Animal Farm Propaganda Essay

Abigail Kim

Mrs. Amanatullah

English Per. 4

7 April 2023

The Power of Propaganda Throughout history, propaganda has been a crucial tool for dictators to control peoples’ beliefs and perceptions, allowing them to maintain power. From Hitler's Nazi Germany to Stalin's Soviet Union, propaganda was used to manipulate the people, demonize their enemies, and promote their own agenda. Propaganda holds the power to build up the dictator’s image, ultimately solidifying the dictator's authority and suppressing disagreement. The satirical novella, Animal Farm, by George Orwell, is an analogy to the Russian Revolution and the rise of Joseph Stalin. In the novel, farm animals rebel against their human farmer, hoping to create a farm where all animals

Squealer’s success in gaslighting the animals to question the truth and themselves led them to put full trust in the pigs’ lies and justify any of their actions. Countless times in the novel, Squealer takes advantage of the animal’s limited knowledge and memory to gaslight them into believing that the pigs' actions are for their own good. He begins with less significant things, such as exploiting the animal of their milk and apples, justifying it as containing “substances absolutely necessary to the well-being of a pig”, therefore it is for the animals’ “sake that we [the pigs] drink that milk and eat those apples” (Orwell 52). As Squealer progresses, Squealer makes bolder moves in his propaganda, modifying the Battle at Cowshed, an event in history all the animals witnessed, to frame Napoleon in a positive light. All the animals thought they “had seen Snowball charging ahead of them at the Battle of the Cowshed, how he had rallied and encouraged them at every turn”,

Propaganda is defined as bias or misleading information to push a political agenda. In the article, “How Photos Became a Weapon in Stalin’s Great Purge”, published on April 3, 2022, Erin Blakemore shows the audience how Stalin manipulated photos, “going back to the past to change the historical record, as when Stalin ordered Leon Trotsky, once a leading figure in the Communist Party, eliminated from all photos” (Blakemore par. 10). By doing so, Leon erases a permanent record from history, further using this to support Stalin’s facade. Squealer employs similar techniques in his propaganda in Animal Farm. When the animalism revolution began they made a set of commandments for all the animals to follow and wrote them on the wall. As time progressed the pigs broke these laws and changed the words to fit Napoleon's plans. Squealer was caught modifying the