UN Ideological Work and International Change

Abstract

Early in George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia is a passage that expresses Orwell’s fascination with a brand of unsophisticated propaganda used by those fighting alongside him to defend the Spanish Republican government. Although the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) was yet another manifestation of how the post-First World War order and the League of Nations had failed, Orwell’s observation – in 1937 – was a profound insight into the thinking that would eventually guide the United Nations’ approach to propaganda. The illiteracy in Spain in the late 1930s and the complicated nature of the international politics of the war made the Spanish Civil War a fascinating arena of propaganda practice. The various combatants produced numerous propaganda posters and these have become compelling historical artifacts in the ecology of propaganda as an instrument of conflict.¹ But the propaganda Orwell was reflecting on was as basic as shouting out statements calculated to sap the enemy’s morale – to convert him rather than kill him. Wrote Orwell: