceThat's the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody's going to be against, and everybody's going to be for. Nobody knows what it means, because it doesn't mean anything.
Noam ChomskyI think what we are confronting now is a new war of ideas. It's not communism versus capitalism, but it is authoritarianism versus democracy and representative government. And that is a threat that here in Europe, they feel acutely. They've seen their countries interfered with, bombarded by cyber-attacks, by Russian propaganda, indeed, by Russian troops.
Adam SchiffIt was not my aim to paint about the Negro in America in terms of propaganda. It is to depict the life of my people as I know it, passionately and dispassionately as Brueghel.
Romare BeardenIn any war, there is a concealment of certain kinds of setbacks because it's propaganda for the enemy.
Kate AdieI found that I loved producing that kind of propaganda and I loved the power that a few students with a Macintosh computer could wield. I was hooked on communications at that point.
Lewis SchiffI very much enjoyed Leo Tolstoy's What is Art? I can't quote it, it's been a while, but at the end of the day, the idea is that "art that does good in the world is art, and what doesn't is not. It's propaganda or something else. It's bad."
Scott AvettIt is part of the general pattern of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear.
Douglas MacArthurPoetry is difficult, I mean interesting poetry, not confessional babble or emotive propaganda. Reading a new poet is discovering an entire world, what Stevens called a 'mundo' and it takes a lot of time to orientate oneself in such a world. What we have to learn to do then, as teachers and militants of a poetic insurgency, is to encourage people to learn to love the difficulty of poetry. I simply do not understand much of the poetry that I love.
Simon CritchleyIn the course of his long, turbulent career, W. E. B. Du Bois attempted virtually every possible solution to the problem of twentieth-century racism...scholarship, propaganda, integration, national self-determination, human rights, cultural and economic separatism, politics, international communism, expatriation, third world solidarity.
David Levering LewisIf we clear the air of the fog of catchwords which surround the conduct of war, and grasp that in the human will lies the source and mainspring of all conflict, as of all other activities of man's life, it becomes clear that our object in war can only be attained by the subjugation of the opposing will. All acts, such as defeat in the field, propaganda, blockade, diplomacy, or attack on the centres of government and population, are seen to be but means to that end.
B. H. Liddell HartAsk a fellow if he favors organized prayer in the public schools. If he says 'No' he's a liberal. If he says 'Yes' he's a conservative. If he says, 'Public schools? The Constitution grants the government no power to run any mandatory tax-funded youth propaganda camps,' you have your hands on the wily libertarian.
Vin SuprynowiczI cannot think of a country in which I would be happy with the government and dominant ideology and available propaganda.
Aleksandar HemonLeft to my own devices, in the face of the climate change deniers, the madness and the greed-based decision-making, and propaganda that's been floating around, it's hard not to become pessimistic.
Trent ReznorMost literary critics agree that fiction cannot be reduced to mere falsehood. Well-crafted protagonists come to life, pornography causes orgasms, and the pretense that life is what we want it to be may conceivably bring about the desired condition. Hence religious parables, socialist realism, Nazi propaganda. And if this story likewise crawls with reactionary supernaturalism, that might be because its author longs to see letters scuttling across ceilings, cautiously beginning to reify themselves into angels. For if they could only do that, then why not us?
William T. Vollmann