Publisher's Synopsis
Perpetrators of genocidal violence have regularly orchestrated propaganda campaigns using newspapers, radio, televisions, the Internet, and other means to justify mass killings. This primary source collection features more than 40 examples of propaganda created to support genocides during the 19th and 20th centuries. The book covers 11 genocides, from campaigns against Native Americans and indigenous Ausrallians to the Holodomor and Holocaust to more recent tragedies in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Rwanda. Each section begins with an introductory essay exploring the course of the genocide, giving readers the background knowledge needed to understand the documents that follow. Each piece of propaganda is accompanied by a brief introduction that provides key contextual information, as well as in-depth analysis of the impact that propaganda had. Augmenting the main text are a collection of high-interest sidebars and an end-of-volume bibliography. Propaganda is an organized or deliberate action or set of actions undertaken for the purpose of disseminating certain types of information and ensuring their acceptance. Where genocide is concerned, what can be termed "hate propaganda" plays an important role in alienating the target population from those who are its persecutors; in providing reasons to the general population for the "necessary" persecution of the target "other"; in suggesting the means such persecution should employ; and in serving as a reinforcement to the perpetrator government undertaking and directing the persecution.
