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Storefront of Nazi-owned "Aryan Book Store" called "Silver Shirt Literature."

Bigoted Bookselling: When the Nazis Opened a Propaganda Bookstore in Los Angeles

On Hitler’s attempt to win Americans over to his cause.
Police officer sitting at the front of a classroom of kids.

Police Used the DARE Program to Get Inside of U.S. Schools

It was never very effective at preventing drug use.
A poster of a colonial man ringing a bell in front of Independence Hall with the words "4 Minute Men" at the top

The US Propaganda Machine of World War I

As the United States prepared to enter World War I, the government created the first modern state propaganda office, the Committee on Public Information.
A collage of images of Henry Ford and newspaper articles about him.

America’s Most Dangerous Anti-Jewish Propagandist

Making sense of anti-Semitism today requires examining Henry Ford’s outsize part in its origins.
Releases of the Republican National Committee’s Press Relations Department, 1939

Possibilities for Propaganda

The founding and funding of conservative media on college campuses in the 1960s.
Mother in bed holding baby.

Facts Don’t Change Minds: A Case For The Virtues of Propaganda

A better understanding of propaganda and how to use it as an educational tool could advance the world in a positive way.
Collage of images of fetuses and placentas.

Fetal Rites

What we can learn from fifty years of anti-abortion propaganda.
Illustration of Samuel Adams writing a document, with images of the American revolution behind him.

How Samuel Adams Helped Ferment a Revolution

A virtuoso of the eighteenth-century version of viral memes and fake news, he had a sense of political theatre that helped create a radical new reality.
Donald Duck with a U.S. military hat

How Disney Propaganda Shaped Life on the Home Front During WWII

A traveling exhibition traces how the animation studio mobilized to support the Allied war effort.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, paying a visit to a hospital with wounded soldiers.

How Propaganda Became Entertaining

Ukraine’s wartime communications strategies have roots in World War II.
Comic of a boy inside an atom structure while a man looks on.

The Surprising History of the Comic Book

Since their initial popularity during World War II, comic books have always been a medium for American counterculture and for nativism and empire. 
A print featuring fish that look like the American flag.

Propagating Propaganda

Toward the end of WWI, as the U.S. peddled Liberty Bonds, a goldfish dealer bred a stars-and-stripes-colored carp: a living, swimming embodiment of patriotism.
Screen shot from CNN of presidential debate, with a question about socialism posed to Bernie Sanders.

How Socialism Became Un-American Through the Ad Council’s Propaganda Campaigns

Bernie Sanders is a Democratic Socialist, a potential problem for the presidential candidate. A Cold War campaign to link American-ness and capitalism helped create popular distrust of socialism.
Soldiers inspecting damaged helmets in a scene from John Huston's 1945 film "The Battle of San Pietro."

The War Documentary That Never Was

John Huston's 1945 movie The Battle of San Pietro presents itself as a war documentary, but contains staged scenes. What should we make of it?
Travels through Virginia. From Theodor de Bry's 'America', Vol. I, 1590, after a drawing of John White. Depicting American Indians dancing.

The Construction of America, in the Eyes of the English

In Theodor de Bry’s illustrations for "True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia," the Algonquin are made to look like the Irish. Surprise.

“Weaponized Babies”; or, Damn, Why Didn’t I Think of Using That Term?

Babies have been playing in the political arena for a long time.

How Woodrow Wilson’s Propaganda Machine Changed American Journalism

The government's suppression of press freedom was a major component of its attempts to build support for the war effort
Title card for animated film "Destination Earth".

Destination Earth (1956)

A Cold War-era cartoon celebrates the wonders of oil and free-market capitalism, and the overthrow of the Stalin-like leader of Mars.
Donald Trump and Roy Cohn at a press conference.

Donald Trump’s Long Con

Trump’s “Art of” trilogy may be full of willful exaggeration, but the books also reveal how the 1980s and 90s formed his dog-eat-dog worldview.
Joseph McCarthy with a map.

Joseph McCarthy in Wheeling, West Virginia: Annotated

Senator Joseph McCarthy built his reputation on fear-mongering, smear campaigns, and falsehoods about government employees and their associates.
An aerial view of houses in Jersey City, United States on July 13, 2024.

Is The ‘Predatory’ Property Tax An Instrument Of Oppression?

According to Andrew Kahrl, the property tax has been used to disposs black homeowners since the 19th century.
Laborers in El Salvador receive food allotments as part of a program sponsored by U.S.A.I.D., in 1983.

Growing Up U.S.A.I.D.

As a child in postings around the world, the author witnessed the agency’s complex relationship with American empire—and with autocrats everywhere.
U.S. President Donald Trump looks at an executive order in the Oval Office.

Are Trump's Actions 'Unprecedented'? Here's What Seven Historians Say

Trump's second administration is 'unprecedented' to some, but historians find parallels in ancient Rome, Nazi Germany, and Latin American dictatorship.
Noam Chomsky illustration by Joe Ciardiello.

The Worlds of Noam Chomsky

If ordinary Americans know one critic of the American Empire, it’s almost certainly Chomsky.
1999 Yugoslavian stamp depicting a NATO jet launching a missile at an oil refinery.

Stamps Capture Unchanging Face of U.S. Violence Abroad

Countries have also used their postal systems to fight back against aggression.
Two newspaper workers flip a first proof of a page off the printing press at the offices of the Daily Mail, 1944.
partner

Perhaps the Most Influential Single Propagandist for Fascism

On the lengths newspaper publishers took to reach new subscribers — and then drive them away — in the 1930s.
Illustration of a faceless Virgin Mary and Elizabeth, holding sonograms of the unborn Christ and John the Baptist.

How an American Film in 1984 Shaped the ‘Fetal Personhood’ Movement

The success of the movie ‘The Silent Scream,’ made by onetime abortionist Bernard Nathanson, continues to influence the pro-life narrative.
Paper and an ink pen.

Call Me Comrade: Cold War Pen-Pals

The correspondence of Soviet and American women during the Cold War.
Soldiers in combat gear stand by an advertisement for "America's Army," a military strategy game from 2002.

Video Games Are a Key Battleground in the Propaganda War

When video games went mainstream, the Pentagon realized their potential as a promotional tool, spending hundreds of millions of dollars on war-based games.
Movie poster of The Birth of a Nation depicting a Ku Klux Klan member as a knight.

How the Work of Thomas Dixon Shaped White America’s Racist Fantasies

On the literary and cinematic legacy of white supremacy in the United States.

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