Soon after the Bolshevik Revolution wall newspapers were hung up around Moscow to distribute ideological thoughts and to (dis-)inform the people. As many people were illiterate in the beginning of this century, posters were the most effective tool for propaganda in the USSR. The ways of production and their design were so special that they reach high prices today, as pieces of art.
However, German posters were produced without any aesthetic idea behind, but to manipulate by using open disinformation and propaganda. Several motives existed, each fitting to a certain political topic.
- Very often they turned out extremely racist.
- The motive could be PR for
- The fight for each other, to work together in war times was another motive. In this case the presentation of different generations working together on the same project was important.
- Other posters were produced to make everybody save materials of daily life. The "Kohlenklau", the figure of an ugly thief of coal, was so popular that finally comics about him were sold. Everybody new the toon figure; a perfect and successful propaganda.
- A mixture between warning and propaganda were the posters talking about the enemy being everywhere and listening. In the beginning the enemy was portrayed as a shadow wearing a hat; a hostile person, hard to recognize. Later the figure seemed to fade away, was no longer really visible but still there, by then more mystic and frightening national security.
What is true for German propaganda posters can also be said about other political powers. And also today propaganda posters are used in pre-election periods. Style has changed, but the idea of presenting something simple that can't get forgotten easily, is still the same.
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Political and economic agendas change. People leave, get exchanged. Whereas one of the things that never seem to change is disinformation. Watching different kinds of cultures and regimes throughout history you will always find disinformation.
Its use is variable just like its tools. First of all it does not necessarily need words. It is possible to disinform in any kind of language (sounds, symbols, letters or with the help of the body). As it seems to have come into existence together with human communication, we need not even hope that it will disappear once in a while.
One could rather say: disinformation has always been there.
Instead of hoping to stop it we need to learn to live with it, detect it, restore it to consciousness. Even this will not be any insurance for not walking into the trap. It is an attempt, nothing else.
For detecting disinformation one needs to know what types of disinformation are possible and how they work. This site gives you some ideas about the history, tendencies and different types of disinformation, with the restriction that it will mostly be about the Western types of disinformation, as it is still harder to understand the media of disinformation in other cultures; and anyhow, many methods and tools run parallel in different cultures.
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