Biography

All governments make propaganda. The difference between totalitarian government propaganda and the democratic kind is that the former has a monopoly on truth; it's version of reality cannot be challenged. Past, president and future is what the rulers say they are. Which is why, from the official point of view, there is stigma attached to the word 'propaganda' in totalitarian societies. Nazi Germany had a Ministry of Volk Enlightenment and Propaganda, and the Soviet Union a Department for Agitation and Propaganda. The idea that rulers should impose their own realities exists, at least as an aspiration, in democracies too. It was nicely summed up by a US government official not so long ago who stated that, 'We [the Bush administration] create our own reality. But democratic governments and parties are not supposed to dictate the truth.