The United States was a relative latecomer to the world of mass propaganda and public diplomacy. By James Chisem Blue Jeans and Cola: U.S. Propaganda and the Cultural Cold War When the Cold War is mentioned in conversation, on the news, or in text, one’s mind invariably wanders to a series of distilled essences: soldiers[…]
How Cold War officialdom made the world safe for propaganda. Introduction SINCE THE 2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS, Americans have been treated to a daily diet of news about the depth and breadth of Russian disinformation sloshing around on social media and dropped into the sweaty hands of various Trump campaign apparatchiks. In 2017, the U.S. Department of[…]
America has not yet emerged from conflicts over what it means to be a “true American.” Consequently, historical assessments of the Cold War and its ramifications in American culture vary widely. Internal and External Conflict During the Cold War, the debate about what it meant to be a true American expressed tensions that had been[…]
Throughout the time of massive change from 1961 to 1981, there was one constant—the Cold War. Introduction 1961–1981: by any measure, an extraordinary age. It was a time of political giants, JFK, Martin Luther King, Jr., Ronald Reagan; of larger-than-life politicians with feet of clay—LBJ and Richard Nixon. It was an era of cultural icons,[…]