A Culture in the Captivity of Propaganda

Abstract

In the article, it is claimed that culture and art at the current stage of society’s development are means of propaganda. The propaganda itself has several semantic loads, which has both a neutral and a negative context. It is essentially a neutral phenomenon, a social and psychological phenomenon. It is not a crime under international criminal law. However, the use of propaganda as a powerful means of influence to manipulate public consciousness has a negative connotation, as it tries to deliberately create images and views that distort or replace information and facts, which in turn form the desired public opinion, attitude towards a certain segment of the population, representatives of an ethnic group, nation, religion, etc. Propaganda uses such techniques as dehumanization, generalization, stereotyping, suggestion, substitution of facts, etc. At the present stage of development, propaganda has reached unprecedented levels of distribution. Today, this has become possible due to informatization, technologization of all spheres of society, active use of communication means, and social networks.

Keywords

• war
• culture
• cinema
• art
• propaganda