‘Your Vigilance is the Price of Your Freedom! Volunteer for Civil Defense Now!’: Shaping U.S. Public Opinion Using Television as a Propaganda Tool

Abstract

‘Your Vigilance is the Price of Your Freedom! Volunteer for Civil Defense Now!’: Shaping U.S. Public Opinion Using Television as a Propaganda Tool By Manivone Sayasone T he conclusive year of World War II showcased a terrifying reality that the people of the United States were forced to confront. Once they entered the Cold War in 1947, Americans faced an era where oceanic barriers could no longer prevent “potential aggressors” from devastating the United States with “long-range bombers, aircraft carriers, and atomic weapons.” 1 The majority of Americans perceived the Soviet Union as a major aggressor because the incompatibilities of their political and economic ideologies could have led the Soviet Union to attack the United States with nuclear weapons. Since the Soviet Union also felt the need to defend against the United States’ nuclear weapons, the two global powers compete to establish a national security state by creating alliances through foreign intervention and by increasing the quantity and quality of their weapons. The ability to establish a national security state was dependent on the utilization of a nation’s domestic resources including raw materials and the labor of its “citizen soldiers in farms and factories.” 2 Therefore, the U.S. government augmented its efforts to generate public support for the development of a national security state by using various forms of propaganda. One of the effective forms of propaganda the government used to shape public opinion about the Cold War in the 1950s was televised, informational films with themes that emphasized the United States’ vulnerability to communist threats, the importance of civic duty, and the preconceived undertones of capitalist and communist societies. National Security Ideologies of the Truman Administration Many of the informational propaganda films released during the early years of the Cold War featured themes based on ideologies that are found in political documents including George Kennan’s 1946 long telegram, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct;” Clark Clifford’s and George Elsey’s 1946 Clifford-Elsey Report, and President Harry Truman’s 1947 speech, the “Truman Doctrine.” 3 As modern viewers would notice in U.S. televised propaganda, each document had an ideology that depicted the Soviet Union and its communist regime as terrifying and tremendous threats that must be contained by the United States before they “encroach upon the interest of a peaceful and stable world.” 4 If the U.S. failed to contain communism globally, Harry Truman stressed in the Truman Doctrine that the U.S. risks endangering the “welfare of [its] own nation” as well. 5 Many propaganda films also depicted the Soviet Union and Michael J. Hogan, A Cross of Iron: Harry S. Truman and the Origins of the National Security State, 1945- 1954 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 2. Ibid., 12. Michael J. Hogan, A Cross of Iron: Harry S. Truman and the Origins of the National Security State, 1945- 1954 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 10-12. George Kennan, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” Foreign Affairs, (New York, Council on Foreign Relations, Inc.:July 1947), n.p. Harry Truman, “Address Before Join Session of Congress (Truman Doctrine Speech)” (Washington, D.C., U.S. Congress: March 12, 1947), n.p.