Animal Farm 1.10 Obey Propaganda… a la Shmoop.
If you want to get people on your side, you need two things – [Stalin standing in a room]
you need to put a message out there, and you need to control where it goes.
Having a cool mustache doesn't hurt, either…
Stalin did this with the Russian newspaper, Pravda, and with posters and messages spread [Pravda newspaper]
throughout the country.
Corporations do it with ad agencies and PR firms.
Napoleon did it with Squealer. All of this… is propaganda. [Examples of propaganda]
Propaganda is communication of any kind that appeals to emotions to spread a desired message.
For instance, “All animals are equal” was a message approved by the pigs…
until it wasn’t. No problem. Just re-write it and re-sell it to the masses.
They might question it at first, but eventually they’ll forget about rule changes [Animals staring at a message]
and that first version, especially when they see what happens to their comrades
for doubting their self-appointed leader.
Okay, so propaganda 101.
Some methods include:
* Bully your enemies. If you don’t like their message, attack them personally and [Pig bullying the animals]
make the public believe they’re awful. Napoleon/Stalin did this to Snowball/Trotsky with great success.
* Choose your words carefully. Napoleon doesn’t reduce rations, he “adjusts” them.
Stalin’s last name was Dzhugashvili until he changed it to Stalin, which means “man of steel.” Super. [Stalin thinking about a name change]
* Get famous people to represent your product.
How many cover girls does Cover Girl have again? [Magazine cover of cover girl]
Stalin depicted himself as a baby-hugging demigod. He made himself famous.
Napoleon didn’t hug babies, but he did take puppies home. [Napoleon pointing to puppies]
* Shout it out! Type your message in big, bold letters. If you absolutely must include
some facts, put them in really tiny fine print buried in a footnote.
Or better yet, just make the whole thing up and say you have supporting documents even [Napoleon holding a supporting document]
though you don’t. This worked for Napoleon when he said he found documents that proved
Snowball was a traitor. Since the animals couldn’t read, why bother showing them?
Stalin always included bold headlines and excluded inconvenient truths. [Stalin giving a speech]
* Endorsements from the common folk.
The sheep do it when they casually mention, within Whymper’s earshot, the great amount [Sheep whispering]
of food the animals have.
Stalin did it with his adoring supporters who believed the propaganda and talked of
him as divine. * Put a bandwagon out there and people – or
animals - won’t be able to resist jumping on it.
In Animal Farm, it worked on most of the animals except Mollie, Benjamin, Moses and the cat. [Animals together on a bandwagon]
In Russia it worked on everyone who didn’t want to die or be sent to the Gulag…
yeah, the Gulag, fun camps where Stalin’s enemies were sent to be slave laborers. [Slaves in Gulag]
* Create a false dichotomy. As in, “You’re either with us or you’re against us”.
Napoleon makes sure the animals don’t have any trouble deciding between himself and Snowball.
Stalin purged everybody he even thought might be against him. [Hand takes a man away]
* Get all emotional. While you’re using words and pictures to get your well-formed
message out, you can throw in some good old-fashioned fear to keep the crowd in line. [Zombies in a group and a spray of zombie buster appears]
Napoleon reigns with terror, killing the subversives violently and grotesquely, as did Stalin.
And there’s always that fear of Jones coming back if the animals don’t follow Napoleon’s orders. [Mr Jones crying for his farm back]
Add a little hatred of the enemy (Snowball and Trotsky) and a little guilt (how dare
those hens protest!) and you’ve got a killer appeal to the masses.
* Repeat after me…endlessly. Beasts of England was propaganda, repeated daily. [Animals screaming beasts of England]
So was “Four legs good, two legs bad,” repeated annoyingly.
Stalin had himself glorified on posters, in the newspaper, in statues, speeches. He was [Stalin in newspapers and statues]
all over the place. Heck, if he were alive today he’d have his own action figure.
We think Squealer deserves a round of applause.
He was the equivalent of the whole Russian propaganda machine all by himself - [A mass group of Squealers]
a one-pig army of misinformation.
From the pigs’ special food and housing to vilifying Snowball, from the betrayal of
Boxer, to re-writing history and the Seven Commandments…
…Squealer was so convincing that the animals came to believe they remembered things just [Squealer on stage and roses thrown at him]
the way he described them. Some pig!