govenrment propaganda

Image by M. Janicki via Flickr

so i watched a movie on saturday called sarah's key ( a very good movie ) and it made me think about the feelings of society during the second world war and even before.One thing that struck me in the movie was the fact that at the time people were made to believe what the government wanted them to believe. A lot of people did not see anything wrong with the treatment of jews, infact they sometimes applauded the government efforts. it made me think about government propaganda and how at the time people were made to believe that the jews needed to be extinguished and that a new race of human beings needed to be formed. One question i ask myself  is,  if i was living at the time in europe and i was not jew or any other disadvantaged group would i have been made to believe that the government was right, and that the jews needed to be extinguished...it is quite scary that even though my values and deep within i know that what was done was evil at its worst form, i cannot say for sure that i would have not supported the government either in a active or passive way.

This really made me question everything i know about the world, everything the media spills to us and everything i read in newspapers or online. As an example, during the recent global economic crisis...we were all made to believe that every one was affected by the failure of western banks and economies but one fact that was not covered in western media was that some economies grew....and these were not in western developed countries but developing countries like nigeira...as a matter of fact the nigerian economy grew by 8.1 percent in 2010 and 7 percent in 2009, that was the highest growth since 1994. So in reality the only nations that were experiencing the crisis were indeed the developed nations. And then recently libya was attacked and the mission was reported as a humanitarian one, which is really hard to believe because other countries like syria and somalia needed help more than libya if the goal was truly humanitarian. I could go on but i think i am going to stop here.

The fact is that the government can make us believe anything they want us to believe....which is very scary. In the end i think we need to really question everything we read or see and always hold on to our values and believe them,  even when our believe in good, justice and tolerance may be unpopular at the time