Protect Yourself Against Communist Threat (Burmese poster distributed in Rangoon)
Burmese-language version of a poster. The poster shows a screaming child in a shirt with a large star ringed by five small stars, sitting on a mat before a hammer-and-sickle outline, while a bloodied bayonet marked 'Communist' points at the child's face. Red Burmese headline text and a bottom line, which NARA's title renders as a call to protect oneself against the Communist threat. The tell is fear-appeal: an endangered child and a bloodied blade stand for what the poster says Communism does, and the bayonet label 'Communist' is the name-calling.
Propaganda techniques used in this poster
- Date
- June 7, 1954
- Period
- Cold War
- Made by
- U.S. Information Agency (predecessor: State Department International Information and Educational Exchange Program), Propaganda Posters Distributed in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East series
- Region
- North America
- Country
- United States
- Medium
- Poster
- Issuer type
- State
- Regime
- Eisenhower Administration
- Leader
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
- Audience
- Foreign public
- Purpose
- Demonize
- Themes
- War and the military, Security and surveillance
- Event
- Cold War
- Source
- Unidentified Source blurred: contractors, cutouts, buried disclosure
- Source
- U.S. National Archives (NARA), Record Group 306, Posters in Asia, Latin America, Middle East, retrieved October 4, 2026
- Rights
- Public domain (U.S. government work; NARA RG 306)
U.S. Information Agency / Department of State, June 7, 1954. National Archives, Record Group 306 (NAID 6949064, 306-PPB-163).
Text on the object
[red headline, first word:] ကွန်မြူနစ် [remaining words illegible] [on bayonet:] ကွန်မြူနစ် [bottom:] ကိုယ့်ကိုယ်ကာကွယ်လော့
Communist [rest of headline not reliably legible]. [On bayonet:] Communist. [Bottom line, approximate:] Protect yourself!
Stylised red script only partly legible; reading of the bottom line is approximate and should be checked by a Burmese reader.
