this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2026
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Propaganda was short for "congregation for propagating the faith" in 1718, and meant a movement or organization for the propagation of ideology before the end of the 1700s. The modern usage refering to the information disseminated is from after WWI (which wasn't perjoritive at the time), when German telegraph lines to other countries were cut and they turned to high-power radio communication. The negative connotation comes from WWII after Germany's very effective use of it.
Nevertheless, propaganda has been used as long as humans have existed, and much like the subcategory "advertisement", is more effective with as many lies as one can get away with. There's nothing inherently untruthful about propaganda, but neither is it inherently truthful. It's manipulation, and can still be effective without lies. It's much broader than papers to circumvent censure.
"Propaganda" "Propagating", interesting, that makes a lot of sense. As for manipulation, it is a bit of a loaded term, when exposed to new information, one may make a different decision than they otherwise would have, you could say that the exposure to that new information had "manipulated" them, but that wouldn't make the information necessarily untrue or the "manipulation" as being a "bad thing" (metaphysics territory).
As far as lies go, you don't need them nor would they even be all that useful when what one advocates for is the truth anyway. (like Scientific Socialism(Marxism Leninism))
Thanks for the mini history lesson by the way.