Kathy Brandon
English 28
Staci Ranger
Argumentative Analysis
08-21-01
Propaganda vs. Reality
For the last couple of years, the United States and Iraq have been unfriendly to each other. It's been difficult to determine who was stating factual evidence, and who was ludicrously attacking to start a war. Its been known that the best and the worst way to get someone's attention, is to manipulate and mislead their views. The precise definition of propaganda is that the more or less systematic effort to manipulate other people's beliefs, attitudes, or actions by means of symbols such as words, gestures, banners, monuments, music, clothing, and so forth can be devastating in the society. Propaganda is a set of methods employed by an organized group that wants to bring about the active or passive participation in its actions of a mass of individuals, psychologically unified through psychological manipulation and incorporated in an organization.
In the encyclopedia Britannica it is stated that any kind of action that has to do with propaganda movement has to be one on one bases, "for propaganda to succeed, it must correspond to a need for propaganda on the individual's part. One can lead a horse to water but cannot make him drink; one cannot reach through propaganda those who do not need what it offers. The propagandee is by no means just an innocent victim. He provides the psychological action of propaganda, and not merely leads himself to it, but even derives satisfaction from it. Without this previous, implicit consent, without this need for propaganda experienced by practically every citizen of the technological age, propaganda could not spread. There is not just a wicked propagandist at work who sets up means to ensnare the innocent citizen. Rather, there is a citizen who craves propaganda from the bottom of...