09-10-2019, 10:15 PM
In a Crisis at its most heated, you are likely to get the "offer that you can't refuse". As an artist you might be encouraged to create propaganda for your side. What sort?
I would rather make this
![[Image: 4freedoms-729x1024.jpg]](http://www.bipartisancafe.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/4freedoms-729x1024.jpg)
than this
![[Image: 51MEP9F05EL._SX282_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51MEP9F05EL._SX282_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg)
and not solely as a question of artistic quality. The government must tread more carefully when people have freedom of speech, freedom to hold or seek a religious tradition (or make their own, or choose none at all), expect to not live in dire need, and all in all not dread the anger of the political leadership. On the other hand, treading more carefully means doing fewer crimes and other blunders. The biggest blunder of the Nazis was the mistreatment of people unfortunate enough to come under their rule.
If you are familiar with the propaganda that is a fecal work both technically and morally (and, yes, the Rockwell piece really is propaganda!) it is by or for the war criminal Julius Streicher, who issued the definitive Jew-hating newspaper that blamed the Jews for every evil in the world and every misfortune in Germany. This is not the worst depiction of Jews that Streicher and his sick cartoonists offered, some of them depicting them doing ritual murder of Christian children (never mind that the Catholic Church had long debunked those stories).
One can easily end up with this dilemma
Are you a good propagandist or a bad propagandist?
I would rather make this
than this
and not solely as a question of artistic quality. The government must tread more carefully when people have freedom of speech, freedom to hold or seek a religious tradition (or make their own, or choose none at all), expect to not live in dire need, and all in all not dread the anger of the political leadership. On the other hand, treading more carefully means doing fewer crimes and other blunders. The biggest blunder of the Nazis was the mistreatment of people unfortunate enough to come under their rule.
If you are familiar with the propaganda that is a fecal work both technically and morally (and, yes, the Rockwell piece really is propaganda!) it is by or for the war criminal Julius Streicher, who issued the definitive Jew-hating newspaper that blamed the Jews for every evil in the world and every misfortune in Germany. This is not the worst depiction of Jews that Streicher and his sick cartoonists offered, some of them depicting them doing ritual murder of Christian children (never mind that the Catholic Church had long debunked those stories).
One can easily end up with this dilemma
Are you a good propagandist or a bad propagandist?
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.