There was a FOIA-dump of old NSA propaganda posters. The kind they put up around Fort Meade for their own employees.
It started off, in the early-50s, with things like "Remember, Freedom of the Press is one of the most important Freedoms." and "Remember, Freedoms come not from humans, but from nature/God itself."
Then it slowly morphed into "Remember, we practice security so we can defend our liberties: every security breach harms our liberty."
Then is quickly morphed into "Please don't have classified conversations in the carpool."
I watched the film and was surprised when it moved on from gambling and scams. Initially thought it was aimed at avoiding being scammed of your hard earned cash by shysters. I wonder if there is a film produced at the time about that?
It's priming. You have to present very obvious scams, to then conflate the concept of being scammed with political ideology... which doesn't necessarily follow.
Propaganda is really interesting in the way it carries a narrative. It's like a good movie, gives you an idea about what you're going to watch, and then slowly flows to the places you expected it to go to, but it does it in unique and interesting way.
There is certainly something innate in the human mind that loves these predictive narratives.
It is literally propaganda. Very good propaganda with a very good and truthful message. (Except maybe a bit of too much idealizing the US and also the role of the catholic church but the main point is fine.)
I guess the confusion is because in Western societies people are used to the doublespeak of only calling something propaganda when it is done by the "other side". The other side is "spreading the narrative" you are "reporting facts".
You use different words to describe the same thing. Like the good guys are "rebels" and the bad guys are "terrorists".
There is nothing wrong with propaganda. It can be used for good or bad. Just don't start falling for your own one.
> It was said to have been produced in 1945, and Paramount Pictures allowed showings for the public "without profit" in 1946. 21st century sources describe a 1943 production and 1947 release instead of 1945 and 1946.
I've been thinking about this video for a few months now. I've been telling people to "not be a sucker" referencing it. I haven't re-watched in a few years, though.
The firm got some good in it, sure. But as I see it, today people could be motivated by a firm of good meanings, then tomorrow a post with bad intentions could swing people the other way just as far.
The firm was produced back in 1945, but we still hearing similar if not exact same racist and xenophobic talk points today across many countries of different backgrounds. This alone is telling.
People don't really care about good or evil, truth or lies, but the message, the story telling, whether someone can make it flip the switches inside their heads, make them subscribe. If you can flip their switches in the exact right way, they'll be your utility.
It turns out, we are, unmistakably, suckers. Just with different arrangement of switches.
People will be more likely to have good intentions if they expect others to have good intentions. If there's a lot of distrust in society good intentioned narratives will lose their power.
People are more likely to have good intentions when they expect a good payback (including non-monetary as well as monetary ones) from the good intentions they gave out. It's more of a trade than care.
Organisms on this planet require resource to survive, but resource is limited. The nature is fundamentally a zero-sum game so that's what everything tends to fall back to when hard time comes. This is so predictable, played again and again, like we're cogs in a machine. Well, maybe we really are.
One very interesting aspect is how the Churches are portrayed as "seeking truth" and speaking out in this piece. In the US today it is reversed - in large part due to Baptists. But even in Nazi Germany the relationship between the Church and Hitler was much more complicated than portrayed. For instance, many Catholics supported the NSDAP.
It's the same with Trump. He doesn't care about religion but he'll say and behave in certain ones sometimes to appease the religious base (only until they fall for his scam).
I was watching a clip from the The Lost World (1925) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chwzrwHnCtk] the other day. I was struck by the silly (to my ears) orchestral fanfare scoring such a dramatic scene, and the fact that almost all of the men are wearing nearly identical outfits. It's still pretty much the same 20 years later in this video. The timbre of the voice of the narrator is another thing, so universal in media from that time and comically foreign today.
Note that the orchestral score on that YouTube video was composed in 2016 by Robert Israel. The original film had no recorded sound; it would have been accompanied on the piano (or, if lucky, pipe organ).
If you get a chance to see a silent film in the theater with live music, don't pass up that chance! I recently went to see "The General" (1926) with semi-improvised music by pianist Ben Model,[1] and (obviously) recommend the experience.
That is interesting that it was actually composed recently, of course he was going for period-accurate and that seems to be his thing. But it's just fascinating to me, the sort of social norms around, and the mood or feelings that are evoked by, that kind of music, compared to a modern "serious" monster movie like Cloverfield or something (of course silent vs. talkie is a bit apples-to-oranges but it just feels culturally worlds apart even though they're kind of going for the same thing).
Their outfits aren't nearly identical, they only look that way to us because we weren't there and don't know the details. It's no different than how classic cars all look close to the same but someone who was there can just tell you at first glance "that one's a <brand>, that one's the top trim, and so on".
Definitely but would you disagree that there is homogeneity to it that would be out of place in say a NYC street scene today? Look up pictures of Straw Hat Day. Just interesting to me given the wide world of fashion choices and styles that developed soon after.
Readit News
The US always has failings, but this message is something we can be proud of.
It started off, in the early-50s, with things like "Remember, Freedom of the Press is one of the most important Freedoms." and "Remember, Freedoms come not from humans, but from nature/God itself."
Then it slowly morphed into "Remember, we practice security so we can defend our liberties: every security breach harms our liberty."
Then is quickly morphed into "Please don't have classified conversations in the carpool."
Deleted Comment
Propaganda is really interesting in the way it carries a narrative. It's like a good movie, gives you an idea about what you're going to watch, and then slowly flows to the places you expected it to go to, but it does it in unique and interesting way.
There is certainly something innate in the human mind that loves these predictive narratives.
Well, that too really. Just a different breed of shyster, but they'll come for your wallet as sure as they will your freedoms.
It would be decades before they wheeled out a crying native american on TV to make people feel guilty about the matter(s).
Yes, it's anti-Nazi but it's still has very obvious problems.
I guess the confusion is because in Western societies people are used to the doublespeak of only calling something propaganda when it is done by the "other side". The other side is "spreading the narrative" you are "reporting facts".
You use different words to describe the same thing. Like the good guys are "rebels" and the bad guys are "terrorists".
There is nothing wrong with propaganda. It can be used for good or bad. Just don't start falling for your own one.
Of course you're going to get nationalism-tinged anti-fascist propaganda from the US Dept. of the Army in 1945.
There are large voting blocs who need to hear and comprehend the message of this film that happens to be propaganda, right now.
Grateful HN is a quality “feed” - way better than all the algorithmic feeds..
If something as curated as HN existed & appealed to the masses - even if it was ad funded! - we could live in a different world.
Dead Comment
> It was said to have been produced in 1945, and Paramount Pictures allowed showings for the public "without profit" in 1946. 21st century sources describe a 1943 production and 1947 release instead of 1945 and 1946.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_Be_a_Sucker
> This item was produced or created: 1945
The firm was produced back in 1945, but we still hearing similar if not exact same racist and xenophobic talk points today across many countries of different backgrounds. This alone is telling.
People don't really care about good or evil, truth or lies, but the message, the story telling, whether someone can make it flip the switches inside their heads, make them subscribe. If you can flip their switches in the exact right way, they'll be your utility.
It turns out, we are, unmistakably, suckers. Just with different arrangement of switches.
I stopped believing good intentions long ago.
Organisms on this planet require resource to survive, but resource is limited. The nature is fundamentally a zero-sum game so that's what everything tends to fall back to when hard time comes. This is so predictable, played again and again, like we're cogs in a machine. Well, maybe we really are.
If you get a chance to see a silent film in the theater with live music, don't pass up that chance! I recently went to see "The General" (1926) with semi-improvised music by pianist Ben Model,[1] and (obviously) recommend the experience.
[1] - https://www.moma.org/magazine/articles/23