Animal Farm Propaganda Essay

The Dangers of Propaganda

Foundation Academy

3rd Period

Cody Cramer

Animal Farm written by George Orwell is a political allegory that evaluates and criticizes the events of the Russian Revolution. The novel shows the danger of propaganda through a story about a group of farm animals that overthrow their human owners and create their own society. The pigs, who take over the farm, use propaganda techniques to manipulate the other animals. The pigs' use of propaganda techniques such as fear, name-calling, and bandwagoning demonstrate the corruptive influence of power and the danger of propaganda.

Throughout the novel the pigs used fear as a tool to control the other animals, instilling in them a sense of danger and threat.

The pigs used name-calling to label any animal who questioned their authority an enemy of the farm. An example of this is when Snowball was used as a scapegoat even after he was expelled from the farm. Orwell writes, “Do you know the enemy who has come in the middle of the night and overthrown our windmill? Snowball!” (Orwell, 43) By blaming Snowball, Napoleon is able to distract the animals from his own struggles and failures as a leader. This highlights the importance of questioning the motives of those in power and not accepting everything they say as truth. Napoleon used the animals' inability to question him to his advantage by portraying the Humans as the root of all the animals' problems. By blaming the humans he was able to create a sense of unity among the animals by allowing the animals to believe that without the humans they could live a better life.”With the worthless parasitical human beings gone, there was more food for everyone to eat.”(Orwell, 28) This allowed Napoleon to suppress any dissenting voices as any opposition to him can be seen as opposition to the goodness of the farm. The quote highlights the irony that even after the animals overthrew the humans they still ended up being suppressed by their own

In Animal Farm, the pigs use the term comrade as a way to make the animals think they are all part of one group and share the same goals and aspirations. "Now, comrades, what is the nature of this life of ours? Let us face it: our lives are miserable, laborious and short." (Orwell, 6) By referring to the other animals as “comrades the pigs are able to appeal to their sense of camaraderie and encourage them to band together which ultimately allows Napoleon to have complete control over them. When all the are participating as one unit it is also easier to get them to all believe one thing as seem when,"...all the sheep burst out in a tremendous bleating of four legs good, two legs BETTER." (Orwell, 133-134). As the pigs become more human like, they anticipate that the other animals will object to their leadership. In order to combat this inevitable outburst, the pigs employed the sheep to create a distraction. This quote is a great example of how the pigs were using the power of the masses or bandwagoning to manipulate the other animals into thinking that everyone is in agreement with their ideas even if that is not the