Quotes / Propaganda Machine

Film — Live-Action

"This is the BTN. Our job is to report the news, not fabricate it. That's the government's job."

—Roger Dascombe, V for Vendetta

"Right now, there is a whole, an entire generation that never knew anything that didn't come out of this tube! This tube is the Gospel, the ultimate revelation. This tube can make or break presidents, popes, prime ministers. This tube is the most awesome God-damned force in the whole godless world, and woe is us if it ever falls in to the hands of the wrong people. And when the twelfth largest company in the world controls the most awesome God-damned propaganda force in the whole godless world, who knows what shit will be peddled for truth on this network?"

— Howard Beale, Network

"Words are the new weapons, satellites the new artillery."

— Elliot Carver, Tomorrow Never Dies

"Joker, I've told you we run two basic stories here. Grunts who give half their pay to buy gooks toothbrushes and deodorants - Winning of Hearts and Minds. Okay? And combat action which result in a kill - Winning the War. I don't ask much of you people but I do expect you to adhere to my editorial policy."

—Lt. Lockhart, Full Metal Jacket

"As the deputy minister of agriculture explained, three sprayings are required to prevent mildew. As with mildew, this ideological disease must be fought preventively. It is caused by harmful germs and various parasites. So the spraying of humans, with appropriate mixtures, is indispensable. Schools, in this case, constitute the first stage. That is where, if you'll excuse the metaphor, young shoots have not yet reached four or five inches. The second spraying is just before or after the blossoming. I refer to universities and young workers. Military service is the best time to protect the sacred tree of national liberty against infection from ideological mildew."

—The General, Z

Literature

If any question why we died,
Tell them, because our fathers lied

— Rudyard Kipling

Alongside, in another prism, a hideous black demon was visible on the first plane. It growled and pranced, shaking its fist at the awestruck throng. Beyond this, a stage had been set up. A banner proclaimed the title of the piece: Colonial Treachery Overcome; actors ran about, telling the official story of the war with the aid of rubber swords and papier-mâché. Everywhere you looked smiling ladies shoved copies of Real War Stories into outstretched hands. Such was the ceaseless noise and color and confusion that it was impossible for anyone present to think straight, let alone frame a coherent argument against the war. (I saw Mandrake's hand behind much of this. It had all his attention to detail, together with the theatricality he had learned off his mate, the playwright Makepeace. A perfect combination of the crude and the subtle.)

Bartimaeus, The Bartimaeus Trilogy (Ptolemy's Gate)

The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior 'righteous indignation' — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.

— Aldous Huxley, Chrome Yellow

"The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human."

— Aldous Huxley, The Olive Tree

"I thought Syria was a controlled society," Blancanales commented. "If there were a coup in progress, would the regime allow news broadcasts?"
Powell laughed. "Who's talking about news? It's the jive line that I got to hear. Or the absence of jive. The music changes for a coup. If Hafez is dead, it'll either be upper music or downer music. If it's a serious coup, there'll be patriotic songs, military marches. If it's a very serious coup, you might hear shooting on the radio. Heard that one time. Deejay's rapping right along, playing pop rock and bebopping, then it's a Shootout in Studio RKO."

— Able Team, "Rain of Doom"

Live-Action TV

Mulder: You can't protect the public by lying to them!
The Cigarette-Smoking Man: It's done every day.

— The X-Files, "F. Emasculata"

"To celebrate this latest victory against a tyrannical few who have endangered the lives of our citizens, Clark declared today a planetary holiday. Curfew has been extended two full hours until 9:00 PM, Earth Standard Time, so go out and enjoy!"

— ISN Reporter, Babylon 5, "The Illusion of Truth"

Jake: What about freedom of the press?!
Weyoun: Please tell me you're not that naive.

— Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, "A Time to Stand"

Warhead: The Enemy is ruthless! They are violent!
Harry: Have you ever met the "Enemy"? You're just spouting propaganda; what you've been programmed to believe!

— Star Trek: Voyager, "Warhead"

"Gelfling have always believed Chamberlain's whispers, yes? This is what I do. I plant stories in ground, watch grow into truth. Keep Gelfling looking over shoulder, and they won't ever see what's right in front of them."

— The Chamberlain, The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, "Nothing Is Simple Anymore"

Music

Today the headlines, tomorrow hard times
And no one ever really knows the truth from the lies
And in the end, the story deeper must hide
Deeper and deeper and deeper inside

— Queen, "Scandal"

And when ya' trust ya' television
Watcha get is watcha got
'Cause when they own the information, oh
They can bend it all they want

— John Mayer, "Waiting On the World to Change"

Where's your will to win, to act like Gunga Din?
Through propaganda, propaganda

— Sparks, "Propaganda"

I learned our government must be strong
It's always right and never wrong
Our leaders are the finest men
And we elect them again and again

— Tom Paxton, "What Did You Learn in School Today?"

TV tells a million lies
The paper's terrified to report
Anything that isn't handed on a presidential spoon

— R.E.M., "Ignoreland"

Radio

"We need racist stereotypes right now of our enemy in order to encourage our warriors to kill the enemy."

— Michael Savage

Stand-Up Comedy

"There's a ton of news right now, a lot is going on, and we have all these 24-hour news networks, and we could be covering everything. Instead, we’re covering three topics. Every hour is Trump, Russia, Hillary, and a panel full of people that remind you why you don't go home for Thanksgiving: 'Milk comes from nuts now all because of the gays'."

— Michelle Wolf, 2018 White House Correspondents Dinner

Tabletop Games

[Sales and Marketing] is the most oily, devious division of Magadon. It's no less corrupt than any other - it just has to work a thousand times harder at hiding that corruption. And yet, that same corruption has to directly affect anyone who deals with the whole company, either directly, or through such intermediaries as Omni Television or Vesuvius Publishing. Most of S&M's efforts are through no supernatural or biomedical trickery, but rather through good old-fashioned treachery and double-talk. Every single piece of publicity material that comes out of Sales and Marketing, be it a billboard design or a college recruiter's speech, is rigorously scrutinized by teams of top-notch spin doctors and propagandists to pack the maximum possible loading into words and graphics, all while maintaining total deniability. S&M's operation philosophy can best be summed up as "if you don't actually make any promises, you can't be held accountable for breaking them." Vampires wish they were this good at manipulating the masses.

—Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Subsidiaries: A Guide To Pentex

At the first sign of trouble, Spin Doctors are on the scene, calming the participants and minimizing bad press. If bad press is called for, they do the opposite, whipping people into a frenzy and flashing images of unrest across the networks. Through an intricate network of reporters, editors and "reliable sources," Media Control can start a rumor in one part of the globe that winds up as solid fact on the six o'clock news in another. Flummoxing an entire roomful of mundane journalists is child's play if you understand Adjustments.

—Mage: The Ascension - Convention Book: Syndicate

Video Games

"Baldur's Mouth is truly remarkable. I had thought that the purpose of a broadsheet was to inform the people, but I see now that I was mistaken. Ink and paper are not as insidious as the voice of the Absolute, but they send out their commands all the same: Think this, feel that, hate them [...] I would use the Mouth to ensure the people did not trust one another. Suspicion creates doubt, and doubt creates dependency. And they would know that they could depend on me. Feared, venerated, adored. I would be everything to them."

—Minthara, Baldur's Gate III

Land of Plenty, Land of Love
Our Fatherland shall rise above!
So blessed we are to have a Gzar
And all his family
The People's complaints
Drowning in prosperity!
Grulovia! Grulovia! Forever shining bright!
Grulovia! Grulovia! You're always right!

Land of sorrow and dismay
Our Fatherland has washed away!
A man bizarre deposed the Gzar
And all his family
The People's remains
Drowning in his treachery!
Grulovia! Grulovia! Ford Cruller murdered you!
Grulovia! Grulovia! An act he'll rue!

Robbed of all their rights of birth
The Royal family roamed the earth!
'Til as he died the Gzar, he cried
Maligula's alive!
The People rejoiced!
Gristol Malik was their voice!
Grulovia! Grulovia! His father was a dope!
Grulovia! Grulovia! He is our hope!

Gristol Malik's aim was true!
Our fatherland did rise anew
He made a plan, and fooled the man
Who took Maligula
Together they rule
Everything is super cool
Grulovia, Grulovia! We're better than before!
Grulovia, Grulovia! Is great once more!

—Grulovia, Grulovia, Psychonauts 2

Voice of Grulovia: Behold, the glory of Grulovia! Never had a nation been more prosperous, its people more content. Never was a family more beloved than the Maliks- Gzar Theodore, Gzarina Rokel, and the young Gzesarevich, Gristol. The nation looked forward to the happy day when Gristol Malik would legally and rightfully inherit his father's throne, but alas... That was not meant to be. The Gzar's Minister of War and Protector of the People, General Maligula, had aroused the jealously of the warmongering Ford Crueller.
Razputin: What the-
Voice of Grulovia: He led his mob of Psychonauts to gang up on Maligula, drowning the brave warrior.
Razputin: Just when I thought I had heard every version of this story.
Voice of Grulovia: And drowning much of Grulovia in the process. Why didn't the Gzar help Maligula in her time of need? No one knows, but historians agree- it is Gzar Theodore's biggest failure. In the end, Grulovia, the Maliks, and Maligula were betrayed by the weakness of the Gzar, and the bloodlust of the Psychonauts.
Razputin: That is some messed up junk.

—Psychonauts 2

Web Original

I love that Snowden exposed a terrifying dystopian surveillance program—and the only lasting impact of his whistle-blowing was the U.S. government pointing its finger and shouting, "Get 'im!" I actually wanted Snowden—unlike almost everyone else on this list—to be influential, to generate a positive change for civil liberties. Instead, all he did was trigger a Carmen Sandiego-style manhunt so that dumb-shit cable-news anchors would have something to breathlessly follow while completely ignoring his core motivations.

—Drew Magary, "The 25 Least Influential People of 2013"

War crimes are never excusable, of course... except that they are excused. All the time. They're excused as long as they're 'ours', whoever 'we' happen to be. In fact, if they're 'ours', they tend to not even be noticed, let alone excused. When they cannot be ignored or straight-facedly excused, they are ideologically neutralised as aberrations, quickly corrected by the putatively aggressive questioning of a Media who are actually pussycats sitting on the laps of the powerful and purring for bellyrubs. The odd playful scratch does not a ferocious tiger make... and anything more than the odd playful scratch might endanger the reliable supply of Kit-e-Kat.

— Jack Graham

freedom: A very simple, effective rebuttal for anyone that dares to attack our leader's policies. Additionally, this word is a trademark of the leader.

— Urban Dictionary

Newspapers seldom print whole speeches these days, so they are typically anchored around vacuous sound bytes...It should be noted that it was arguably this soundbyte-fixation which led to the rush to war back in 2003, with the focus on individual words and snippets (“axis of evil”, for example) rather than statements or arguments.

— Darren Mooney

The fascist narrative comes, in effect, in two parts. The first involves a nostalgic belief in a past golden age — a historical moment in which things were good. In the fascist narrative, this golden age was ended because of an act of disingenuous betrayal — what’s called the “stab in the back myth”...The second part is a vision of what should happen, which centers on a heroic figure who speaks the truth of the conspiracy and leads a populist restoration of the old order. The usual root of this figure is (a bad misreading of) Nietzsche’s idea of the Übermensch — a figure of such strength that morality does not really apply to him.

— Dr. El Sandifer, "Guided By the Beauty of Their Weapons"

As a master of theatrical sarcasm and apocalyptic rhetoric, Kiselyov eclipses Bill O'Reilly, and as a theoretician of conspiracy he shames Glenn Beck. He tells his viewers that, in Ukraine, fascists abound, the U.S. State Department underwrites revolution, and 'life is not worth a single kopeck.' But he insists, 'The presentation of me as a minister of propaganda is itself a form of propaganda.'

— The New Yorker on Russia Today, "Watching the Eclipse"

Webcomics

"Some people have no firewalls."

— Gregor Mendel Thurmad, Freefall, Strip 3511

Western Animation

"The ancient secret of war. The secret to creating hysteria. Fear. GODS."

— Blackwolf, Wizards

"In war, truth is the first casualty."

— Star Wars: The Clone Wars, "Duchess of Mandalore"

Real Life

A nation of well informed men who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the region of ignorance that tyranny begins.

— Benjamin Franklin

The power of his rhetoric amazed me. The substance of the speech might be commonplace, idle and false, but I had to fight hard against abandoning myself with the rest of his audience. He sucked power from his listeners and spurted it back at them. Afterwards, my father introduced me to Lloyd George, and when I looked closely at his eyes they seemed like those of a sleep-walker.

—Robert Graves on Lloyd George, Good-bye to All That (1929)

In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind."

— Edward Bernays, father of public relations

As far as the mass of the people go, the extraordinary swings of opinion which occur nowadays, the emotions which can be turned on and off like a tap, are the result of newspaper and radio hypnosis. In the intelligentsia I should say they result rather from money and mere physical safety. At a given moment they may be 'pro-war' or 'anti-war', but in either case they have no realistic picture of war in their minds.

— George Orwell is always right

There is no nonsense so errant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action.

— Bertrand Russell

"In politics it is necessary either to betray one's country or the electorate. I prefer to betray the electorate."

— Charles de Gaulle

It is not propaganda’s task to be intelligent, its task is to lead to success.

— Joeseph Goebbels

"I was requested to arouse hatred against individuals and against systems."

—Hans Fritzsche during the Nuremberg Trials. June 26, 1946

What I would like to emanate from the darkness of this tragedy is one spark of life. I mean, the realization that crime does not begin when you murder people. Crime begins with propaganda, even if such propaganda is for a good cause. The moment propaganda turns against another nation or against any human being, evil starts.

—Hans Fritzsche, former Goebbels propagandist, to Dr. Leon Goldensohn. April 6, 1946

"We have created our myth. The myth is a faith, it is passion. It is not necessary that it shall be a reality. It is a reality by the fact that it is a good, a hope, a faith, that it is courage. Our myth is the Nation, our myth is the greatness of the Nation! And to this myth, to this grandeur, that we wish to translate into a complete reality, we subordinate all the rest."

— Benito Mussolini, Mussolini's Italy (1935) p218

"Politicamente, só existe aquilo que o público sabe que existe."^note Politically, there exists only what the public knows to exist.

— António de Oliveira Salazar on the foundation of the Secretariado Nacional de Informação (Portugal's propaganda ministry during the dictatorship), 1933

The enemy is clearly delineated: he is a perfect model of malice, a kind of amoral superman.

—Richard J. Hofstadter

The nationalist myth often implodes with a startling ferocity. It does so after the lies and absurdities that surround it become too hard to sustain. They collapse under their own weight. The contradictions and tortuous refusal to acknowledge the obvious becomes more than a society is able to bear. The collapse is usually followed by a blanket refusal, caused by shame or discomfort, to acknowledge or examine the crimes carried out...By the time the British had landed on the Falklands and were rolling over the poorly supplied and ill-clad Argentine soldiers, the Argentine public had retreated into a mythic world that was not unfamiliar to Germans in the last days of the Third Reich. There was no hint in the national press that the Argentine forces were being defeated. It appeared that the British were losing the war. When the Argentine forces surrendered it hit the country like a tidal wave.

— Chris Hedges, War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning

On the morning of September 22, fishermen of the fishery station in Rajin-Sonbong city caught a 10cm long white sea cucumber while fishing on the waters off Chongjin. They said the rare white sea cucumber has come to hail the auspicious event of electing Secretary Kim Jong Il as Party General Secretary. Seeing the mysterious natural phenomena, Koreans say Secretary Kim Jong Il is indeed the greatest of great men produced by heaven and that flowers come into bloom to mark the great event.

— Korean Central News Agency (29 Sep 1997)

The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.

— Henry A. Wallace

"If you aren't careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing."

— Malcolm X

If we did make our points clearer than truth, we did not differ from most other educators and could hardly do otherwise...

— Dean Acheson on the Red Scare

Thus were two generations of Americans treated by their overlords until, in the end, at the word 'communism' there is an orgasmic Pavlovian reflex just as the brain goes dead.

— Gore Vidal, Vanity Fair, 1999

"There are different kinds of truths for different kinds of people. There are truths appropriate for children; truths that are appropriate for students; truths that are appropriate for educated adults; and truths that are appropriate for highly educated adults, and the notion that there should be one set of truths available to everyone is a modern democratic fallacy. It doesn't work."

— Leo Strauss on the "noble lie"

"See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda."

— George W. Bush, Greece, N.Y. 5.24.05

Charles Krauthammer Has Ashes Spread Over Prosperous, Liberated Iraq

—The Onion obituary

"The reason propaganda works is that most people are too involved or too stupid to recognize it as propaganda. People claim to understand the bias and filter it out, but that's absurd. Of course they don't."

— Ann Coulter

"Suppose somebody were to write a book about German history and say, 'Well, look, Hitler and his advisors certainly perceived their position as defensive'—which is absolutely true: Germany was under 'attack' by the Jews, remember. Go back and look at the Nazi literature, they had to defend themselves from the virus; this bacillus that was eating away at the core of modern civilization—and you've got to defend yourself, after all. And they were under 'attack' by the Czechs, and by the Poles, and by European encirclement...I'm sure that if we had records from Genghis Khan we would find that what he was doing was 'defensive', too."

—Noam Chomsky, Understanding Power

Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort. And, sadder still, there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires, as if one shouldn't trust the evidence of one's eyes watching the destruction and the misery and death brought by the latest mission civilizatrice''.

— Edward Said, Orientalism

"Information war is now the main type of war, preparing the way for military action."

— Dmitry Kieselev

Because Americans dislike Realpolitik, public discourse about foreign policy in the United States is usually couched in the language of liberalism. Hence the pronouncements of the policy elites are heavily flavoured with optimism and moralism. American academics are especially good at promoting liberal thinking in the markeplace of ideas. Behind closed doors, however, the elites who make national security policy speak mostly the language of power, not that of principle, and the United States acts in the international system according to the dictates of realist logic. In essence, a discernible gap separates public rhetoric from the actual conduct of American foreign policy.

— John Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York, 2001) p.25

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