How Does Propaganda Work? What Are Its Historical Origins? Was the War in Iraq Initiated by a Campaign of Propaganda and Disinformation?

The prevalence of the word 'propaganda' in ordinary discourse indicates the social pervasiveness of the phenomenon. The Holocaust in Nazi Germany was the result of a decade of systematic propaganda harnessing and intensifying a centuries-old anti-Semitic legacy. The massacre of over half a million Tutsis in Rwanda was instigated by radio propaganda. Support for the 1991 Gulf War has been attributed to the deliberate shaping of public opinion through false atrocity stories such as alleged incubator baby killings. …