Herbert Hoover Propaganda

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Pages: 12

Propaganda, a term which as recent as a century ago procured a negative connotation, entails a means whereby a state may inculcate what it defines as fundamental collective wisdom to a public that in turn, absorbs that which is disseminated to them forsooth. Though this phenomena did not pose itself as something unprecedented- as attested to by former sixteenth century utilizations, viz. the religious propaganda of the Protestant Reformation- its multifarious emanations would nevertheless entail vast teleological shifts after its use once more became ubiquitous upon America’s entry into the Second World War. Having relinquished the isolationist policies of Herbert Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt vivaciously campaigned for America to condemn the …show more content…
To proceed with the analysis, it is vital to note that hereupon propaganda began acting about the absolute necessity of proliferating and affirming the virtues of democracy as the path of light, as juxtaposed to the barbarous and totalitarian ideals of the antipodal powers of Europe. Entrusted with a campaign of what is best described as covert psychological warfare or, as put by Captain Charles H. Smith at a lecture delivered at the Naval War College, “the planned use, by a nation, of propaganda and related informational measures designed to influence the opinions, emotions, attitudes and behavior of enemy, neutral or friendly foreign groups in such a way as to support the accomplishments of its national policy and aim,” organizations such as the Office of War Information would strategically juxtapose the values formerly elucidated by Roosevelt himself with those of the Axis Powers in Europe. Naturally, leaflets akin to the one displayed in exhibit 4 would be disseminated as a means of bringing the aforesaid into …show more content…
Alluding once more to historian Philip Gleason’s argument, the virtues of democracy, equality, and respect for individual dignity became the structural rudiments for a breeding of a new American identity, and hence a psyche derivative of said rudiments. Fundamentally, if one is to glance at the schematism of World War II propaganda, wherein the rudiments for the forthcoming era of American prophecies were laid out, the indubitable consequences of the proliferation of propaganda of this sort are manifest in the policies and the direction they seem to be collectively oriented towards. Dissolution of what today is conceived as archaic fragments of America’s bygone past is recognized to be the exceptional product of a strategic implementation of propaganda. To reference the rather explicit evolution of propaganda and both its more direct and more universal consequences would require an analysis of the strategies where a particular message intended to be conveyed to a