Forensic Research Archive of Manipulation and Exploitation
Illustration: a redacted-dossier collage of press photography, contact sheets and political crowds from multiple eras.

Case studies

Propaganda examples: case studies

Illustrated, sourced walk-throughs of propaganda, and of efforts to counter it, from royal inscriptions of about 1274 BC to campaigns of 2026, newest first. Each page sets out what happened, the techniques used and the positions on the record.

Illustration, not an archive object

Illustrated, sourced write-ups that a general reader can follow: what happened, how the techniques work in it and the positions on the record, with most pages adding a same-method test and a guide to spotting the method next time. They run from royal inscriptions of about 1274 BC to campaigns of 2026, and are grouped below by period and subject.

The first five turned watch briefs into write-ups for modern techniques that have no poster in the gallery. A 1918 poster can show name-calling, but nothing from 1918 shows corpus poisoning or disclosure theater, so a case study shows those techniques in a real, sourced event instead. The sections that followed are built from the documentary and scholarly record rather than from watch briefs, and most are historical; many set their material beside a gallery poster that used the same move.

The first five

Case study Actor When Techniques
The Hanover Institute: reports written for chatbots to cite Israel's state advertising agency, via Havas and Piro Aug 2026 Corpus poisoning, Synthetic media, Narrative laundering, Disclosure theater, Manufactured consensus, Transfer
Matryoshka's midterm clips: borrowed faces and a borrowed logo Russia-aligned Matryoshka network Sep 2026 Synthetic media, Transfer, Name-calling, Outrage bait, Firehosing, Accusation in a mirror
The Justice Department's FARA release and public demonstrations U.S. Department of Justice Sep 2026 Semantic hijacking, Euphemism / doublespeak, Overton window shifting, Fear appeal, Card stacking
The Gyirong flood and the official death toll Chinese public-security authorities Aug-Sep 2026 Limited hangout, Flooding the zone, Manufactured consensus, Card stacking
Alaj: the portal Iranian state media promoted for reporting 'traitors abroad' Iranian state media (Fars, IRIB) Sep 2026 Identity fusion, Name-calling, Scapegoating, Fear appeal, Narrative laundering

Before 1914

Ten deep dives on propaganda from the ancient world to the eve of the First World War. Almost everything shown is public domain, so these pages carry more images than the modern cases (about 100 in all, listed in images.json). Each page covers every side of its conflict with the same technique definitions, and the pages marked with a content note show racist, sectarian or violent material uncropped, as it was published.

Case study Sides covered When Techniques
Kadesh and Behistun: kings carving their own record Ramesses II and the Hittite record; Darius I and his rivals c. 1274-420 BC Card stacking, Transfer, Name-calling, Scapegoating, Semantic hijacking
Octavian, Antony and the Res Gestae: how Augustus wrote his own reign Octavian and Mark Antony; the Res Gestae and its critics 44 BC-AD 14 Transfer, Name-calling, Whataboutism, Scapegoating, Card stacking, Euphemism / doublespeak, Glittering generalities, Bandwagon
Propaganda Fide, 1622: where the word comes from The Congregation in the Church's own terms; how the word changed 1622-1933 None: a page about the word itself
The Reformation print war: Luther, Cranach and the Catholic reply Lutheran and Catholic print 1518-1545 Name-calling, Transfer, Card stacking, Scapegoating
The English Civil War pamphlet war, 1641-1649 Royalist and Parliamentarian 1641-1649 Fear appeal, Scapegoating, Name-calling, Transfer, Card stacking
Join or Die to the Boston Massacre: patriot and loyalist print, 1754-1783 Patriot, loyalist and British 1754-1783 Name-calling, Card stacking, Transfer, Fear appeal
Revolution, counter-revolution and Napoleon's bulletins, 1789-1815 Revolutionary, royalist, British and Napoleonic 1785-1815 Name-calling, Scapegoating, Transfer, Card stacking, Fear appeal, Plain folks
Abolitionist and pro-slavery print, 1787-1860 Abolitionist and pro-slavery 1787-1860 Whataboutism, Card stacking, Transfer, Testimonial, Name-calling, Fear appeal, Euphemism / doublespeak
Union and Confederate print, 1861-1865 Union, Confederate and Northern Democratic 1861-1865 Transfer, Glittering generalities, Name-calling, Fear appeal, Card stacking, Astroturfing
Remember the Maine: the yellow press and Spain, 1895-1898 U.S. and Spanish press 1895-1898 Name-calling, Scapegoating, Card stacking, Outrage bait

These pages carry era: pre-1914 in their frontmatter. Their images live in images/. The gallery now has a pre-1914 era, so the best of them can move into it as entries.

First World War

Historical case studies of wartime propaganda from several belligerents, held to the same standard as the modern cases. They show which atrocity stories were later confirmed and which were not, and they embed posters from the gallery.

Case study Actor When Techniques
Wellington House and the Bryce Report: atrocity evidence, confirmed and unconfirmed (1914-1915) British government: the Bryce Committee and the War Propaganda Bureau at Wellington House 1914-1915 Testimonial, Narrative laundering, Card stacking, Fear appeal
The German 'corpse factory': a false atrocity story and its long afterlife (1917-1925) The Times and the Daily Mail, reprinting a Belgian exile newspaper; carried on by wire services 1917-1925 Card stacking, Testimonial, Name-calling
The Committee on Public Information: how the U.S. government sold the First World War at home (1917-1919) U.S. government: the Committee on Public Information (chair George Creel) 1917-1919 Transfer, Name-calling, Fear appeal, Testimonial
Holy war on three sides: the Ottoman jihad call, Germany's Islam policy and Britain's Arab Revolt messaging (1914-1918) Ottoman government and the Şeyhülislam; German Foreign Office; British authorities in Cairo and London, and Sharif Hussein of Mecca 1914-1918 Identity fusion, Transfer, Scapegoating, Name-calling, Glittering generalities
Russia's war of words: tsarist lubki, the Liberty Loan and the fight over 'German agents' (1914-1918) Tsarist publishers and army; the Provisional Government; the Bolsheviks; the U.S. CPI (Sisson Documents) 1914-1918 Name-calling, Scapegoating, Transfer, Glittering generalities, Testimonial
Managing the news: France's 'bourrage de crâne' and Austria-Hungary's War Press Office (1914-1918) French War Ministry press bureau and the Maison de la Presse; the Austro-Hungarian War Press Office 1914-1918 Card stacking, Transfer, Glittering generalities
Germany answers back: the Manifesto of the 93 and the Lusitania medal (1914-1916) German scholars and artists (the Manifesto of the 93); German overseas publicity; the German Embassy in Washington; a private medallist and the British copies of his medal 1914-1916 Testimonial, Whataboutism, Transfer, Card stacking

Second World War, all sides

Seven deep dives on how each major belligerent ran its wartime propaganda, held to the same technique definitions. Wartime film and radio, the OWI's Domestic Branch and Japan's Co-Prosperity Sphere have their own pages (Wartime radio voices: open and hidden broadcasts aimed at the enemy, 1939-1945, Why We Fight: the U.S. Army's orientation films, 1942-1945, The Office of War Information's Domestic Branch, 1942-43, 'Asia for the Asiatics': Japan's Co-Prosperity Sphere and the movements that used it); these pages link to them rather than repeat them.

Case study Actor When Techniques
The Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, 1933-1945 Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda (Goebbels) 1933-1945 Manufactured consensus, Card stacking, Fear appeal, Bandwagon, Identity fusion, Scapegoating, Name-calling, Euphemism / doublespeak, Accusation in a mirror
Fascist Italy's propaganda machine: from the Duce's Press Office to the Ministry of Popular Culture Italian Press Office, Ministry for Press and Propaganda, Ministry of Popular Culture (MinCulPop) and the Salò ministry 1924-1945 Identity fusion, Manufactured consensus, Card stacking, Scapegoating, Whataboutism, Euphemism / doublespeak, Name-calling, Glittering generalities, Fear appeal
Imperial Japan's wartime propaganda at home: the Information Bureau, the neighbourhood associations and the war communiqués Empire of Japan: Cabinet Information Bureau, Ministry of Education, Spiritual Mobilization Movement, Imperial General Headquarters 1937-1945 Limited hangout, Card stacking, Euphemism / doublespeak, Semantic hijacking, Identity fusion, Glittering generalities, Name-calling, Fear appeal, Transfer
Soviet wartime propaganda, 1939-1945: Sovinformburo, Agitprop and the Red Army press Soviet Information Bureau, Central Committee Agitprop, Red Army Main Political Administration, TASS 1939-1945 Transfer, Fear appeal, Identity fusion, Name-calling, Card stacking, Euphemism / doublespeak, Narrative laundering, Accusation in a mirror
Britain's Ministry of Information and Political Warfare Executive: posters at home, black radio abroad UK Ministry of Information and Political Warfare Executive 1939-1945 Glittering generalities, Fear appeal, Card stacking, Transfer, Astroturfing, Narrative laundering, Scapegoating, Outrage bait
The U.S. Office of War Information and the Writers' War Board: a 'strategy of truth' meets the advertising men U.S. Office of War Information and the Writers' War Board 1942-1945 Glittering generalities, Transfer, Plain folks, Fear appeal, Card stacking, Scapegoating, Narrative laundering
Chinese wartime propaganda, 1937-1945: Chongqing, Yan'an and Wang Jingwei's Nanjing Nationalist government (Chongqing), Chinese Communist Party (Yan'an) and Wang Jingwei's Reorganized National Government (Nanjing) 1937-1945 Glittering generalities, Transfer, Testimonial, Plain folks, Card stacking, Scapegoating, Identity fusion, Semantic hijacking, Euphemism / doublespeak, Narrative laundering

Rise to power, 1917-1949

Fifteen case studies on how three twentieth-century regimes built and used propaganda on their way to power and through their first years of holding it: the NSDAP's rise from a Munich fringe party to the Reich government (1920-1933), the Bolsheviks' seizure of power and the internal struggle that followed Lenin's death (1917-1938), and the Chinese Communist Party's growth from a rural insurgency to the founding of the People's Republic (1927-1949). Where the Second World War and Cold War sections above cover each regime once its power was already consolidated, these pages track the propaganda that built that power in the first place: founding myths, street violence staged as a case for order, internal purges dressed as loyalty, and personality cults raised before the state existed to enforce them. The apparatus, youth, and collapse pages for these three regimes are in the sections below. That series is closed.

Nazi Germany

Case study Actor When Techniques
Before the state: the NSDAP's propaganda in its fringe years, 1920-1923 German Workers' Party (DAP), renamed NSDAP in February 1920; Anton Drexler, then Adolf Hitler from July 1921 1920-1923 Name-calling, Scapegoating, Identity fusion, Glittering generalities, Transfer, Fear appeal, Bandwagon, Plain folks
Hitler über Deutschland: the 1932 campaigns that made the NSDAP a mass party NSDAP under presidential candidate Adolf Hitler; Joseph Goebbels as Reich Propaganda Leader Jan 1932 - Jan 1933 Transfer, Identity fusion, Bandwagon, Glittering generalities, Name-calling, Scapegoating, Fear appeal, Card stacking
The SA in the street: uniforms, a martyr and staged disorder as proof only the NSDAP could 'restore order' (1921-1933) The NSDAP's Sturmabteilung (SA); Goebbels's Berlin Gau propaganda apparatus and Der Angriff 1921-1933 Identity fusion, Transfer, Bandwagon, Scapegoating, Name-calling, Fear appeal, Accusation in a mirror
Before Triumph of the Will: staging scale for a fringe party at Nuremberg, 1923-1933 NSDAP under Adolf Hitler; the SA 1923; 1927-1933 Bandwagon, Transfer, Identity fusion, Card stacking, Testimonial, Glittering generalities
From a fire to a vote: the Reichstag Fire Decree and the Enabling Act, February-March 1933 Hitler's NSDAP-DNVP coalition government; Reich President Hindenburg Feb-Mar 1933 Scapegoating, Fear appeal, Name-calling, Euphemism / doublespeak, Manufactured consensus, Identity fusion, Bandwagon, Card stacking

USSR

Case study Actor When Techniques
Bolshevik agitprop, 1917-1921: soviets, decrees, agit-trains and the ROSTA windows The Bolshevik party and Sovnarkom; the Russian Telegraph Agency (ROSTA) and the Central Committee's Agitprop department 1917-1921 Glittering generalities, Bandwagon, Manufactured consensus, Plain folks, Narrative laundering, Card stacking, Name-calling, Scapegoating, Euphemism / doublespeak
The Lenin cult after 1924: an embalmed body, a mausoleum and a doctrine called "Leninism" The Soviet Communist Party leadership; the Institute of Lenin; Joseph Stalin as the self-declared systematiser of "Leninism" 1924-1930s Identity fusion, Transfer, Glittering generalities, Manufactured consensus, Narrative laundering, Bandwagon
'Trotskyism or Leninism': the press campaign that removed Trotsky from Soviet leadership (1924-1929) The Stalin-Zinoviev-Kamenev "Triumvirate," then Stalin alone; Pravda, Izvestia and Bolshevik 1924-1929 Name-calling, Scapegoating, Card stacking, Identity fusion, Manufactured consensus, Bandwagon
"Liquidate the kulaks as a class": the propaganda campaign for collectivization (1929-1933) The Communist Party of the Soviet Union under Stalin; Pravda, Izvestia and the OGPU 1929-1933 Name-calling, Scapegoating, Identity fusion, Euphemism / doublespeak, Card stacking, Fear appeal, Bandwagon, Glittering generalities
The Moscow show trials: confession, spectacle and consent (1936-1938) The Soviet government under Stalin: prosecutor Andrei Vyshinsky and the NKVD 1936-1938 Name-calling, Scapegoating, Fear appeal, Manufactured consensus, Testimonial, Card stacking

Maoist China

Case study Actor When Techniques
Divide the land, label the enemy: propaganda and discipline in the Jiangxi Soviet (1927-1934) The Chinese Communist Party under Mao Zedong and Zhu De; the Chinese Soviet Republic government at Ruijin 1927-1934 Name-calling, Scapegoating, Glittering generalities, Plain folks, Identity fusion, Card stacking, Euphemism / doublespeak, Transfer
The Yan'an Rectification Movement: doctrine, self-criticism and the Rescue Campaign (1942-1945) Mao Zedong and the CCP Central Committee; Kang Sheng's Central Social Affairs Department 1942-1945 Identity fusion, Euphemism / doublespeak, Name-calling, Scapegoating, Fear appeal, Testimonial, Narrative laundering, Plain folks
Propaganda of the Chinese Civil War, 1945-1949: land reform, surrender leaflets and the fall of the mainland CCP Central Propaganda Department and Xinhua News Agency; the Nationalist government's Central Propaganda Department 1945-1949 Scapegoating, Name-calling, Fear appeal, Glittering generalities, Transfer, Testimonial, Card stacking, Euphemism / doublespeak, Bandwagon, Manufactured consensus
Land reform and the struggle session: how the CCP's class labels decided who kept their land, 1946-1952 CCP base-area governments, then the PRC government; village-level work teams and peasant associations 1946-1952 Scapegoating, Name-calling, Identity fusion, Fear appeal, Bandwagon, Glittering generalities, Euphemism / doublespeak
The Mao cult before the state: 'Mao Zedong Thought' and 'The East Is Red', 1943-1949 The CCP Central Committee and Politburo; Liberation Daily and Xinhua News Agency 1943-1949 Testimonial, Glittering generalities, Transfer, Narrative laundering, Manufactured consensus, Bandwagon, Identity fusion

Hosted images for this set lean toward U.S. government and Library of Congress holdings and toward Wikimedia Commons files with an explicit U.S. public-domain rationale, not just a German CC BY-SA-DE or PD-China/PD-Russia Commons tag, since 1920s-1940s German, Soviet and Chinese works can carry U.S. copyright restored under the URAA. Most Nazi-era posters and photographs, and nearly all Soviet and Chinese posters and period photographs, were left out on that basis; each page's Image gaps section says which ones and why.

The propaganda apparatus, 1912-2026

Fifteen more case studies on the same three regimes, this time on the standing institutions that ran propaganda once each party held power, rather than the campaigns that won it: the secret police and party courts that turned denunciation and verdicts into public theatre, the party's own newspapers and press agencies, and the mass organisations — a labour front, a writers' union, a camp system, a military political-officer corps, a system of work-unit control — through which the message reached everyone from a factory floor to a labour camp. This is phase two of the planned full life-cycle series for Nazi Germany, the USSR and Maoist China that the "Rise to power" section above began; like that set, these pages are built from the documentary and scholarly record rather than from watch briefs, so their briefs list is empty.

Nazi Germany

Case study Actor When Techniques
The Gestapo's Denunciation Apparatus: Policing by Public Tip-Off, 1933-1945 Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo), created under Hermann Göring and Rudolf Diels, taken over by Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich in 1934, and folded into the RSHA under Heydrich (then Heinrich Müller) as Amt IV from 1939; the NSDAP's block and cell wardens (Blockleiter/Zellenleiter), who fed it public reports 1933-1945 Fear appeal, Identity fusion, Plain folks, Bandwagon, Scapegoating, Euphemism / doublespeak, Name-calling
The People's Court: the Volksgerichtshof as a stage for verdicts, 1934-1945 The Volksgerichtshof (People's Court), created by Reich law on 24 April 1934 under the Reich Ministry of Justice; its president from August 1942, Roland Freisler; the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda 1934-1945 Fear appeal, Name-calling, Scapegoating, Manufactured consensus, Transfer, Identity fusion, Card stacking
The SS as its own propaganda institution: Das Schwarze Korps, the Ahnenerbe and the order myth, 1931-1945 Schutzstaffel (SS) under Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler: the SS press office and Das Schwarze Korps, the Ahnenerbe research institute, the Race and Settlement Main Office (RuSHA) and the Wewelsburg SS school 1929-1948 Identity fusion, Transfer, Glittering generalities, Testimonial, Narrative laundering, Scapegoating, Name-calling
Manufactured unanimity: the Nazi single-list plebiscites, 1934-1938 Hitler's one-party government; the Reich Interior Ministry and Reich Statistical Office; the NSDAP Reich Propaganda Directorate and SA/SS 1934-1938 Manufactured consensus, Bandwagon, Identity fusion, Glittering generalities, Card stacking, Fear appeal
The German Labour Front and Strength Through Joy, 1933-1945 Deutsche Arbeitsfront (DAF, German Labour Front) under Robert Ley; its Kraft durch Freude (KdF, Strength Through Joy) subdivision from November 1933 1933-1945 Identity fusion, Euphemism / doublespeak, Glittering generalities, Transfer, Plain folks, Bandwagon, Card stacking

USSR

Case study Actor When Techniques
The Agitprop Department: the Communist Party's standing propaganda apparatus, 1920-1991 The Agitation and Propaganda Department (Agitprop) of the CPSU Central Committee, renamed and re-subordinated across seven decades; regional obkom and raikom propaganda departments; the All-Union Znanie Society 1920-1991 Manufactured consensus, Card stacking, Euphemism / doublespeak, Narrative laundering, Bandwagon, Plain folks, Identity fusion, Testimonial, Flooding the zone, Scapegoating
The NKVD as its own propagandist: 'enemies of the people,' informants and the vigilant state (1934-1946) The Soviet secret police: the Cheka (1917), GPU/OGPU (1922-1934) and then the NKVD (1934-1946) under Genrikh Yagoda, Nikolai Yezhov and Lavrentiy Beria in turn 1917-1954 Name-calling, Scapegoating, Fear appeal, Identity fusion, Testimonial, Transfer, Manufactured consensus, Limited hangout, Euphemism / doublespeak
Pravda, Izvestia and TASS: the institutional structure of the Soviet press monopoly, 1912-1991 The Bolshevik party, then the CPSU: the Politburo and Central Committee Agitprop; Pravda and Izvestia; the Russian Telegraph Agency (ROSTA) and its successor TASS; the pre-publication censor Glavlit 1912-1991 Manufactured consensus, Narrative laundering, Bandwagon, Plain folks, Identity fusion, Card stacking
The Union of Soviet Writers and socialist realism, 1932-1969 The Union of Soviet Writers, created by Communist Party decree; the Central Committee's Cultural-Propaganda (from 1948, Agitprop) apparatus under Andrei Zhdanov 1932-1969 Identity fusion, Glittering generalities, Euphemism / doublespeak, Name-calling, Scapegoating, Manufactured consensus, Card stacking, Testimonial
Selling the Gulag: the "re-forging" of the White Sea-Baltic Canal, 1930-1937 The OGPU (from July 1934, the NKVD) camp administration, the Gulag, under Genrikh Yagoda; the White Sea-Baltic Canal camp administration (Belbaltlag); the OGPU-organized 120-writer brigade led by Maxim Gorky 1930-1938 Euphemism / doublespeak, Glittering generalities, Testimonial, Transfer, Card stacking, Narrative laundering, Disclosure theater

Maoist China

Case study Actor When Techniques
Zhongxuanbu: the Central Propaganda Department as the ruling party's standing ministry of message, 1949-2026 The Chinese Communist Party's Central Propaganda Department (Zhongxuanbu), an organ of the CCP Central Committee, with its chain of provincial, city and county propaganda departments and the "party groups" it places inside nominally state bodies 1949-2026 Manufactured consensus, Card stacking, Euphemism / doublespeak, Narrative laundering, Semantic hijacking, Astroturfing, Flooding the zone
Xinhua News Agency: China's state press apparatus, 1931-present Red China News Agency, renamed Xinhua News Agency (New China News Agency) in 1937; since 1949 a ministerial-level institution of the PRC State Council, working under the Central Propaganda Department 1931-present Manufactured consensus, Card stacking, Euphemism / doublespeak, Semantic hijacking, Transfer
The danwei: how the work unit became China's basic unit of political control, 1951-2003 The Chinese Communist Party and the government of the People's Republic of China, acting through state and collective work units (danwei), their Party committees and personnel offices 1951-present (core system: 1950s-1990s) Identity fusion, Fear appeal, Bandwagon, Manufactured consensus, Name-calling, Euphemism / doublespeak
The PLA's Political Commissar System: Dual Command, the General Political Department and PLA Daily The CCP's Central Military Commission; the PLA's General Political Department (from 2016, the CMC Political Work Department) and its subordinate political departments; political commissars, political instructors and party committees at every command echelon; PLA Daily 1929-2026 Identity fusion, Glittering generalities, Testimonial, Card stacking, Manufactured consensus, Euphemism / doublespeak
The Hundred Flowers and Anti-Rightist Campaigns: soliciting criticism, then purging it (1956-1959) Mao Zedong and the CCP Central Committee; the United Front Work Department under Li Weihan, which convened the forums; from June 1957 the Anti-Rightist Campaign's central and local leading groups 1956-1959; 1978-1982 Card stacking, Name-calling, Euphemism / doublespeak, Bandwagon, Fear appeal, Identity fusion, Scapegoating, Testimonial

As with the "Rise to power" set, hosted images lean on Bundesarchiv CC BY-SA-DE releases, TASS and other Wikimedia Commons material carrying a PD-Russia or PD-China rationale, and openly licensed present-day photographs, rather than on copyrighted period posters; each page's Image gaps section says what could not be hosted and why.

Youth and education, 1917-2026

Fifteen more case studies on the same three regimes, this time on how each one reached children and young people before they could form their own political views: age-graded youth movements with their own uniforms, oaths, badges and camps; nationalized school curricula and textbooks rewritten to teach the ruling doctrine as settled fact and to vet or purge the teachers who taught it; elite cadet schools bred to staff the party, the officer corps or the SS; and, at the harder edge of the same mechanism, the evacuation of city children into a party organization's camps, a martyr-cult built around a child's disputed death, and the mobilization or relocation of millions of young people once a mass youth movement had served its purpose. This is phase three of the planned full life-cycle series for Nazi Germany, the USSR and Maoist China that the "Rise to power" and "The propaganda apparatus" sections above began; like those sets, these pages are built from the documentary and scholarly record rather than from watch briefs, so their briefs list is empty.

Nazi Germany

Case study Actor When Techniques
The Hitler Youth: from a party wing to a legal duty, 1926-1945 Hitler-Jugend (Hitler Youth), the NSDAP's youth wing, and its junior branch the Deutsches Jungvolk; Reich Youth Leaders Kurt Gruber (1926-1931), Baldur von Schirach (1931-1940) and Artur Axmann (1940-1945) 1922-1945 Identity fusion, Bandwagon, Transfer, Glittering generalities, Euphemism / doublespeak, Card stacking, Plain folks
The Bund Deutscher Mädel: raising Nazi Germany's girls for the Volk Bund Deutscher Mädel (BDM), the girls' section of the Hitler Youth within the Reich Youth Leadership under Reich Youth Leader Baldur von Schirach (1931-1940), then Artur Axmann (1940-1945); BDM national heads Trude Mohr (1934-1937) and Jutta Rüdiger (1937-1945) 1930-1945 Identity fusion, Glittering generalities, Plain folks, Transfer, Bandwagon, Card stacking, Scapegoating, Euphemism / doublespeak
Nazi control of school curriculum and teachers, 1933-1938 The Reich and Prussian governments; the Reich Ministry of Science, Education and National Education (REM) under Bernhard Rust from May 1934; the National Socialist Teachers League (NSLB) under Hans Schemm, then Fritz Wächtler; Julius Streicher's Stürmer-Verlag 1933-1938 Scapegoating, Name-calling, Euphemism / doublespeak, Identity fusion, Transfer, Card stacking, Manufactured consensus, Bandwagon
Two ladders to the top: the Napolas, the Adolf Hitler Schools, and the Reich's rival cadet pipelines (1933-1945) The Prussian, then Reich, education ministry under Bernhard Rust (the Napolas, from 20 April 1933), increasingly directed from February 1936 by SS-Obergruppenführer August Heissmeyer; the NSDAP's Deutsche Arbeitsfront under Robert Ley and the Reich Youth Leadership under Baldur von Schirach (the Adolf Hitler Schools, announced 15 January 1937) 1933-1945 Identity fusion, Transfer, Glittering generalities, Plain folks, Bandwagon, Testimonial, Card stacking, Euphemism / doublespeak
Kinderlandverschickung: evacuating Germany's children into Hitler Youth camps, 1940-1945 Reich Youth Leadership under Baldur von Schirach and the Hitler Youth and League of German Girls, which ran the KLV camps; the National Socialist People's Welfare (NSV), which placed younger children with rural foster families; the National Socialist Teachers League as a nominal school partner 1940-1945 Euphemism / doublespeak, Fear appeal, Card stacking, Identity fusion, Glittering generalities

USSR

Case study Actor When Techniques
The All-Union Pioneer Organization: scouting rebuilt as a communist pipeline, 1922-1991 The Russian Communist Youth League (RKSM, from 1926 the Komsomol), which founded and supervised the Pioneer organization; from 1924 the All-Union Pioneer Organization named after V. I. Lenin; Soviet schools, which hosted its troops; the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which stood at the top of the pipeline the organization fed 1922-1991 Transfer, Euphemism / doublespeak, Bandwagon, Identity fusion, Glittering generalities, Testimonial, Narrative laundering
The Komsomol: youth pipeline, mass mobilization and internal discipline, 1918-1991 The Komsomol (Russian Communist Youth League from 1918, renamed Russian Leninist Communist Youth League in 1924 and All-Union Leninist Communist Youth League/VLKSM in 1926), its Central Committee and local raikom and obkom committees, acting under the Communist Party of the Soviet Union 1918-1991 Identity fusion, Transfer, Bandwagon, Glittering generalities, Card stacking, Name-calling, Scapegoating, Manufactured consensus
Soviet control of school curriculum and textbooks The Soviet state: the People's Commissariat of Enlightenment (Narkompros) under Anatoly Lunacharsky, the Central Committee of the Communist Party from 1931, and the state publishing houses that printed a single approved textbook per subject 1917-1959 Card stacking, Name-calling, Euphemism / doublespeak, Scapegoating, Identity fusion
The Little Octobrists (Oktyabryata): a red star badge for seven-year-olds The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, through its youth wing the Komsomol and the Soviet school system, which supplied each class of Octobrists with an assigned older Young Pioneer as its "leader" 1923-1991 Identity fusion, Transfer, Glittering generalities, Bandwagon, Narrative laundering
The Pavlik Morozov cult: a Soviet martyr built from a disputed murder The Soviet Communist Party's youth and cultural apparatus: the Union of Soviet Writers (Maxim Gorky), the Komsomol and Young Pioneer press, state publishers, filmmakers and composers, and the Ministry of Education's school curriculum 1932-1991; reassessment 1988-present Testimonial, Glittering generalities, Manufactured consensus, Identity fusion, Transfer, Narrative laundering

Maoist China

Case study Actor When Techniques
A corner of the flag on a six-year-old: the Young Pioneers of China The Chinese Communist Party, acting through the Communist Youth League of China (formerly the New Democratic Youth League), the Ministry of Education, and, from February 2021, the Party's own Central Committee directly 1949-present Identity fusion, Glittering generalities, Transfer, Bandwagon, Euphemism / doublespeak
Red scarf to Party card: a century of the Communist Youth League of China The Communist Youth League of China under the direct leadership of the Chinese Communist Party; its predecessor organisations, the Socialist Youth League of China (1922-1925), the Chinese Communist Youth League (1925-1936) and the New Democratic Youth League (1949-1957); the League's Central Committee and its press organs 1920-2026 Identity fusion, Glittering generalities, Transfer, Bandwagon, Testimonial, Card stacking, Euphemism / doublespeak, Narrative laundering
Class struggle in the classroom: nationalizing China's school curriculum and textbooks, 1949-1977 The Government Administration Council (from 1954, the State Council) and the Ministry of Education; the People's Education Press (est. December 1950); provincial and municipal education bureaus; from 1966, the Central Cultural Revolution Group; from summer 1968, Worker and PLA Mao Zedong Thought Propaganda Teams sent into schools; from 1977, Deng Xiaoping and the restored Ministry of Education 1949-1977; requirement continues to 2026 Name-calling, Scapegoating, Testimonial, Identity fusion, Glittering generalities, Transfer, Plain folks, Bandwagon
The Red Guards: how Mao turned millions of students into a political weapon, 1966-68 Mao Zedong and the Central Cultural Revolution Group; the CCP Central Committee, State Council and Central Military Commission (the free rail-travel notices); Lin Biao and the People's Liberation Army (the 1968 propaganda teams) 1966-1968 Bandwagon, Identity fusion, Testimonial, Name-calling, Euphemism / doublespeak
Down to the countryside: how China rebranded a mass relocation of youth as revolutionary 're-education' (1968-1980) Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee; local revolutionary committees, schools, work units (danwei) and Educated Youth offices that assigned and enforced rural and border-region placements 1968-1980 Euphemism / doublespeak, Glittering generalities, Bandwagon, Testimonial, Transfer

As with the "Rise to power" and "propaganda apparatus" sets, hosted images lean on Bundesarchiv CC BY-SA-DE releases, RIA Novosti and other Wikimedia Commons material carrying a CC BY-SA, PD-Russia or PD-China rationale, and openly licensed present-day photographs, rather than on copyrighted period posters or press photographs; each page's Image gaps section says what could not be hosted and why.

Regime collapse and fall, 1944-1991

Fifteen more case studies on the same three regimes, this time on how each one's propaganda behaved as its power ran out: a last, hopeless conscription and a fabricated "wonder weapon" and "resistance" campaign staged as Nazi Germany's fronts collapsed in 1944-45, a controlled opening that outran its own state and a coup's propaganda that failed within three days in the Soviet Union of 1985-91, and a succession fight fought through funeral choreography, a scapegoated "Gang of Four," a state-permitted literature of grievance and a single engineered verdict on Mao Zedong in China of 1976-81. This is the fourth and final phase of the planned full life-cycle series for Nazi Germany, the USSR and Maoist China that the "Rise to power," "The propaganda apparatus" and "Youth and education" sections above began; like those sets, these pages are built from the documentary and scholarly record rather than from watch briefs, so their briefs list is empty.

Nazi Germany

Case study Actor When Techniques
The Volkssturm: staging a 'people's storm' out of Nazi Germany's last conscription, 1944-45 Adolf Hitler (decree); Martin Bormann and the NSDAP's regional Gauleiter (call-up and organization); Heinrich Himmler as Commander of the Replacement Army (training, weaponry, armament); Joseph Goebbels as Reich Plenipotentiary for Total War and Reich Minister of Propaganda September 1944 - May 1945 Euphemism / doublespeak, Glittering generalities, Transfer, Fear appeal, Card stacking
The Nero Decree: Hitler's order to destroy Germany, and the myth built on defying it Adolf Hitler, who signed the decree; the Wehrmacht High Command (OKW) chain and regional Gauleiters formally charged with carrying it out; Albert Speer, Reich Minister for Armaments and War Production, in his documented and later self-publicised resistance to it; Joseph Goebbels and the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, for the "total war" framing that supplied its logic February 1943 - April 1945 Euphemism / doublespeak, Glittering generalities, Identity fusion, Fear appeal, Card stacking, Testimonial
Wonder weapons: how the Reich sold the V-1, V-2 and Me 262 as war-winners, 1944-1945 The Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda under Joseph Goebbels; Adolf Hitler's own statements; Wehrmacht High Command (OKW) communiqués; SS-Obergruppenführer Hans Kammler, who ran V-2 production from August 1944 and all jet-aircraft production from February 1945 1944-1945 Glittering generalities, Euphemism / doublespeak, Card stacking, Fear appeal, Transfer, Testimonial
Werwolf: Nazi Germany's propaganda of a nationwide resistance that barely existed, 1944-1945 Heinrich Himmler and SS-Obergruppenführer Hans-Adolf Prützmann, who organized the small real "Werwolf" stay-behind unit from around autumn 1944; Joseph Goebbels and the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, whose "Radio Werwolf" (from 1 April 1945) and allied press turned that unit into the image of a mass underground 1944-1945 Fear appeal, Card stacking, Name-calling, Transfer
The Wehrmachtbericht's collapse: from 'Endsieg' to Dönitz's surrender broadcasts, 1944-1945 The Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW) propaganda department attached to the Wehrmachtführungsstab under Generaloberst Alfred Jodl, producing the daily Wehrmachtbericht under Hasso von Wedel's Wehrmacht propaganda branch; Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, as Hitler's designated successor and head of state of the Flensburg government, 1-23 May 1945 1944-1945 Euphemism / doublespeak, Glittering generalities, Fear appeal, Limited hangout, Transfer, Card stacking

USSR

Case study Actor When Techniques
Glasnost: the controlled opening that outran the Soviet state (1985-1989) Soviet government under General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev: the CPSU Politburo and Central Committee, Gosteleradio, and the editors of Pravda, Izvestia, Novy Mir and other state publications and broadcasters 1985-1989 Euphemism / doublespeak, Card stacking, Limited hangout, Overton window shifting
From 'ill health' to Swan Lake: the GKChP's case for its own coup, 19-21 August 1991 The State Committee on the State of Emergency (GKChP): Vice President Gennady Yanayev, KGB chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov, Defence Minister Dmitry Yazov, Interior Minister Boris Pugo, Premier Valentin Pavlov, First Deputy Defence Council chairman Oleg Baklanov, Peasants' Union chairman Vasily Starodubtsev and state-enterprise association head Alexander Tizyakov, acting through TASS, Radio Moscow and Gosteleradio 18-21 August 1991 Euphemism / doublespeak, Card stacking, Fear appeal, Scapegoating, Name-calling, Glittering generalities, Manufactured consensus, Accusation in a mirror
Yeltsin on the tank: the broadcast image that framed the August 1991 coup's collapse Boris Yeltsin, President of the RSFSR, and aides at the Russian White House (Vice President Alexander Rutskoi, Prime Minister Ivan Silaev, Supreme Soviet chairman Ruslan Khasbulatov); wire photographers and camera crews, chiefly the Associated Press's Alexander Zemlianichenko 1991-1993; 2005 Name-calling, Transfer, Bandwagon, Fear appeal
Swan Lake on loop: how Soviet television announced a coup by going silent (19-21 August 1991) Gosteleradio, the Soviet state television and radio monopoly, and its flagship news programme Vremya, placed under the control of the State Committee for the State of Emergency (GKChP) on 19 August 1991 1982-1991 Card stacking
The end of the USSR: Gorbachev's resignation and the flag over the Kremlin (December 1991) The outgoing Soviet government under President Mikhail Gorbachev and Soviet Central Television; the governments of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus under Boris Yeltsin, Leonid Kravchuk and Stanislav Shushkevich; hardline Communist and nationalist deputies who contested the dissolution 8-25 December 1991 Euphemism / doublespeak, Transfer, Card stacking, Scapegoating, Name-calling, Glittering generalities

Maoist China

Case study Actor When Techniques
Grief on schedule: Mao's death, Hua Guofeng's succession and the 'two whatevers', 1976-1978 The CCP Central Committee, State Council, Central Military Commission and NPC Standing Committee (the joint mourning announcement); Hua Guofeng and his office; the drafters and publishers of the 7 February 1977 "two whatevers" editorial in People's Daily, Red Flag and PLA Daily 1976-1978 Testimonial, Transfer, Narrative laundering, Manufactured consensus, Bandwagon, Glittering generalities
The Gang of Four: arrest, denunciation and a trial that closed the Cultural Revolution's books (1976-1981) The Chinese Communist Party under Hua Guofeng, backed by Marshal Ye Jianying and Central Guard Bureau commander Wang Dongxing; from 1978, the leadership under Deng Xiaoping; the Special Court of the Supreme People's Court (Jiang Hua presiding) 1976-1981; 2013-2019 Scapegoating, Name-calling, Limited hangout, Card stacking, Manufactured consensus, Bandwagon
Boluan Fanzheng: how Deng Xiaoping's faction used a debate about truth to break Hua Guofeng's hold on power, 1977-1981 Deng Xiaoping and allies inside the Chinese Communist Party, chiefly Hu Yaobang and the Party School's internal journal Theoretical Trends; Guangming Daily, People's Daily and People's Liberation Army Daily as the carrying press; provincial and military-region party leaderships that published endorsements through 1978 1977-1981 Testimonial, Semantic hijacking, Narrative laundering, Manufactured consensus, Euphemism / doublespeak, Limited hangout
The 1981 Resolution: how the Chinese Communist Party engineered a single verdict on Mao Deng Xiaoping and Hu Yaobang, directing the drafting on the Central Committee's behalf; Hu Qiaomu's drafting group; the October 1980 conference of about 4,000 senior cadres; the Sixth Plenary Session of the 11th CCP Central Committee, which adopted the final text on 27 June 1981 1980-1981 Limited hangout, Card stacking, Scapegoating, Euphemism / doublespeak, Manufactured consensus
Scar literature: China's state-permitted reckoning with the Cultural Revolution, 1977-1981 The Chinese Communist Party's post-Mao leadership under Deng Xiaoping (the Central Propaganda Department, the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles and the Chinese Writers' Association it oversees, and official journals and newspapers including People's Literature and Wenhuibao); individual writers publishing under this reopened space 1977-1981 Scapegoating, Card stacking, Limited hangout, Overton window shifting

This set closes the planned regime life-cycle series. As with the "propaganda apparatus" and "Youth and education" sets, hosted images lean on Bundesarchiv CC BY-SA-DE releases, RIA Novosti and other Wikimedia Commons material carrying a CC BY-SA, PD-Russia or PD-China rationale, U.S. government works, and Library of Congress and NASA holdings, rather than on copyrighted period posters or press photographs; three pages (The end of the USSR: Gorbachev's resignation and the flag over the Kremlin (December 1991), The 1981 Resolution: how the Chinese Communist Party engineered a single verdict on Mao and Scar literature: China's state-permitted reckoning with the Cultural Revolution, 1977-1981) carry a diagram only, after Wikimedia rate-limiting cut short the photograph search their Image gaps sections describe. Two Volkssturm photographs and one Werwolf-era newspaper front page show Nazi swastika insignia and carry a content note.

Empire and anti-colonial propaganda

Six historical case studies of imperial and colonial propaganda and of the movements that opposed it. Each page scores both sides with the same technique definitions, states documented violence with its sources and disputed ranges, and makes no finding on whether empire or independence was right. They are not built from watch briefs, so briefs is empty.

Case study Actors When Techniques
Buy Empire, burn foreign cloth: the Empire Marketing Board and the swadeshi boycotts Britain's Empire Marketing Board; the swadeshi movement and Indian National Congress 1905-1933 Glittering generalities, Transfer, Identity fusion, Card stacking, Plain folks
The Congo Free State press war: Leopold II's Press Bureau and the Congo Reform Association Leopold II's Congo Free State and Press Bureau; E. D. Morel's Congo Reform Association 1890-1908 Glittering generalities, Narrative laundering, Name-calling, Card stacking, Limited hangout, Transfer
'Benevolent assimilation': the Philippine-American War and the propaganda on every side U.S. government and press; the Philippine Republic; the Anti-Imperialist League 1898-1904 Euphemism / doublespeak, Glittering generalities, Name-calling, Card stacking, Transfer, Fear appeal
'Asia for the Asiatics': Japan's Co-Prosperity Sphere and the movements that used it Imperial Japan; Manchukuo, Burma, Azad Hind and Putera; British India 1932-1946 Semantic hijacking, Glittering generalities, Euphemism / doublespeak, Transfer, Name-calling
The Kenya Emergency, 1952-1960: 'rehabilitation', the Hola water cart, and the oath Colonial Government of Kenya and the Colonial Office; the Kenya Land and Freedom Army 1952-2013 Name-calling, Euphemism / doublespeak, Card stacking, Fear appeal, Limited hangout, Identity fusion, Transfer
Algeria 1954-1962: 'events', psychological action, and the FLN's single voice French state and army; the FLN and ALN 1954-1962 Euphemism / doublespeak, Card stacking, Manufactured consensus, Narrative laundering, Accusation in a mirror, Name-calling, Identity fusion

The gallery now has pre-1914 and interwar eras, but these pages' pre-1914 and interwar images stay on the pages until they are added to it as entries. Each page's Image gaps list says which visuals are missing and whether they can be filled.

Genocide and atrocity propaganda

Deep dives on propaganda that prepared, accompanied or followed genocide and mass atrocity, across perpetrators of every ideology and region. Each page documents how the operation worked (organisation, outlets, message, reach and detection) in full anatomical detail, without a ready-to-use playbook, and scores every side, including democracies, with the same technique definitions. Pages with offensive or violent material carry a content note.

Case study Actor When Techniques
German South West Africa, 1904-1908: the war on the Herero and Nama and the contest over its record Imperial German government, General Staff and Schutztruppe command; the South African administration and British government (1918 Blue Book); the German Reichskolonialamt (1919 reply) 1904-1908; 1918-1926 Name-calling, Euphemism / doublespeak, Card stacking, Whataboutism
The Armenian genocide, 1915-1923: the wartime 'internal enemy' frame, the rival record, and a century of state denial The Committee of Union and Progress government of the Ottoman Empire; later Turkish governments and bodies they funded; rival wartime publishers (British Wellington House, U.S. Ambassador Morgenthau, Near East Relief) scored on the same terms 1915-1923; denial 1935-present Scapegoating, Fear appeal, Euphemism / doublespeak, Bothsidesism, Narrative laundering
Nazi propaganda before and during the Holocaust, 1933-1945 The Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda under Goebbels; the Reich Chamber of Culture; Julius Streicher's Der Stürmer; Hitler's own speeches 1933-1945 Name-calling, Scapegoating, Euphemism / doublespeak, Accusation in a mirror, Card stacking
Collectivisation, the 1932-33 famine and its denial: the kulak label, the silence and the foreign press The Soviet party-state (Stalin, Molotov, the Politburo and the Communist Party of Ukraine leadership) and its press; abroad, correspondents and outlets that carried or contested its line 1929-1934; denial 1935-present Name-calling, Scapegoating, Euphemism / doublespeak, Card stacking, Limited hangout, Narrative laundering
Kangura, Radio Rwanda and RTLM: Hutu Power propaganda before and during the genocide against the Tutsi, 1990-1994 Hassan Ngeze's Kangura; state Radio Rwanda under ORINFOR; RTLM, founded by a committee including Félicien Kabuga, Ferdinand Nahimana and Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza 1990-1994 Accusation in a mirror, Name-calling, Scapegoating, Fear appeal, Euphemism / doublespeak, Identity fusion
Media war over Croatia and Bosnia, 1987-1995, and the denial of Srebrenica Serbian state media under Slobodan Milošević (TV Belgrade/RTS, Politika) and Bosnian Serb outlets (SRT Pale, Radio Prijedor); Croatian state media under Franjo Tuđman; the Bosnian government's information work 1987-1995; denial 1995-present Accusation in a mirror, Name-calling, Fear appeal, Scapegoating, Identity fusion, Card stacking, Euphemism / doublespeak
Angkar: language control in Democratic Kampuchea, 1975-1979, and the contests over its record The Communist Party of Kampuchea, speaking as "Angkar" through cadres, Radio Phnom Penh, the party journal Tung Padevat and the S-21 security office; after 1979 the People's Republic of Kampuchea and Vietnam 1975-1979; retellings 1979-present Euphemism / doublespeak, Name-calling, Scapegoating, Identity fusion, Fear appeal, Card stacking
Anti-Rohingya propaganda in Myanmar, 2012-2018: the 'Bengali' label, the monks' sermons and the military's covert Facebook pages Myanmar's military, including a covert Facebook operation; state bodies; the Buddhist nationalist 969 movement and Ma Ba Tha 2012-2018 Name-calling, Fear appeal, Scapegoating, Astroturfing, Narrative laundering, Outrage bait, Card stacking

Film, radio and television

Seven historical case studies on moving pictures and broadcasting, from Soviet montage to satellite news. Each applies the same technique definitions to every state involved, and several set Allied and Axis, Eastern and Western, or government and commercial material side by side. Two of them cover techniques the first five left uncovered: Astroturfing (the invented German officer of a British black station, in Wartime radio voices: open and hidden broadcasts aimed at the enemy, 1939-1945) and Sleeper effect (measured by U.S. Army researchers in viewers of a Why We Fight film, in Why We Fight: the U.S. Army's orientation films, 1942-1945).

Case study Actor When Techniques
Soviet montage cinema as state film: Battleship Potemkin and October Soviet state studios Goskino and Sovkino (Eisenstein) 1925-1928 Card stacking, Transfer, Narrative laundering
Film under Goebbels: Triumph des Willens (1935) and Der ewige Jude (1940) German propaganda ministry (Riefenstahl, Hippler) 1935-1940 Transfer, Bandwagon, Identity fusion, Scapegoating, Name-calling, Card stacking
Why We Fight: the U.S. Army's orientation films, 1942-1945 U.S. War Department (Capra's Signal Corps unit) 1942-1945 Name-calling, Card stacking, Transfer, Sleeper effect
Britain's Ministry of Information films and London Can Take It! (1940-1942) British Ministry of Information, Crown Film Unit 1940-1942 Testimonial, Narrative laundering, Card stacking
Reefer Madness and the 1930s marihuana campaign Exploitation film makers; separately, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Narcotics 1936-1938 Fear appeal, Card stacking, Testimonial, Scapegoating
Wartime radio voices: open and hidden broadcasts aimed at the enemy, 1939-1945 German, Japanese, British and U.S. wartime radio 1939-1945 Name-calling, Scapegoating, Fear appeal, Plain folks, Card stacking, Narrative laundering, Astroturfing
State television across borders: from Der schwarze Kanal and ZDF-Magazin to RT, CGTN, Alhurra and Al Jazeera East and West German TV; Qatar, U.S., Russia and China satellite channels 1960-2025 Card stacking, Testimonial, Narrative laundering

Cold War

Eight case studies from 1950 to 1984, spread across both blocs and the non-aligned world. Each page applies the same technique definitions to the U.S., Soviet, Chinese, Indonesian and Vietnamese material it covers, and its same-method test holds the other side's material to the same definitions.

Case study Actor When Techniques
The Congress for Cultural Freedom: a CIA-funded intellectuals' network, 1950-1967 U.S. CIA, via conduit foundations 1950-1967 Narrative laundering, Testimonial, Transfer
The Crusade for Freedom: Truth Dollars for a CIA-funded radio, 1950-1971 National Committee for a Free Europe, CIA-funded; Soviet Radio Peace and Progress as the mirror 1950-1971 Narrative laundering, Glittering generalities, Testimonial, Transfer
'For whites only': the forged Klan letters sent to Olympic committees in 1984 Soviet KGB, per the U.S. government (1984) and Andrew and Mitrokhin (1999); the USSR denied it 1984 Astroturfing, Transfer, Fear appeal
The Korean War germ-warfare charges: commissions, confessions and the 1953 recall China, North Korea and the USSR; a U.S. counter-poster 1952-1953 Narrative laundering, Testimonial, Card stacking, Transfer
McCarthy's numbers: 205, 57, 81 and the move from 'card-carrying Communists' to 'security risks' (1950-54) U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy 1950-1954 Name-calling, Motte and bailey, Card stacking, Identity fusion, Fear appeal
Big-character posters: how the opening labels of China's Cultural Revolution did the work of charges (1966-68) Mao Zedong, the Central Cultural Revolution Group and party press 1966-1968 Name-calling, Identity fusion, Scapegoating, Bandwagon
Lubang Buaya, 1965: the mutilation story the autopsies did not support Indonesian Army; UK Information Research Department; U.S. embassy 1965-1966 Name-calling, Scapegoating, Fear appeal, Card stacking, Transfer, Narrative laundering
Chieu Hoi and Radio Hanoi: both sides' propaganda aimed at the other side's soldiers in Vietnam South Vietnam and the U.S. (JUSPAO, U.S. Army); North Vietnam (Radio Hanoi) 1963-1973 Fear appeal, Testimonial, Bandwagon, Card stacking

They cover two techniques the first five left uncovered: Motte and bailey (McCarthy) and Astroturfing (the forged Klan letters). Hosted images are U.S. government works or openly licensed photos. Soviet, Chinese, North Korean and Vietnamese posters with unclear U.S. copyright status were left out, and each page lists them under Image gaps. This makes the pictures lean toward U.S. material even where the text does not.

Latin America, Africa and the Middle East

Fourteen case studies on state and movement propaganda outside Europe, North America and East Asia, spanning left- and right-aligned governments, colonial-era and post-independence states, and both sides of a conflict wherever both are documented. Each page applies the same technique definitions whatever the government's alignment, and states scale and context plainly where a then-and-now pairing could otherwise imply equivalence. These are not built from watch briefs.

Case study Actors When Techniques
Perón cumple, Evita dignifica: Argentina's state media machine, and the decree that erased it Peronist government of Argentina; the Revolución Libertadora that overthrew it 1946-1964 Transfer, Glittering generalities, Identity fusion, Card stacking
History will absolve me: the 26th of July Movement and Batista's press, 1953–1959 26th of July Movement; government of Fulgencio Batista 1953-1959 Card stacking, Testimonial, Transfer, Glittering generalities, Name-calling, Identity fusion, Bandwagon
The Cuba-United States radio war: Radio Swan's cover story and Havana's 'gusanos' Cuban government; U.S. CIA and later U.S. government broadcasters 1960-1990 Narrative laundering, Name-calling, Scapegoating
Órgano oficial del Comité Central: Cuba's standing media apparatus after 1959 Cuban party and state media: Prensa Latina, Radio Habana Cuba, ICRT, Granma 1959-2025 Transfer, Card stacking, Glittering generalities, Euphemism / doublespeak
A committee on every block: Cuba's Committees for the Defense of the Revolution Committees for the Defense of the Revolution 1960-2025 Fear appeal, Euphemism / doublespeak, Identity fusion, Bandwagon
¡Venceremos!: Cuba's 1961 literacy campaign, the primer, and the year-end declaration Cuban government literacy campaign 1961 Glittering generalities, Identity fusion, Transfer, Card stacking, Testimonial, Name-calling
Playa Girón and the Bay of Pigs: mercenaries in one telling, Cuban patriots in the other Cuban government; U.S. government and Brigade 2506 1961-1962 Narrative laundering, Name-calling, Euphemism / doublespeak, Card stacking, Glittering generalities
Pioneros por el comunismo: Cuba's youth ladder, the single textbook, and the reply that uses the same devices Cuban party youth organizations and the Ministry of Education; published critics of that system 1961-2026 Transfer, Identity fusion, Glittering generalities, Card stacking, Name-calling
The peoples of three continents: OSPAAAL, a Havana secretariat, and Tricontinental OSPAAAL secretariat in Havana; the 1966 Tricontinental conference 1966-2019 Transfer, Name-calling, Narrative laundering
Cuba's crisis years: Mariel, the Special Period, the Malecón, and 11 July Cuban government, on Mariel, the Special Period, the Malecón and 11 July 1980-2021 Name-calling, Identity fusion, Euphemism / doublespeak, Scapegoating, Card stacking
Mobutu's authenticité: how Zaire's party-state wrote one man into the nation Government of Zaire under Mobutu Sese Seko 1966-1990 Identity fusion, Transfer, Semantic hijacking, Glittering generalities
South Africa's information war: the apartheid state's secret projects and the ANC's Radio Freedom Apartheid-era South African government; the African National Congress 1973-1997 Narrative laundering, Astroturfing, Fear appeal, Name-calling, Identity fusion
Voice of the Arabs and the Voice of Britain: the Arab radio war, 1953-1967 Egypt's Sawt al-Arab; Britain's Sharq al-Adna and Operation Musketeer 1953-1967 Name-calling, Narrative laundering, Transfer, Scapegoating
The 1990-91 Gulf crisis: Iraq's 'guests' and 'linkage', and Washington's Hitler analogy Government of Iraq; U.S. President George H.W. Bush 1990-1991 Euphemism / doublespeak, Whataboutism, Transfer

Kuwait's own 1990 Washington campaign, covered separately in The Nayirah testimony: a Kuwaiti government PR campaign at a House human rights caucus, and Indonesia's 1965 Lubang Buaya story and Peru's Shining Path, both covered above, belong to the same period and region but are grouped with their own sets. Known gaps: Perón's Argentina is the only South American case besides Shining Path; Venezuela, Brazil and the Southern Cone dictatorships' own propaganda are not covered yet, nor are francophone West Africa, Ethiopia, or the Gulf states' own state media beyond Egypt.

Images. Argentine and Cuban photographs use Commons' PD-AR and pre-1978 U.S. public-domain tags; U.S. government material (Radio Swan, Radio Martí) is public domain; the FRAME gallery supplies the then-and-now posters. The eight additional Cuba pages host U.S. government photographs from 1959 and 1962 and one openly licensed photograph of the Radio Rebelde hut. Cuban state and party photographs stay under Image gaps on those pages. South African, Zairian and Middle Eastern movement-era photographs proved harder to clear, and each page lists what could not be hosted under Image gaps.

Extremist and armed movements

Seven case studies on the propaganda of non-state extremist and armed movements, chosen to span ideologies, regions and eras: jihadist, white-supremacist, far-left, and ethno-nationalist (with republican and loyalist Northern Ireland on one page). Each page also covers how the movement was countered, and states plainly where the record shows states using the same methods or committing abuses of their own. These are not built from watch briefs; they draw on academic, government, court, truth-commission and NGO research.

Case study Movement When Techniques
The Islamic State's media machine: Dabiq, Rumiyah, Amaq and the 'virtual caliphate' Islamic State media arms (al-Hayat, Amaq); lineage from AQAP's Inspire 2010-2019 Identity fusion, Glittering generalities, Fear appeal, Name-calling, Scapegoating, Transfer, Outrage bait
The second Ku Klux Klan: selling membership as '100% Americanism' Second Ku Klux Klan (U.S.) 1915-1944 Glittering generalities, Transfer, Plain folks, Scapegoating, Bandwagon, Fear appeal
Christchurch and its copycats: livestreamed attacks and 'manifesto culture', 2019-2022 Christchurch attacker and the copycat chain 2019-2022 Fear appeal, Scapegoating, Name-calling, Accusation in a mirror, Transfer
Red Army Faction: communiqués, hunger strikes and the 'isolation torture' campaign Red Army Faction (West Germany) 1970-1998 Name-calling, Semantic hijacking, Fear appeal, Transfer, Testimonial
Shining Path: the Gonzalo cult, the 'people's war' and the state's reply Shining Path (Peru), and the state's reply 1980-1992 Identity fusion, Testimonial, Transfer, Name-calling, Fear appeal, Glittering generalities
Walls, prisons and airwaves: republican and loyalist paramilitary propaganda in Northern Ireland Republican and loyalist paramilitaries 1969-1998 Transfer, Identity fusion, Semantic hijacking, Fear appeal
The Tamil Tigers' martyr cult, and the state's 'humanitarian operation' Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, and Sri Lankan state messaging 1976-2009 Identity fusion, Transfer, Euphemism / doublespeak, Card stacking

Safety line. These pages analyse structure, messaging, audience, spread and counter-measures at the level of published research. They quote movement material only in short phrases as evidence, never link to extremist media, and give no operational detail.

Images. Movement media is copyrighted, and much of it shows violence or is built to recruit, so it is cited, not hosted. The pages use openly licensed photographs of public murals, memorials, places and counter-measures, plus the original FRAME diagrams drawn by make_diagrams_extremist.py from diagrams-extremist.json. Each page lists its gaps.

Known gaps in this set. Religious extremism beyond jihadism (for example Kahanism, Christian Identity and the Army of God, or Aum Shinrikyo), ETA, the Weather Underground and South Asian and African movements beyond the LTTE are not covered yet. Genocide-linked media such as Kangura and RTLM, and 969/Ma Ba Tha in Myanmar, belong to the separate atrocity-propaganda set.

Election campaigns

Campaign propaganda in democracies, told in pairs. Each page covers the same method used by, or against, both main sides, with the differences in scale, money and fact-check outcomes stated as plainly as the similarities.

Case study Sides When Techniques
The 1800 election: "Jefferson and no God" and "squints at monarchy" Federalist and Democratic-Republican presses 1800 Name-calling, Fear appeal, Transfer, Testimonial, Identity fusion, Narrative laundering
Crime and victim attack ads in two U.S. presidential races: Horton and the furloughs (1988), James Byrd Jr. and hate-crimes law (2000) Against Dukakis (1988) and against George W. Bush (2000) 1988, 2000 Fear appeal, Card stacking, Transfer, Testimonial
Mood over argument: "Morning in America" (Reagan-Bush 1984) and "Hope" / "Yes We Can" (Obama 2008) Reagan-Bush (1984) and Obama (2008) 1984, 2008 Glittering generalities, Transfer, Bandwagon, Testimonial, Card stacking, Fear appeal
2004: outside-group ads on Kerry's Navy record and Bush's Guard record Outside groups against Kerry and against Bush 2004 Testimonial, Card stacking, Transfer
The steelworker ad and the welfare ads: two fact-checked attacks from the 2012 U.S. presidential race Priorities USA Action and the Romney campaign 2012 Card stacking, Testimonial, Transfer
British election posters and broadcasts, 1978 to 2005: Conservative and Labour attack campaigns Conservative and Labour 1978 to 2005 Fear appeal, Card stacking, Name-calling, Transfer
Facebook's April 2019 takedowns in India: a Congress IT cell, a BJP-linked IT firm and a Pakistani military network Networks linked to Congress and to a BJP-linked firm 2019 Astroturfing, Manufactured consensus, Name-calling
Brazil 2018 and 2022: WhatsApp blasts, removal orders against both campaigns, and the electoral court's new powers Bolsonaro and Haddad (2018), Bolsonaro and Lula (2022), and the electoral court 2018, 2022 Flooding the zone, Fear appeal, Name-calling, Card stacking, Outrage bait

Democracies' domestic propaganda

How democratic governments of every party presented policy and war to the public, mostly their own citizens. Some rows reach further: The Nayirah testimony: a Kuwaiti government PR campaign at a House human rights caucus is a foreign government's campaign, Kuwait's, run through a U.S. public-relations firm, and the Israeli and UK pages include messaging aimed at audiences abroad.

Case study Actor When Techniques
The Office of War Information's Domestic Branch, 1942-43 U.S. Office of War Information (Roosevelt administration) 1942-43 Glittering generalities, Transfer, Euphemism / doublespeak, Card stacking, Narrative laundering
The Nayirah testimony: a Kuwaiti government PR campaign at a House human rights caucus Government of Kuwait via Hill & Knowlton; repeated by U.S. officials 1990-91 Astroturfing, Narrative laundering, Transfer, Card stacking, Testimonial
How the US and UK governments presented the case for war in Iraq, 2002-03 U.S. (Bush) and UK (Blair) governments 2002-03 Card stacking, Fear appeal, Testimonial, Transfer, Narrative laundering
The Pentagon's retired military analyst outreach programme (2002-2008) U.S. Department of Defense 2002-08 Testimonial, Narrative laundering, Disclosure theater, Manufactured consensus
COINTELPRO: the FBI's covert media and information operations against U.S. groups, 1956-1971 FBI (Eisenhower to Nixon administrations) 1956-71 Narrative laundering, Astroturfing, Name-calling, Card stacking, Euphemism / doublespeak
RICU and the Integrity Initiative: UK government-funded messaging that did not show its source UK Home Office and Foreign Office 2007-18 Narrative laundering, Astroturfing, Manufactured consensus
Taxpayer-funded government advertising in Canada and Australia, 1996-2019 Canadian and Australian governments of both main parties 1996-2019 Transfer, Glittering generalities, Card stacking
"Désinfox coronavirus": the French government's page of selected press fact-checks French government information service (SIG), Philippe government 2020 Testimonial, Transfer
Israel's Strategic Affairs Ministry paid for news content, and a later ministry's STOIC campaign aimed at U.S. lawmakers Israel's Strategic Affairs and Diaspora Affairs ministries 2017-24 Disclosure theater, Narrative laundering, Astroturfing, Synthetic media, Manufactured consensus

Corporate, industry and advocacy campaigns

Seven cases where the actor was a company, a trade group or an advocacy group rather than a government. They are held to the same technique definitions as the state cases above. Six are industry campaigns and one, the Alar campaign, was run by an environmental group with a public-relations firm. The method, not the sector or cause, decides the tags. They include two techniques the first five left uncovered, Astroturfing and Bothsidesism. Each page's Positions on the record gives the actor's own case and any legal outcome in its favour, and its Same-method test names a documented case from another sector or side.

Case study Actor When Techniques
Torches of Freedom: the 1929 Easter Parade cigarette march Edward Bernays for the American Tobacco Company 1929 Astroturfing, Narrative laundering, Transfer, Glittering generalities
Ethyl: how leaded petrol was named, defended and kept on sale General Motors, Standard Oil (N.J.) and the Ethyl Gasoline Corporation 1921-1996 Euphemism / doublespeak, Testimonial, Card stacking, Glittering generalities
The tobacco industry's smoking-and-health doubt campaign, 1953 to 1998 U.S. cigarette makers, Hill & Knowlton, TIRC/CTR and the Tobacco Institute 1953-1998 Bothsidesism, Card stacking, Narrative laundering, Testimonial
The Sugar Research Foundation and the 1967 heart disease review Sugar Research Foundation 1965-1971 Narrative laundering, Card stacking
Fossil-fuel industry climate doubt campaigns, 1977 to the 2000s Exxon/Mobil, the Global Climate Coalition, ICE and the American Petroleum Institute 1977-2004 Bothsidesism, Card stacking, Narrative laundering, Testimonial, Name-calling
The Alar campaign: an advocacy report, a TV exclusive and a planned echo Natural Resources Defense Council with Fenton Communications 1989 Fear appeal, Testimonial, Flooding the zone
OxyContin's launch marketing: a one-paragraph letter and a "less than one percent" message Purdue Pharma 1995-2001 Card stacking, Transfer, Testimonial, Semantic hijacking

These pages are built from court records, regulator findings, internal documents quoted in court or in peer-reviewed work, and the actors' own statements, not from watch briefs, so their briefs list is empty.

Their hosted images are U.S. government works and U.S. publications from before 1931, from Wikimedia Commons, with provenance in images.json. Copyrighted ads, broadcasts and company documents are quoted and linked, not hosted. Each page lists its own image gaps. The ones that could be filled:

Case Missing visual Why it's fillable
Torches of Freedom Press photos of the 31 March 1929 march; the 1 April 1929 New York Times page U.S. publications from 1929 are public domain; no scan found yet
Leaded petrol Ethyl magazine ads from the 1920s Public domain if published before 1931; no scan found on Commons yet
Tobacco doubt A photo of the 14 April 1994 House hearing A House or government photo would be public domain
Sugar research The Hickson-Hegsted letters Reproduced in the CC BY figures of Kearns et al., PLOS Biology 2017
Alar campaign EPA's 1989 Alar documents U.S. government works

Health, science and moral panics

Six historical cases where public-health, scientific or moral-protection messaging is scored by the same definitions whoever sent it: governments and health agencies, campaigners, journalists, activists and dissenters. Each page states plainly where the cited record shows a claim to be false, and separates that finding from the stated aims of the people involved.

Case study Actors When Techniques
Better babies, fitter families: eugenics campaigns in the US, Sweden and Germany Eugenics societies and state programmes in the United States, Sweden and Germany 1907-1945 Glittering generalities, Transfer, Fear appeal, Scapegoating, Name-calling, Euphemism / doublespeak, Testimonial, Overton window shifting
Just Say No and the fried egg: anti-drug campaigns, 1971-2016 U.S. administrations of both parties, the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, and Rodrigo Duterte's government in the Philippines 1971-2016 Fear appeal, Card stacking, Transfer, Testimonial, Name-calling, Scapegoating, Narrative laundering
The satanic panic: ritual-abuse claims in the US and UK, 1980-1994 Memoir authors, therapists, investigators, broadcasters and prosecutors in the U.S. and UK 1980-1994 Fear appeal, Testimonial, Scapegoating, Identity fusion, Card stacking
Gay plague, tombstones and Silence = Death: messaging in the AIDS crisis, 1981-1990 Health authorities in the U.S., UK and Australia, newspapers and columnists, religious and political figures, and activists 1981-1990 Name-calling, Scapegoating, Fear appeal, Transfer, Testimonial
The MMR scare: from a 1998 press conference to Vaxxed, and its 1802 ancestors Andrew Wakefield, UK newspapers, U.S. celebrity advocates, and the makers of Vaxxed, with 19th-century pro- and anti-vaccination prints for comparison 1998-2019 Testimonial, Transfer, Card stacking, Fear appeal, Bothsidesism, Motte and bailey, Name-calling
Follow the science, Plandemic: COVID-19 messaging from officials and contrarians, 2020-2022 U.S. officials and agencies, the Lancet statement's organisers, platforms, and contrarian producers and activists 2020-2022 Semantic hijacking, Manufactured consensus, Motte and bailey, Testimonial, Fear appeal, Name-calling, Glittering generalities, Card stacking

The MMR and COVID pages tag Motte and bailey (the MMR page on a campaigner's statements, the COVID page on officials' statements), as the McCarthy page does, and the MMR page tags Bothsidesism, as the tobacco and climate pages do. Each lists its image gaps at the end. Related campaigns are covered on other pages: Reefer Madness and the 1930s marihuana campaign, The tobacco industry's smoking-and-health doubt campaign, 1953 to 1998 and OxyContin's launch marketing: a one-paragraph letter and a "less than one percent" message, and the Soviet AIDS-origin campaign in the comparison Then and now: "the Americans made it" (Soviet AIDS story 1983, Chinese Fort Detrick claim 2020).

Asia and the Pacific

State propaganda in Asia and the Pacific, from both the governments and their opponents, held to the same technique definitions. Unlike the first five, these pages are built from the historical and scholarly record rather than from a watch brief.

Case study Actor When Techniques
India's Emergency: 'India is Indira' and the censored press Government of India under Prime Minister Indira Gandhi (Indian National Congress); later, networks linked to a Congress IT cell and to the IT firm Silver Touch, and the BJP-led government of 2024 1975-1977; 2019-2025 Identity fusion, Scapegoating, Card stacking, Testimonial, Euphemism / doublespeak, Astroturfing, Transfer
Xinjiang's 'vocational training centres': the government's messaging and its critics' Government of the People's Republic of China and Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region authorities; critics including the U.S. government, researchers, parliaments and media consortia 2018-2022 Euphemism / doublespeak, Limited hangout, Card stacking, Testimonial, Astroturfing, Manufactured consensus, Whataboutism
Gwangju, May 1980: 'rioters', 'spies' and the censored press Republic of Korea Martial Law Command (commander Lee Hee-sung) and the Defense Security Command under Chun Doo-hwan; national newspapers under martial-law censorship 1980-1997; 2016-2026 Name-calling, Scapegoating, Card stacking, Euphemism / doublespeak
Pengkhianatan G30S/PKI: how Indonesia's New Order kept 1965 on screen Indonesia's New Order government under President Suharto (armed forces history centre, Ministry of Information, state film company PPFN, state broadcaster TVRI); later, the armed forces command in 2017 1966-1998; 2017-2023 Card stacking, Fear appeal, Name-calling, Scapegoating, Transfer, Euphemism / doublespeak
Indian Chronicles: fake local outlets, revived NGOs and a borrowed professor The Srivastava Group (New Delhi) and affiliated NGOs, think tanks and websites, per EU DisinfoLab; content amplified by Asian News International (ANI). No state attribution established. 2005-2020 (operation as reconstructed by EU DisinfoLab); exposed 2019-2020 Narrative laundering, Astroturfing, Transfer, Testimonial, Manufactured consensus
The loudspeaker war: propaganda across the Taiwan Strait, 1949-1987 Government of the Republic of China (Kuomintang) on Taiwan and Kinmen; government of the People's Republic of China and the People's Liberation Army on the Fujian coast 1949-1992; 2017-2024 Name-calling, Identity fusion, Fear appeal, Glittering generalities, Transfer, Card stacking
The Kim leader cult, the anti-US month and the leaflets sent back Government of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the Workers' Party of Korea (state media, schools, museums); opponents' messaging by the U.S. Army and UN Command (1950-53), the Republic of Korea government and military (DMZ loudspeakers), and South Korea-based defector groups (balloon leaflets) 1945-2026; Monolithic Ideological System 1967-2013; counter-messaging 1950-1953 and 1963-2025 Identity fusion, Transfer, Glittering generalities, Testimonial, Card stacking, Scapegoating, Name-calling
Operation Spectrum: Singapore's 'Marxist conspiracy' and its answers Government of Singapore (People's Action Party): Ministry of Home Affairs and Internal Security Department; in 2019, Parliament and the ministers who issue POFMA directions 1963; 1987-1990; 2017-2024 Name-calling, Testimonial, Card stacking, Fear appeal
Marcos's martial law: the 'New Society' and the online contest over its memory Government of the Philippines under President Ferdinand E. Marcos and the media allowed to publish under martial law; later, pro-Marcos online networks, networks linked to the Philippine military and police, a China-based network, and the NTF-ELCAC anti-insurgency task force 1972-1986; 2016-2022 Fear appeal, Euphemism / doublespeak, Glittering generalities, Card stacking, Transfer, Astroturfing, Name-calling
Screened, state-written and contested: East Asia's history-textbook disputes since 1955 Japan's Ministry of Education (MEXT) and private textbook publishers; the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform (Tsukurukai); the People's Republic of China's Communist Party and education authorities; the Republic of Korea's Ministry of Education (2015-2017); the Democratic People's Republic of Korea's Workers' Party 1955-2026 Euphemism / doublespeak, Card stacking, Identity fusion, Glittering generalities
The Great Leap Forward's 'sputnik' harvests and the famine that followed Chinese Communist Party and the government of the People's Republic of China (People's Daily, Xinhua, provincial and county Party committees); on the other side, the Republic of China government on Taiwan and the U.S. government 1958-1962; 1981; 2021 Card stacking, Bandwagon, Glittering generalities, Testimonial, Name-calling, Identity fusion, Euphemism / doublespeak

Censorship and information control

Propaganda has a flip side: controlling what people can read, see and search for. These deep dives apply one standard to the Church, empires, democracies and one-party states, from the sixteenth century to 2026. Censorship is not itself a technique id in FRAME's taxonomy, so each page tags only the propaganda techniques that the censors' own messaging used (the labels given to banned material, official euphemisms, partial official accounts), with the evidence on the page. Every page states the censoring authority's own rationale in its own words next to its critics'.

Case study Actor When Techniques
The Index of Prohibited Books (1559-1966) Catholic Church: Roman Inquisition, Congregation of the Index, Holy Office 1559-1966 Name-calling, Card stacking
Wartime censorship in the First World War: Britain, Germany, France and the United States Governments of the UK, Germany, France and the US 1914-1921 Name-calling, Fear appeal, Card stacking
Glavlit and the retouched photographic record Soviet government (Glavlit, state publishers) 1917-1991 Card stacking, Limited hangout
The 1933 book burnings and Nazi control of publishing German Student Union; Reich Propaganda Ministry and Reich Chamber of Culture 1933 Name-calling, Scapegoating, Glittering generalities
Apartheid South Africa's banned organisations, persons and publications Government of South Africa 1950-1990 Semantic hijacking, Name-calling, Card stacking
China's Great Firewall and the June Fourth anniversary Government of the People's Republic of China and platforms under its rules; Hong Kong authorities from 2020 1989-present Name-calling, Euphemism / doublespeak, Card stacking, Limited hangout
Government pressure on platforms and broadcasters ("jawboning"), 2020-2026 U.S. officials of both parties, New York's financial regulator, the European Commission, Brazil's Supreme Federal Court 2020-2026 Name-calling, Euphemism / doublespeak

Countering propaganda

Case studies of attempts to counter propaganda, by governments, schools, researchers and civil society. Research-led pages on each method (prebunking, fact-checking, media literacy, platform interventions, and the debate over them) are in counter/.

Case study Actor When Techniques
The Institute for Propaganda Analysis (1937-1942) Institute for Propaganda Analysis (US, private) 1937-1942 Name-calling, Glittering generalities, Transfer, Testimonial, Plain folks, Card stacking, Bandwagon
World War II rumor clinics and rumor control (1940 to 1947) US and UK rumor clinics and rumor control 1940-1947 Scapegoating
Cold War radio jamming (1948 to 1988) Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact; UK over Cyprus 1948-1988 None tagged
The Active Measures Working Group (1981 to 1992) US interagency working group (State, USIA, CIA, FBI) 1981-1992 Narrative laundering, Testimonial
Finland's media literacy model Finnish government and schools 2013 onwards None tagged
Baltic counter-disinformation: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania 2014 onwards None tagged
EUvsDisinfo and the EEAS East StratCom Task Force EU External Action Service 2015 onwards None tagged
The State Department's Global Engagement Center (2016 to 2025) US State Department 2016-2025 Narrative laundering
Hamilton 68: the Russian-influence dashboard and its secret account list Alliance for Securing Democracy (US) 2017-2018 None tagged
Laws against "fake news": Germany, France and Malaysia under one standard Germany, France and Malaysia 2017-2019 None tagged
Government fact-check units: Russia, China, India and Ukraine Russia, China, India and Ukraine 2017 onwards None tagged
The UK's Counter Disinformation Unit and its sister units (2019 to 2024) UK government 2019-2024 None tagged
The DHS Disinformation Governance Board (2022) US Department of Homeland Security 2022 None tagged

"None tagged" means the page records a counter-measure, not propaganda output that can be scored against the technique list. Tags are added only where the page's evidence shows the technique.

Social and political movements

Grassroots movements paired with the campaigns that opposed them, left and right. Each page judges both sides by the same technique definitions, says plainly where a side used ordinary open persuasion (petitions, marches, testimony, boycotts, lobbying), and states documented violence, state power and court findings as facts, whichever side they fall on.

Case study Sides When Techniques
Votes for Women and the anti-suffrage campaigns, 1908 to 1920 Suffragists (NAWSA, National Woman's Party) and anti-suffrage associations 1908-1920 Transfer, Fear appeal, Testimonial, Bandwagon
Temperance, Prohibition and the wets: the dry campaigns and their opponents, 1874 to 1933 Drys (WCTU, Anti-Saloon League) and wets (brewers, AAPA, WONPR) 1874-1933 Fear appeal, Scapegoating, Name-calling, Transfer, Card stacking, Bandwagon
Labor organizing and anti-union campaigns in the United States, 1910-1941 Unions and strike committees; employers, detective agencies and citizens' committees 1910-1941 Name-calling, Semantic hijacking, Fear appeal, Glittering generalities, Transfer, Astroturfing, Narrative laundering, Card stacking
The civil rights movement and the Citizens' Councils: boycotts and marches, 'outside agitator' labels, state money and economic pressure Civil rights movement; Citizens' Councils and the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission 1954-1968 Name-calling, Scapegoating, Semantic hijacking, Euphemism / doublespeak, Fear appeal, Bandwagon, Identity fusion, Transfer
The US abortion debate: persuasion campaigns on both sides since the 1960s Anti-abortion and abortion-rights movements 1969-2022 Glittering generalities, Semantic hijacking, Fear appeal, Card stacking, Euphemism / doublespeak, Transfer
The Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street: two protest waves after the 2008 crash Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street 2009-2011 Transfer
Black Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter: two slogans, their campaigns, and a foreign operation that posed as both Black Lives Matter, Blue Lives Matter, and the IRA posing as both 2013-2020 Name-calling, Fear appeal, Card stacking, Astroturfing, Narrative laundering, Outrage bait
Gun rights and gun control: persuasion on both sides of the U.S. gun debate Gun-rights and gun-control movements 1976-2020 Semantic hijacking, Fear appeal, Card stacking, Name-calling, Glittering generalities, Identity fusion, Transfer
MAGA and the Resistance: grassroots organising for and against Trump, 2016-2021 MAGA grassroots and the Resistance 2016-2021 Glittering generalities, Name-calling, Astroturfing, Testimonial, Sleeper effect

How the first five were chosen

Rules every page follows

  • Score the method, not the cause. A page describes what the material does and how it was built. It does not rule on the underlying political question (Gaza, a midterm race, protest law, a death toll, sanctions).
  • Don't sanitise the record. Where offensive labels or slurs are the evidence, they are quoted as they were, with a short content note at the top of the page rather than commentary.
  • Separate record from frame. Each page has a "Positions on the record" section giving the actor's own stated position and its critics', and marks what is documented versus not shown.
  • Only openly licensed images. Every image is public domain or openly licensed, with its source and licence in the page's Images table and in images.json (with sha256 hashes). The mechanism diagrams are original FRAME drawings (CC BY 4.0), generated by make_diagrams.py from each page's sourced facts. Historical posters are embedded from the gallery, which documents their rights separately.

Image gaps in the first five

Every page ends with an Image gaps list saying which visuals it lacks and why. Across all five, the gaps are:

Case Missing visual Why Fillable?
Hanover Institute The Hanover site and a sample report Not openly licensed No
Hanover Institute A chatbot answer citing Hanover No openly licensed capture No
Hanover Institute FARA Exhibit AB and short form Registrant-filed, so public-domain status is unclear; site unreachable from the build environment Maybe
Matryoshka Frames from the clips Built from copyrighted Cameo and brand footage and a trademarked logo; defamatory of real people No
Matryoshka BfV, ISD or CeMAS charts Not openly licensed No
DOJ release The justice.gov release and the @DOJNatSec post Public domain, but justice.gov was unreachable from the build environment Yes
DOJ release Photos of related demonstrations None tied to the release; would imply an unshown link No
Gyirong flood Police "rumour" notices, deleted WeChat posts No openly licensed copies No
Gyirong flood Xinhua and China Central Television rescue coverage Not openly licensed No
Gyirong flood An English-language map Only a Chinese/Nepali-labelled map is openly licensed Could be drawn
Alaj The Fars announcement and the Alaj channel Fars is CC BY 4.0, but farsnews.ir was unreachable from the build environment Yes
Alaj The NCSC/FBI/AIVD advisory Public domain (FBI) or Open Government Licence (NCSC), but both sites unreachable Yes
Alaj IranWire dossier examples Copyrighted; contain personal data No

Adding a case study

  1. For a modern case, start from a brief rated documented or high. A historical case starts from primary documents and the scholarly record, and leaves briefs empty. Prefer a case that covers a technique no case study or gallery image covers yet.
  2. Write case-studies/<slug>.md with frontmatter (id, title, type: case-study, tags with case-study plus technique ids, aliases, related, briefs) and the sections used by the existing pages.
  3. Add its diagram to DIAGRAMS in make_diagrams.py and run python3 case-studies/make_diagrams.py.
  4. Add any openly licensed images to images/ and to images.json, and list what you could not find under Image gaps.
  5. Add a ## Case studies link on each technique page it tags, and a row to the matching section's table above.
  6. Run python3 scripts/weekly_audit.py --markdown-check.