by FUEL, edited by Damon Murray and Stephen Sorrell
208 pages, hardcover, $32.95
Published by FUEL
fuel-design.com

In Propagandopolis’s A-to-Z compendium by country, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, readers follow a history of images designed to influence, persuade and provoke. The book’s unsettling foreword by Robert Peckham, author of Fear: An Alternative History of the World, sets the stage for what the United States is currently experiencing with the concentration of media in the hands of a few billionaires and the vast spread of the internet to disseminate “information.” There’s no time like the present to examine the history of propaganda.

The dynamic, colorful illustrations within propaganda inflame the imagination and rouse some to action. Slogans simplify and amplify political positions. Mexico for Freedom, a dramatic poster of a Nazi flag being ripped to shreds by an eagle set against the colors of the Mexican flag, was published in 1942, the year Mexico joined World War II. Common themes abound: Several anticommunist posters show a Soviet octopus spreading its tentacles across various threatened countries. A powerful poster dated 1942 depicts a giant book looming over a group of soldiers burning books with a quote from President Roosevelt: “Books are weapons in the war of ideas.”

For the cover, FUEL repurposed a poster designed by György Pál circa 1970 featuring anonymous figures serving in the Civil Defence. However, the figures have been replaced by Che Guevara, Saddam Hussein, Josef Stalin and Margaret Thatcher, all whose policies and leadership are exemplified in technicolor posters within. As the text reads on a Republican mural in Northern Ireland: “You can kill the revolutionary but not the revolution.” —Anne Telford ca