Propaganda In Dictatorships: The History And Use Of Dictatorship

HISTORY IS USED AS POLITICAL PROPAGANDA ONLY IN DICTATORSHIPS
Dictatorship is a form of government when one person or a group of people has absolute power in their hands of the state. After gaining the power using fraud or force they have to use terror and withdrawal of the civil rights to maintain it. Many dictatorships also use propaganda to attain acceptance of the masses. Even though democracies also tend to use history as political propaganda for dictatorships it is a crucial tool. Dictators search justification of their ideology at the memories, documents, traditions and cultural heritage because they cannot justify their power form elections and laws. According to the Schneider and Woolf (2015), “This results that history becomes an

To be able to control history governments establishes institutions, which tend to alter and moderate facts. These institutions with a help of telephone tapping, mail control and intimidation in all forms pressures historians and artists to create works suitable for the regime. The ones who refuse to obey often get their carriers damaged. Since propaganda is the excellent tool to control masses, there are many ways how it can be employed. It can be employed through the face-to-face communication, such as group discussions, lectures, newspapers and other printed sources. It can also be employed through images, such as paintings, theatre, movies.
History textbooks for primary and secondary education are one of the most popular ways how dictators manipulate history. It is so because textbooks have a big impact on the young minds and have a broad reach. Even though democracies may also use censorship of textbooks to alter the history, for dictatorships it is crucial because they search justification of their ideology in the past. In many countries dictators use textbooks to explain the current events with the vision of the past. Using censorship, they adjust how groups, events and individuals are portrayed. By shaping young minds

Visual censorship was widely used because ideologies and political leaders needed to be shown as infallible. In Soviet Union Stalin was known for erasing people whom he found unbeneficial for him anymore. One of those people was Nikolai Yezhov, former head of the secret police. He was responsible for mass arrests and executions of the opposition of the Party, however later he was executed for disloyalty himself. Hitler also liked to eliminate people who were not beneficial to him anymore. Propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, was travelling and spreading Nazi ideas all over Germany during the war, however later he was deleted from photos. Bo Gu or Qin Bangxian was a senior leader of the Chinese Communist Party. After miscommunication on tactical military defense he got into the argument with the Party leader and was erased from the photo as well as replaced in his duties. For more current example, in North Korea Jang Song-thaek, was executed after being convicted as traitor. Kim Jong-un’s uncle is being erased from photographs and online archives by North Korean state