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[der Chef]

WEBAGANDA
Lee Richards, December 2005

The word wide web has come of age with an estimated one billion users around the globe. Advances in computer technology allow almost anyone with the right software and creativity to produce impression digital art. Throw a political agenda into the mix and you have a Webagandist.

During the 1999 NATO war with Serbia, USENET groups and websites were flooded with political debate and propaganda. One effort that particularly caught my eye was the digital art produced by someone calling himself “Pravda” (Truth). Pravda produced imaginative anti-Miloshevich propaganda and was no doubt a skilled Photoshop artist. The messages may have been crude but the design demonstrated skill using the technology of the time with the internet providing a means to disseminate it to a global audience.

Pravda's opinion of Slobodan Miloshevich

Today a very talented Brazilian left-wing liberal artist named Carlos Latuff produces extreme anti-US and pro-Palestinian cartoons and caricatures. His level of creativity is astounding even if his messages are abhorrent. Occasionally he uses pornography, more often his work is ghoulish, and generally is amusing. He attacks Israeli policy towards the Palestinians and is violently anti-American. He pays particular attention to the war in Iraq and to capitalism. Latuff must be a Pepsi drinker, as he constantly snipes at Coco Cola by showing that the company is the root of all evil. McDonalds receives similar treatment. One of his cartoons fuels the ridiculous conspiracy theory that the US engineered the AIDS virus, with others furthering the myth that 9/11 was orchestrated by the CIA.

Latuff says his images are “copyleft” meaning he actively encourages his fellow “brothers and sisters-in-arts” to freely disseminate his propaganda around the internet, to reproduce it on t-shirts, as leaflets, in newspapers, and even on walls.

In his own words,

“If you agree with my points of views and want to support me, please, don't waste your precious time in useless discussions with right-wingers. Don't feed flame wars with trolls.

You are fighting the fleas instead to fight the dog. Let's keep our focus on BIG dogs only.

The best thing you can do is to save my artworks, reproduce and forward them to other people. And let those right-wingers speaking alone... That's called STRATEGY!”

Latuff hero-worships the photo-montage satirist John Heartfield whose legendary work ridiculed Hitler and the Third Reich. Latuff’s artistic ability may approach that of Heartfield but mainly falls well short of the mark with his political message. He sees himself as a subversive and has faked a US Customs wanted poster with his own picture on it. However, I’m sure there’s few in the US Administration that take his work too seriously.

[der Chef]

More examples of Pravda's anti-Serbian propaganda:-

[der Chef]

More examples of Latuff's anti-American propaganda:-

Comparing Ariel Sharon to a Nazi

Comparing Ronald McDonald to Hitler!

A parody on Joe Rosenthal's famous photograph of raising the US flag at Iwo Jima

What Latuff thinks of Fox News - OK he might have a point with this one!  

A swipe at corporate America based on the photograph by Eddie Adams showing a Vietcong officer being shot by police chief Nguyen Ngoc Loan

Alleging the AIDS virus was manufactured by the CIA

The US is going to provoke nuclear war by messing with the affairs of Korea

Alleging Blair was behind the death of Dr. David Kelly

Any moment now the hawks in the US military will push the nuclear button

[Azazel]

these are impressive pics/ satiric pics. unfortunatley i never heard of him, but now i do, thats good!

[der Chef]

Here's a new one from Carlos reflecting on recent Israeli leaflet drops in Lebanon.

[LKK100YR]

Personally i don't think Webaganda would work

the internet does not feed information like a TV, rather it provides information like a library.  you pretty much have to be a leftist to find leftist propaganda, you have to be an anti-semite to find anti-semite propaganda, and so on...

but the thing is, if you already hate jews... seeing sharon with a swastika  hardly changes anything..

[Corasian]

Good point, LKK, and I agree. I believe that most important battlefront for information warfare in the present day and age is the popular media. The major news networks pay greater attention to the messages broadcast by the leftists and the actions that they influence within the governing bodies than the actual outcomes of the battles. Although this is to be expected, it is also ever-so-subtly lending credibility to the claims of and proving to be a force multiplier for the enemy.  

BUT, it would be a great misstep to totally discount the webaganda, as the web has an increasingly stronger influence over the younger generations and it has the ability to rally like-minded groups worldwide, as evidenced by the Cartoon Protests.

[Pescarii]

While it is true that the most influential media remains television, the power of internet propaganda can further radicalize and motivate groups cocooned in a media bubble. In the case of the US, leftists receive their worldview by all types of media and use the Internet as a means of presserving the bubble. For others, it is a means of disseminating a vision (like Islamicism) across vast gulfs and with little restriction. While this would not be much of a factor in changing the majority of the populations' minds, it has a powerfull effect to radicalize smaller, partisan cadres.

[soldatensender]

Personally i don't think Webaganda would work

the internet does not feed information like a TV, rather it provides information like a library.  you pretty much have to be a leftist to find leftist propaganda, you have to be an anti-semite to find anti-semite propaganda, and so on...

but the thing is, if you already hate jews... seeing sharon with a swastika  hardly changes anything..

Not sure that I agree totally with your first point LKK100YR. With cable TV and the large number of channels and programming available, you still need to seek out what your looking for on television but can still stumble upon something unexpected through channel hopping. You can say the same about the internet, propaganda material can appear in expected places, like on forums, spam emails or randomly browsing through social networks etc.

I do agree with your second point, blatant propaganda like these images will not win anyone new to their cause, regardless of how creative they are. If more subtly done it can possibly be more effective, eg the virals that ridicule a political leader can influence the general population against them, particularly if the joke is too close  to the truth for comfort.

While it is true that the most influential media remains television, the power of internet propaganda can further radicalize and motivate groups cocooned in a media bubble. In the case of the US, leftists receive their worldview by all types of media and use the Internet as a means of presserving the bubble. For others, it is a means of disseminating a vision (like Islamicism) across vast gulfs and with little restriction. While this would not be much of a factor in changing the majority of the populations' minds, it has a powerfull effect to radicalize smaller, partisan cadres.

Yes I agree Pescarii.