With Snowball now banished for good from Manor Farm, Napoleon busily consolidates his dictatorship. But a good dictator needs good propaganda, something vaguely plausible to keep the other animals in check and maintain Napoleon's iron grip on power. Thanks to Napoleon's ineptitude and mismanagement of the farm, the animals are beginning to starve. But Napoleon believes the Animalist revolution must live forever; it simply cannot be allowed to fail or be sabotaged by the forces of reaction.
So up pops the loathsome Squealer, Napoleon's propagandist-in-chief. There are lies, and then there are Squealer's phony statistics. He rattles off a list of "facts," which allegedly prove that there really is no hunger on the farm. The animals' rumbling tummies must be mere figments of their imaginations.
Good propaganda needs to construct useful myths to hold society together through thick and thin—noble lies that will lead the inhabitants of the farm to a higher Animalist virtue. The so-called "Battle of The Windmill" provides Squealer with a propaganda gift. He convinces the animals that they won this epic encounter between the heroic revolutionary forces of Animalism and the reactionary hordes of humanity. After all, didn't the animals successfully send Frederick and his men packing from the farm? The fact that the men blew up the windmill, leading to growing hunger among the animals, is completely ignored. In any case, this simply demonstrates to Squealer, Napoleon, and the rest of the true believers that if anything goes wrong in this Animalist utopia, it is always as the result of deliberate sabotage by hostile forces, both internal and external. It is never their fault.
Friday, November 2, 2012
What are some examples of propaganda in Animal Farm in chapter 8?
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