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US military by U.S. Department of the Army from Wikimedia Commons
10 Examples of Cold War Propaganda
During the Cold War, propaganda persisted constantly. Cold War propaganda promoted the merits and benefits of one political system while criticising or demonising the other using a variety of media, strategies, and levels of sophistication. This peaked in the 1950s and 1960s when American values were heavily promoted through literature, music, film, television, and other forms of popular culture.
The Cold Annihilation era, during which the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics both posed the threat of nuclear war, has received less attention than World War II, despite the horrors that befell common people living in communist countries. The primary tactic employed during the Cold War was propaganda, which is described in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as false or exaggerated ideas or claims used to promote a political figure, a government, or a cause.
1. All media in the USSR was completely repressed
Within the confines of the Iron Curtain, the communist USSR regime employed oppressive propaganda that condemned and outlawed democratic principles like free enterprise and personal success. People in communist nations were prohibited from opposing or criticising the government’s policies. If they did, they were oftentimes slain after being captured, tortured, and imprisoned. But every media outlet claimed that life was good under communism.
2. They used art to express optimism that never really existed
Isaak Brodsky by State Museum and Exhibition Center from Wikimedia Commons
During the Cold War, socialist realism, an artistic movement that portrays the realities of the working class and elevates national leaders like Stalin to heroic status, served as the official cultural propaganda in the USSR. Numerous works of art included workers in factories carrying their equipment, farmers engaged in cooperative labour, or both, as in Sergei Gerasimov’s “A Kolkhoz Celebration.” The same as with any other part of daily life, artists were not permitted to comment on social injustices. Art was needed to convey joy and hope.
3. Propaganda from the American Cold War favoured capitalism
In addition to the media, art was also used by the Americans to further their Cold War propaganda, which praised capitalism and democracy while decrying the communist regime. The advantages of living in a free country, in the ideal world, were emphasised, as were ideas like nuclear families, school and work communities, and the importance of freedom. A war between democracy and communism was shown in films like “Red Dawn” and spy books like Ian Fleming’s James Bond series, with democracy always coming out on top.
4. Senator McCarthy instilled the fear of communism in America
Senator Joseph R. McCarthy by National Archives and Records Administration from Wikimedia Commons
For his second term, Senator McCarthy in the United States capitalised on the nation’s concern over communists’ nuclear weapons. His propaganda launched a national witch hunt, which was supported by the Federal Bureau of Investigation under J. Edgar Hoover. The American public’s worry about a Soviet nuclear assault was played upon in propaganda movies like “Red Nightmare” and “Duck and Cover.” McCarthy lost his position of authority in less than seven years, yet his legacy lasted for another two decades.
5. Films such as “Red Nightmare” was used to depict a communist government crushing America
Contrarily, communism was criticised as a political philosophy as well as a social and economic structure. Every form of media—from feature films to children’s comic books—was employed to depict an America ruled by communist tyranny.
The 1962 movie Red Nightmare, which was first created as a training tool for the military services but was later broadcast on television, is a prime example. Red Nightmare promotes the absurd allegation that entire US cities had been rebuilt on Soviet soil in order to teach communist spies and infiltrators techniques for overthrowing the US government and society.
6. Comic books were used to spread propaganda to the youth
The United States has been nearly overnight overrun by communists and renamed the “United Soviet States of America,” according to the comic book This Godless Communism, which is about an American family. While seeking assistance, they discover that all of their liberties and rights have been revoked. The mother is moved to an urban factory, the father is sent to a far-off lumber mill, and the kids are sent to state-run daycare centres and schools.
The CIA ordered an animated adaptation of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, an allegory of the Russian Revolution and the Soviet Union, in the 1950s to be used as propaganda.
7. The conflict between capitalism and communism was carried to the big screen via motion films
Following the HUAC-instigated blacklists, a number of pro-American movies were produced as studios and filmmakers tried to project a patriotic and devoted image. John Wayne plays a HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee) investigator in the movie Big Jim McLain, which is about his trip to Hawaii to investigate communist activity there.
In films like The Third Man, the issue of Soviet and Western espionage was frequently presented. Red Planet Mars, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and The Blob are examples of how Cold War panic permeated the science fiction industry. All featured extraterrestrials in the guise of enigmatic powers determined to seize control of the earth covertly, a clear allegory for communist infiltration.
In 1980s movies like Red Dawn and Rocky IV, where the US is the target of a joint Soviet-Cuban assault, Cold War themes were also reintroduced (where an American boxer battles with a robotic Soviet fighter).
8. Television journalists were influencing the public
James Bond flicks and drama shows like I Spy and The Man from UNCLE have featured Cold War espionage as a central theme. Get Smart, a Mel Brooks television programme, also made fun of it. Even the antagonists in kid’s cartoons like Rocky and Bullwinkle (Boris and Natasha) and Roger Ramjet (Noodles Romanoff) were stereotyped as European communist spies.
Sometimes, journalists on television have an impact on public opinion. For example, Walter Cronkite said in a 1968 editorial that the US might consider leaving Vietnam in 1954, while Edward R. Murrow criticised Joseph McCarthy in 1954.
9. Communist East Germany played a Potato Beetle Battle
Flag of East Germany by Flag of East Germany from Wikimedia Commons
Germany was divided into a capitalist West Germany and a communist East Germany following World War II. The communist East German government misled its citizens by alleging that American planes were releasing Colorado potato beetles to damage the harvests of East German farmers.
In actuality, the majority of the scarce insecticides were shipped to the Soviet Union. However, the government utilised propaganda posters that showed potato beetles dressed as American troops to make children collect all the beetles found on their farms by hand.
10. Popular literature, including George Orwell’s novel 1984, contains references to the Cold War
George Orwell by Branch of the National Union of Journalists from Wikimedia Commons
The most common literary subgenre during the Cold War was the “spy book.” Conflicts with the Soviet Union served as inspiration for Ian Fleming’s James Bond books, which he wrote in the 1950s. Bond battles the Soviet counter-espionage organisation SMERSH in The Spy Who Loved Me. A series of books, including The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, which is set in East Germany, was written by John le Carre, a pen name for David Cornwell, a former employee of the British spy service MI5. Additionally, hundreds of inexpensive pulp books with profane themes or excessive violence were published in the 1950s and 1960s. In Purgatory of the Conquered, a communist takeover of America was depicted, and in Red Rape, a Soviet campaign to seize Western women for sex enslavement was described.
In an effort to persuade their inhabitants that they lived in the ideal society, the United States and its allies developed propaganda. Despite not being as free, democratic, or egalitarian as the propaganda claimed, it did feature free markets, a limited government, the rule of law, individualism, and human rights.
