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Leslie Groves and J. Robert Oppenheimer at Los Alamos in 1942.

General Groves Invented the Atomic Bomb, Not Oppenheimer

Gen. Leslie Groves promoted Oppenheimer as the atomic bomb's inventor to craft a propaganda narrative, obscuring the true creators and moral implications.
by Peder Anker via Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists on July 21, 2025
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.
by Evan Friss via Literary Hub on August 21, 2024
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.
by Max Felker-Kantor via Teen Vogue on April 4, 2024
A poster of a colonial man ringing a bell in front of Independence Hall with the words "4 Minute Men" at the top
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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.
by Livia Gershon, Nick Fischer via JSTOR Daily on November 17, 2023
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.
by Daniel Schulman via The Atlantic on November 7, 2023
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.
by Lauren Lassabe Shepherd via Lapham’s Quarterly on August 30, 2023
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.
by Anna Hennessey via Psyche on May 23, 2023
Collage of images of fetuses and placentas.

Fetal Rites

What we can learn from fifty years of anti-abortion propaganda.
by S. C. Cornell via The Drift on October 27, 2022
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.
by Adam Gopnik via The New Yorker on October 24, 2022
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.
by Marilyn Chase via Smithsonian on July 11, 2022
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.
by Kathryn Cramer Brownell via The Atlantic on March 27, 2022
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. 
by J. Hoberman via The Nation on January 25, 2022
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.
by Laurel Waycott via The Public Domain Review on March 17, 2021
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.
by Oana Godeanu-Kenworthy via The Conversation on February 27, 2020
Soldiers inspecting damaged helmets in a scene from John Huston's 1945 film "The Battle of San Pietro."
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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?
by Kristin Hunt via JSTOR Daily on December 5, 2019

“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.
by Janet Golden via Nursing Clio on April 23, 2018

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
by Christopher B. Daly via The Conversation on April 27, 2017
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.
by John Sutherland via The Public Domain Review on June 1, 1956
Trump's Chipocalypse Now meme, featuring Trump as Lt. Kilgore attacking Chicago with helicopters.

Trump’s ‘Chipocalypse Now’ Meme Sends a Message With Deep Historical Roots

What could be more purgative, more exhilaratingly American to the MAGA base than avenging the nation with racial warfare?
by Joe Lowndes via New Lines on September 12, 2025
A person white washing over a Texan Independence exhibit.

Texas’ Official History Museum Hides More Than It Shows

The Bullock Museum glorifies Texas heroes while treating slavery like an awkward uncle no one wants to talk about.
by Brian Gaar via The Barbed Wire on September 11, 2025
Thomas Paine.

Inventing the American Revolution: On Thomas Paine’s Guide to Fighting Dictatorship

“How are free people supposed to stay free? One short answer: don’t trust anyone over thirty.”
by Matthew Redmond via Literary Hub on August 13, 2025
Young Latino children holding a small American flags.

The Diversity Bell That Trump Can’t Un-ring

The biggest problem with the history Trump wants to impose on us is that it never, in fact, existed.
by Geraldo Cadava via The New Republic on August 7, 2025
Lighter falling onto a pile of books.

What If History Died by Sanctioned Ignorance?

We must mobilize now to defend our profession, not only with research and teaching but in the realm of politics and public persuasion.
by David W. Blight via The New Republic on August 7, 2025
Art of the Radio Free Dixie Banner

Radio Free Dixie: A Revolutionary Cultural Institution

Sixty-four years after Radio Free Dixie first aired, the show is still a shining example of a truly revolutionary cultural institution.
by John Morrison via Scalawag on August 5, 2025
Joseph McCarthy

Joseph McCarthy’s War on Voice of America

A largely forgotten campaign of harassment and persecution from the 1950s that still echoes today.
by Daniel Golden via Columbia Journalism Review on August 4, 2025
American Progress painting by John Gast

Homeland Security’s Genocidal Aesthetics

By posting paintings like “American Progress,” the DHS signals its white supremacist beliefs.
by Ed Simon via Hyperallergic on August 1, 2025
“The Yellow Press,” a 1910 political cartoon that portrays William Randolph Hearst as a jester distributing sensational stories.

Scapegoating the Algorithm

America’s epistemic challenges run deeper than social media.
by Dan Williams via Asterisk on July 24, 2025
A man pushes a bicycle as he walks amid rubble in the devastated area around Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital, April 3, 2024. (AFP via Getty Images)

Gaza and the Undoing of Zionism

A historian reviews new books by Peter Beinart, Avi Shlaim and Pankaj Mishra on the project that animates Israel’s violence.
by Yakov M. Rabkin via New Lines on June 20, 2025
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.
by John Ganz via The Nation on April 7, 2025
Joseph McCarthy with a map.
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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.
by Joseph McCarthy, Liz Tracey via JSTOR Daily on March 24, 2025
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