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April 05, 2024 / Tarik Ata / The International - Propaganda is something we in the West often associate with Nazi Germany and the likes of Joseph Goebbels or even that of the Soviet Union — often incorrectly equating the USSR to the Nazi regime in the process. But what if I were to tell you we currently live in a far more propagandised world, one that even the notorious propagandist Goebbels would not have been able to fathom. Well, this is the predicament we find ourselves in.
Propaganda is disseminated via a myriad of mediums, be it entertainment (cinema, TV, video games, and even music) to academia, journalism, and various other information-producing industries. The United States government has, and continues to, propagate an image of itself as a benevolent power seeking the promotion of “liberal” virtues around the globe. Despite furthering its own interests by breaking international law and committing crimes against humanity, as we saw in Abu Ghraib, the notorious prison in Iraq where many were tortured and sexually abused, and in Guantanamo Bay, where hundreds were detained — many still are — without trial and held against their will often suffering barbaric abuses such as sodomy and torture.
The propaganda machine of the United States has infiltrated every aspect of our lives, dictating the narrative empire wants to be told and masking the crimes that are committed. The barbarity that Washington engages in serves the capital and political interests and is often at the expense of those within the metropole as taxpayers fund Washington’s imperial ambitions. All the while the United States is crumbling from within, with tens of millions currently living in poverty, life expectancy is falling, and infrastructure collapsing; the empire, as Parenti notes, bleeds the republic.
One area that is insidious, because of the often-alleged apolitical approach of this industry, from Hollywood, and the entertainment industry more broadly, as it partakes in spreading an imperial doctrine around the globe propagating it to the masses. The image that is developed and the message which is distributed, as we shall outline, is dictated by American exceptionalism and hegemonic interests using entertainment as a tool in empire building.
Entertainment has been a source of propaganda for centuries, as historian John M. MacKenzie suggests in his book Propaganda and Empire, seeing imperial powers attempt, and often succeeding, in propagating a “popular imperialism” that sought the promotion of their operations. It was essential and often used similar language as seen today: declaring an invasion as a humanitarian intervention to bring peace and democracy, attempting to give it legitimacy, or as what occurred frequently in the British Empire as an act of benevolence and a utilitarian need to “civilize” those “savages” and bestow upon them the “joys” of the Enlightenment — despite many having civilizations and cultures that were thousands of years old.
The propagandising of entertainment for imperial interests has not changed only the dominant actors have, now rather than the British Empire as the largest player, it is now the United States.
Hollywood is one of the main distribution hubs of Washington’s imperial propaganda and this is evident by the numerous US government agencies partaking in the development of films and television, as academic Mathew Alford had noted:
“800 Hollywood films, over one thousand TV shows along with hundreds more [are] supported by the CIA, NSA, White House, and State Department.”
US government agencies, like the CIA, State Department, Department of Defense (DoD), NSA, FBI, and many more have special departments — often referred to as the entertainment liaison office — that provide “assistance” to film producers that are seeking to make a film or TV show and are in need of materials, locations, money, and whatever else they can conjure up. But for this, the script is often reviewed, and if the script is not to the liking of the departments and constructs a negative image of the US government the production is rejected and frequently ceases to be produced.
Take the 2013 film Lone Survivor for instance, which was based on Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell’s non-fiction book, it received DoD support and saw the script altered to portray the soldiers more positively omitting the parts of the book where they discussed executing unarmed prisons. After the script was successfully reviewed and altered by the US government one report from the Army’s entertainment liaison office stated:
“Audiences going to see the film will voluntarily sit through a two-hour infomercial about the participation of Army Special Forces in one of our many joint missions.”
Source: https://www.internationalmagz.com/articles/the-entertainment-propaganda-machine
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Updated on 7/27/2025 - GDG
