• Hobo@lemmy.world
    13·
    3 days ago

    It wasn’t always a meaningless pejorative. McCarthyism did that, which is still going on.

    Did you fail history class like super bad or something? There’s been propaganda from literally every country for basically all written history, and people have been calling it for just as long.

    • LocalAreaMan@lemmy.ml
      41·
      3 days ago

      I am not only versed in history, but capable of the most cursory internet searches.

      Per wikipedia “The meaning of propaganda changed from a neutral term for spreading ideas to a heavily negative label for manipulation and deception during World War I and World War II.”

      Wear your dunce cap with shame, Professor Numbnuts.

      • Hobo@lemmy.world
        13·
        3 days ago

        You have to link sources ya screwball. It’s funny you didn’t and I think you know why you didn’t link it. It may have something to do with the propaganda you’re spewing:

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda

        The term is essentially contested and some have argued for a neutral definition,[54][55]: 9  arguing that ethics depend on intent and context,[55] while others define it as necessarily unethical and negative.[56] Emma Briant defines it as “the deliberate manipulation of representations (including text, pictures, video, speech etc.) with the intention of producing any effect in the audience (e.g. action or inaction; reinforcement or transformation of feelings, ideas, attitudes, or behaviours) that is desired by the propagandist.”

        Propaganda has existed since the beginning of recorded history. In the New Kingdom of Egypt, the state utilized a “Clean Victory”[failed verification] ideology to prioritize the preservation of Maat (cosmic order) over factual military reporting.[21] Temple reliefs sanitized warfare by omitting violence against non-combatants,[22] portraying the Pharaoh as a disciplined protector rather than a chaotic aggressor.[23][unreliable source?] This was exemplified by Ramesses II, who reframed the Battle of Kadesh, a stalemate, as a divine personal victory.[24] To visually reinforce this authority, artists used hierarchical scaling to depict the king as a giant among men,[25] utilizing motifs like the “smiting of the enemy” to symbolize the Pharaoh’s triumph over chaos.

        According to Harold Lasswell, the term began to fall out of favor due to growing public suspicion of propaganda in the wake of its use during World War I by the Creel Committee in the United States and the Ministry of Information in Britain: Writing in 1928, Lasswell observed, "In democratic countries the official propaganda bureau was looked upon with genuine alarm, for fear that it might be suborned to party and personal ends. The outcry in the United States against Mr. Creel’s famous Bureau of Public Information (or ‘Inflammation’) helped to din into the public mind the fact that propaganda existed.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism

        McCarthyism is a political practice defined by the accusation and investigation of left-wing individuals of communist and Soviet influence on American institutions and of Soviet espionage in the United States during the late 1940s through the 1950s, heavily associated with the McCarthy era.[1] After the mid-1950s, U.S. senator Joseph McCarthy, who had spearheaded the campaign, gradually lost his public popularity after several of his accusations were found to be false.

        McCarthy was a huge asshole, and caused immense harm. However, claiming he’s the reason there was a negative connotations with the word, then saying it happened during WWI and WWII, and then only viewing it from the incredibly modern western centric view is incredibly dishonest.