Inspiring Older Readers
Propaganda: Power and Persuasion by David Welch
Propaganda is a notoriously difficult thing to pin down. One man’s propaganda is another’s truth and what one person construes as the use of power and privilege to persuade, another sees as the legitimate passing of valuable information from those that have it to those that don’t. David Welch’s book does a great job in confronting a lot of those issues without really trying to solve the conundrum or to come out with definitive positions. His approach is to try and give us a fair representation of all these different points of view – from the relatively benign campaigns to promote the glories of the humble potato to the distinctly evil and sinister campaigns against minority groups or religions.
The book has been published by The British Library and was designed to accompany their May 2013 exhibition. This is the kind of thing that BL do superbly and the book is a high quality production both in terms of the range of images it reproduces and the text that sits alongside it.
The book is usefully divided into sections dealing with specific aspects of the use of propaganda – in politics, in war, as a public information service – and it also tries to get a social historical handle on its origins. Section five contains some of the most inflammatory uses of propaganda as a tool and sets out a series of case studies of the way it can be used negatively and damagingly against anyone thought of as ‘the other’.
For me, however, one of the most powerful sections of the book deals with the way in which propaganda is used as a way of creating or supporting notions of nationhood and, attached to that, the idea of the national ‘leader’. Understandably enough there is a lot of attention given to some of the world’s most problematic leaders – some would say tyrants – and there is no doubt that the iconography that grows up around powerful figures like Hitler, Stalin and Mao is almost quasi-religious in its intention. This is not, as the book usefully reminds us, simply a mid-20th century phenomenon and Roman Emperors were not beyond a bit of image manipulation themselves. What I do find a little disappointing is that the book focuses relentlessly on the iconography of the oppressive states when it could have turned it’s gaze effectively on our own propaganda machine and the way in which our own leaders are given less than subtle propaganda support.
This is a book that is packed with fabulous reproductions of posters, leaflets and book illustrations on a glossy high quality paper. At the time of the exhibition it sold for £19.99 which seemed to me a very good price but you may have to pay a little more for one now – especially in very good condition. I think you’ll find its worth it if you’re looking for a combination of great visuals and informative, intelligent text to go with them.
Terry Potter
October 2016