WAR PROPAGANDA: ETHICAL ISSUES
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This research paper deals with the ethical issues involved with the use of propaganda in wartime by totalitarian and democratic governments. No nation can be expected to wage war with one hand tied behind its back, but ethical issues of the most profound nature are raised any time propaganda is used in such a manner as to promote atrocities such as genocide or wanton destruction of human life, especially among non-combatants. Regimes which fail to control the excesses of war fever may be guilty of crimes against humanity and, in the case of democratic regimes, a betrayal of their basic values. Jacques Ellull goes too far when he says that ethics play no part in the use of propaganda in war, but he is correct historically in the sense that propaganda has frequently been used in an ethically neutral sense to support clandestine or other military actions necessary in the defense of a nation's survival or other fundamental interests. Propaganda as psychological warfare inherently involves attempts to manipulate, distort or falsify the truth, but must be kept within reasonable limits or it can become counter-productive for the nation concerned and contribute, in the case of democratic governments, to a longer-term erosion in their fundamental integrity and the viability of democracy itself. Propaganda has been variously defined. Taylor offers the following succinct and ethical neutral definition: "a process for the sowin
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fective propagandist "must be ethically negative rather than positive; his weapons are exaggeration and falsehood rather than understatement and truth. He must accept as his principal dicta, The greater the lie the less likely the truth of it be doubted, and constant repetition will eventually achieve acceptance" (13). Nazi war propaganda, which Herzstein said consisted of arguing the moral rightness of the German cause, demonizing the external enemy and the Jews, "emphasizing enemy losses and one's own expectations of victory, keeping morale high, [and] urging workers to greater productivity," was effective in sustaining the German war effort almost to the end (15-16). According to Taylor, "the Second World War witnessed the greatest propaganda battle in the history of war . . ., a struggle between mass societies, a war of political ideologies in which propaganda was merely one, albeit a significant weapon" (208).
For the totalitarian regimes, such as Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, the bigger the lies the better, but Weingarten said their rhetoric "projected apocalyptic conflicts unencumbered by the traditional restraints on war and directed toward the annihilation of the enemy" (561). The results were atrocities and genoc
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2319
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)
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