Lessons from the Propaganda Underground: How Cold War Optics Can Help Us Read Our World

Featuring Margaret Peacock, University of Alabama.

The twentieth century witnessed the advent of modern propaganda. Many associate propaganda with the Nazi regime, with its vitriolic efforts to conjure militant hyper-nationalism and anti-Semitism. But far more pervasive and long lasting was the propaganda that characterized the Cold War that followed. Propagandists from the Soviet Union and the United States mobilized new and old techniques in mass communication to wage a war of words and images on the global stage. In this talk, Margaret Peacock examines the practices of Cold War propagandists in the Soviet Union, the United States, and the Middle East to unpack the lasting ways that the hearts and minds of the world have been swayed.