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It is said you can prove anything through the Bible. Each reader can interpret the words to suit his own meaning. That follows any writing. A person can read a complete article and be selective with the small piece that either agrees or disagrees with what he wants it to be. Back during the Cold War, I originally wrote about the pigs on our farm and their different personalities. Readers read different meanings into my pig column. They saw comparisons on everything from local politics to international commentary. All I was writing about was pigs. Readers read what they wanted. My veteran friend Carl Harveston was sent to Berlin just after the wall was built. He said he didn’t know what the word “propaganda” meant. But he found out with the constant barrage he heard of pro and con political doctrine. Everybody uses propaganda. A salesman uses in his pitch to sell his product. A preacher wants to influence people away from the sins he sees. And a government’s leaders present the best cause to have the public agree with them. Joseph Goebbels was Adolph Hitler’s minister of information and had a whole nation turning their backs on ethnic extermination as they goose-stepped to dictatorship. Good propaganda is what an individual’s own side uses. Bad propaganda is what the other side uses. Each one is convinced they are in the right, and usually with the presumption that God is on their side. “Remember the Maine” was America’s motto to start the Spanish American War with the accusation Spain had blown up the ship of that name in Havana harbor. The country acquired far flung possessions that came with victory. “Remember Pearl Harbor” was the rallying cry after the Jap attack started World War II. A peaceful America was roused to put men and women on battlefronts around the world and defeat the imperialism of Germany and Japan. It could have gone another way, but the message and need to fight was clear. The following Cold War, with opposing political philosophies, had the East and West facing off with stockpiling of nuclear weapons. Either finger on the trigger could have signaled the end of civilization. Newspaper cartoonists carried sketches of mushroom clouds over the earth. Following 1950, a lot of American troops were brainwashed by the Communists in North Korea if captured. The US took efforts to explain why they were fighting on the other side of the world. Young, idealistic men and women went to Vietnam and had their weapons muzzled by administrations that prevented them from winning. They came home disillusioned despite the propaganda. Two books published following World War II were utilized as propaganda to prove different ideologies—“Animal Farm” (1945) and “1984 (1949).” George Orwell gave us useful words to be interpreted according to the user: Big Brother, thought police, doublethink. Perhaps the most enigmatic writer of this century has been Orwell. His influence on political philosophy has varied with the uses of different governments and groups. That would have infuriated him. He hated propaganda, even quit a job once with the BBC because he hated what he was doing. Film rights to his “Animal Farm”--which expounded that all pigs were equal but some were more equal—were bought by the CIA and used by Howard Hunt with some revisions as an animated movie against Communism. It was shown around the world. The John Birch Society was so overwhelmed with Orwell’s work the last four digits of their phone number was 1984. A socialist, Orwell hated Communism and Capitalism with equal passion. Orwell hated the far right as much as he hated the far left. He felt that Britain and America would become totalitarian states. He believed capitalism was doomed. An admirer of Hitler, he did an about face when Hitler and Stalin signed their pact. Born in Bengal as son of a British Civil servant, he was named Eric Blair and took up the pen name of George Orwell in 1933. He was not the kind of person you would enjoy as a house guest. Contrary and single minded, he spurned society by working menial jobs—dish washer, laborer in his lean years. From time to time, he held newspaper jobs as writer and essayists. He was a prolific writer who cared only for writing. Although his writings made him wealthy after 1945, he spurned physical comforts and died in miserable conditions in 1949, three months after marriage to a woman who was promised she could be a rich widow. He sold more books than any serious writer in the 20th Century. In 1973, the English version of “1984” was selling 1,340 copies a day. His works have been translated into 60 languages. We must wonder what kind of words he would use to describe the propaganda of the new century, with each country’s leader following his own view. Rest in Peace, George Orwell. But your words march on. Orwell has been interpreted as varied
politically as North Pole and South Pole.
One good thing, though--his books make us think.
That’s what’s important.
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