A national conference on Americanization in April 1918 evidenced how social and political concerns mattered in wartime. Many regarded the global war as an unhoped-for opportunity to patch up the American nation and bring together the various ethnic groups living in the United States. Across the United States, ethnic enclaves existed and hyphenated Americans oscillated between pledging allegiance to the Stars and Stripes and being loyal to their homelands. Assimilationists seized the opportunity to foster American ideals in children. They consistently rallied politicians in their crusade against the hyphen and eventually defeated progressive integrationalists.

As the war ended, politicians and educationalists saw the American Junior Red Cross as a means to promote American ideals abroad. Consequently, the American Junior Red Cross shifted its focus on a new form of Americanization, using children as part of a cultural diplomacy that positioned the United States as the global Good Samaritan. Children reached out around the globe, waged war against diseases, dedicated much of their spare time to rescue foreign "brothers" and "sisters," and sponsored children overseas.

Across the nation, children were urged to become “soldiers of the soil,” members of the United States School Garden Army, an initiative created in February 1918 by the US Bureau of Education to promote local gardening. Federal authorities urged local communities to feed themselves while the United States fed the Allies and other nations dependent on the US food supply. The more food civilians grew, the better the United States could feed the world. Children thus became part of a large pool of unpaid labor, serving the interests of both politicians and educationalists: as youth helped to increase food production, they learned skills and habits of self-reliance. Through the United States School Garden Army, children hooverized and learned to change their diet and eat with moderation. Gardening taught them the meaning of sacrifice.

Early-twentieth-century empire soaked into European culture. That occurred via new visual media and other imaginative means: cinema, photography, and popular press; zoos, trade fairs, and colonial exhibitions; postcards and advertisements; colonial commodity consumption; memoirs, travelogues, and exploration; quality literature and popular fiction. Europe’s relations with exotically faraway, excitingly wealth-producing, aesthetically enticing, but threatening overseas worlds saturated identity and national character. Europeans knew themselves via their racially “othered” colonized populations, who enabled a vivid topography of the imagination. Resulting languages of difference and belonging delivered many resources for individual and collective self-understanding. Cultural media were legion: mass-circulation fictions and recognized novels; children’s comic books; polar expeditions and Central Asian exploration; new Black sporting celebrity; Negrophilia surrounding Josephine Baker and Paul Robeson. “Race” acquired many sinister applications, from social Darwinism and eugenics to the hardening of the “color line.” The most aggressively elaborate version was the Nazis’ racial state.

The introduction begins with the book’s central argument: Egyptian cultural and media institutions have constructed a coherent state project after the 1952 revolution through a praxis of ‘achievement’ (ingāz, pl. ingazāt). Inspired by the anthropology of bureaucracy and the state, the book intervenes in the longstanding historiography on the Nasser era to show how low- and mid-ranking bureaucrats affiliated to the Ministry of Culture and National Guidance have worked to create a unified state-idea after 1952, while constituting a bureaucratic corps on a similar ideological basis. Such bureaucrats, as well as higher-ranking officials and ministers, are central actors in the book’s narrative. The introduction also reviews the book’s main sources and methods, including ethnographic fieldwork, archival visits in institutional repositories and personal libraries, as well as regular dives into the second-hand book market in Cairo.

The “information system” should provide understanding, which is needed for the practice of good citizenship. But it is not working well. This started with the rise of advertising in the late 19th century, when industrial output rose so dramatically that consumers had to be persuaded – on the basis of impulses and sentiments – to buy what they wanted rather than what they needed. When this sort of talk became obviously effective, public relations emerged to make businessmen, like Rockefeller, look good, and then, during World War I, propaganda was used to make the government look less warlike than the nasty “Huns.” Thus a powerful language of selling was introduced into American life, preferring efficacy rather than Enlightenment standards of truth, veracity, and reason. Scholarly explanations for how this all worked started with Marshall McCluhan who said that each “medium” – such as books or the telegraph – controls what kind of messages we can transmit. Then Neil Postman pointed out that the medium of commercial television will “amuse us to death” by ignoring our real needs in favor of peddling profitable wants. Thus Postman alerted us to how, since he wrote, getting our attention via slippery language has become the dominant business model for corporations today and has corrupted the marketplace for ideas.

Governments command tax revenue to provide services. The US government’s revenue is lower than that in Western European nations. The latter provide services such as universal healthcare, paid parental leave, and free education. A large portion of the US government’s revenue supports the military, which comprises almost half of the world’s total military expenditures. The richest 400 American families pay the lowest tax rate today, in sharp contrast to their paying the highest share in the 1950s. The federal government borrows to pay for services rather than resort to taxing the rich. Americans seem more accepting of not redistributing wealth than Western Europeans. Policies not supported by the elite are unlikely to become law. Poorer people are less likely to vote in the US. Since the 1950s, US states with the most liberal policies have had better mortality trends than conservative states. Americans prefer medical care spending over public health and social spending. Neoliberalism has increased economic inequality and produced a rightward political shift. Reparations can improve racial inequalities

To carry out its action, the Israeli state must ensure the support of its Western allies and contain criticism from its adversaries or new partners in the Arab world, whose public opinion is highly critical of Israel. To achieve these political objectives, Tel Aviv implemented an unprecedented communication strategy to disseminate its narratives and content to the widest possible audience.

This chapter explores the role of China’s state-run media in perpetuating “correct collective memory.” Using the official narrative of the state’s COVID-19 response as a case study, it demonstrates the capability of the CPS in shaping public discourse. The party’s Publicity Department oversees social media platforms such as Sina Weibo, which has nearly 600 million active users. The chapter shows how party agencies work with Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) who are elevated to prominent and authoritative status within the tightly controlled media environment. These storytellers promote Manichean rhetoric and nationalist sentiments by boosting polemics against foreign powers, presenting a narrow spectrum of facts, silencing opposing ideas as “unpatriotic.” The chapter demonstrates the party’s ability to deftly manipulate social media to advance politically expedient narratives.

The chapter argues that propaganda in the 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Fronts had three goals: to motivate the troops to fight, to encourage disciplined conduct and correct treatment of civilians, and to instill patriotism and pride in the Soviet Union. The political departments passionately preached hate against the enemy to motivate the troops to fight, which fuelled violence against civilians from enemy countries. Soviet officials were aware of this problem, but they always viewed the troops’ morale and combat capacity as more important than the need to minimize attacks against civilians. Hate propaganda usually stopped after an enemy was vanquished, except in Austria. There, from the outset of the two army groups’ entry into the country, the official message was that Austrians were the Germans’ first victims. In contrast to the “enemy” countries, the Red Army’s propaganda consistently cultivated a pro-Bulgarian and pro-Yugoslav atmosphere in the ranks by telling the troops positive stories about the two countries.

This chapter analyses the literary, textual, and propaganda work of the two main British fascist organisations in the interwar period: the British Fascisti (1923–1935), founded by Rotha Lintorn-Orman, and Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists (BUF, 1932–1940). The evolving styles, structures, and aesthetics in fascist publications reflect shifts in policy and strategy, often influenced by opposing political movements. Fascist literature was a strategic tool in a war of words and ideas, and as such was crucial for promoting fascist ideology. The chapter highlights the dissemination of fascist materials, including newspapers sold at events, manifestos for recruitment, and pamphlets on diverse topics. Songs, short stories, and poems aimed to mobilise and instruct, while public speeches were central to fascist rallies and demonstrations. The BUF trained its members, the Blackshirts, in public speaking, making speeches integral to their propaganda efforts; these speeches were later published, recorded, or filmed. This ‘gestural politics’ is exemplified by the BUF’s newspaper Action!, a title that symbolised the movement’s focus on public performance and outreach. Through these varied forms, the chapter shows how fascist propaganda intertwined literary efforts with political activism to influence British society.

Cultural exchange was another critically important mechanism for influencing popular emotions. This chapter looks at Sino-North Korean exchanges in theater, film, and the arts. It argues that these exchanges reached large audiences in both countries while inculcating official emotions.

This chapter focuses on the Chinese volunteers who fought in Korea during the Korean War. It looks at the interactions between the Chinese volunteers and North Korean civilians. It shows how the CCP strove to shape the emotions of the volunteers and inspire feelings of empathy toward North Korean civilians. Through using new North Korean source materials, it shows how the North Korean government sought to shape popular perceptions of the volunteers.