The US Government’s Not-So-Secret Propaganda Department

Images made with Midjourney AI V4

A partial list of films funded/assisted by the DOD:

sources:

[ths]

A soviet era joke:

"
A CIA agent and a KGB agent talk to each other.

The CIA agent says: "The USSR truly has the best propaganda"

The KGB agent responds: "What are you talking about, the US has the most incredible propaganda."

To which the CIA agent responds: "What do you mean? The US doesn't have any propaganda."
"

[panqueque]

The thing is, the military doesn't just refuse to fund anti war media. In the case of Apocalypse Now, then took steps to prevent the movie from being made. When Coppola refused to make changes to his script, they pulled out and pulled some string to make production harder than it needed to be. Not only was the US army unwilling to cooperate, but they leveraged their weight to prevent other countries' militaries from helping too.

[nickiannucci]

Happened to me. Played war all my childhood. Call of duty, G.I Joe, and War movies galore. As long as I could remember I thought the military was the coolest shit ever, and more importantly that real men are warriors. Turned 18 and joined the Marine Corps infantry. Wasn’t till after I was already in when I realized that I had been a damn fool

[michealprovidence]

Those AI generated images can be some real nightmare fuel if you pause on some of em. yikes.

[Loner-Wolf]

Two films the US army refused to help with was Full Metal Jacket and Platoon.

[ellingeidbo]

Well that explains why every COD player is suicidally over confident about their ability to survive a combat scenario.

[dahasolomon]

As a rule every Hollywood block buster is propaganda.

[HellyeahRook]

I went to Iraq, and when I played call of duty it felt so gross. It triggered me, and made me angry. That was not what went down, or how it was like. Later on when I was in exposure therapy, my therapist gave me playing call of duty as homework. Had to learn to tolerate the anxiety it gave me because it was connected to my war trauma. I did its job in that regard, but that was not its purpose at all.

[ths]

11:40 "Guys, we don't have propaganda anymore" *creates the largest propaganda machine the world has ever seen

[PataPannu]

Honestly the only impression i've gotten from those movies is that American military arrives only right at the end when most of the characters are already dead or wounded or that the military consistently manages to displace and loose expensive hardware to terrorists or other wanna-be doomsday cultists.

[D.M.S.]

I played war as a kid, watched war movies, games and so on. Then I studied history, anthropology, sociology and so on. I also heard the graphic stories of my grandpa and grandma about the war. And as the time came, in which I had to decide what if I want to go to the military, I had no wish for it. Being a man, does not mean to kill another human being. I have no wish to die for corporate interests, and I got bullied enough in school. I don't need that in the military. The civil services are chaotic enough, I don't want this with guns. My grandparents would rotate in their graves, if I would go to the military after everything they have been through and told me about it.

Yes, you can be proud if you want, yes you can learn a lot. But nobody of us will be a hero, we will not achieve anything worthwhile. It is not like in the stories. You will die a pointless, embarrassing and horrific death. It will be honorless, because the cause was corporate greed, and you will have achieved nothing in the long run. US and NATO wars are like that. Russian wars as well, and Chines will be too. You will be scared, you will cry and beg not got go. You will regret it, and your loved ones, will hate you for leaving them. If you are lucky, you die quick. And we can call us lucky if we are just come out of it extremely traumatized and fucked up. Many won't get out of it at all, or will be mutilated. I will never understand military families. Grandparents or parents, who expect their children to go to the military, have clearly not their best interest in mind and should not be responsible to care of a human being.

Powerful strangers with money will always find a way for you to kill and die in the mud. As long as they won't send their own children to fight and die, or go themselves, you have no business on a strange man's battlefield. As long as your family is not in direct danger (for example, Ukraine), you stay at home and take care of them. You have no business in Asia or the Middle East. If they want oil, chips, money or whatever, they should get it themselves. Fuck the nation. Save your loved ones.

PS: I'm from Germany. Without the first world war, my family would be enormous. Without the second world war, I would have not existed, but this war reduced my family to a shadow of its former size. It was pointless, it hurt, and it achieved nothing, except tears.

This is how you think, when you were a child, as you had to comfort your over 80-year-old grandmother, when she cried about the loss of her loved ones in the war. She was 17 when she had to escape Prussia and take care about wounded soldiers and her remaining family.

[charlesk]

6:14 I'll present this fact whenever I run into the "cod isn't propaganda" argument. Too bad many don't see through it. Whenever you present this fact, people just go quiet. Thank you for this video. Sometimes it feels like im going a little insane with how many people are either willing or not, pretending to not notice what is happening.

[ghostcodenameprowler]

This video reminds me about how many years ago I actually found a video game made by the US Military and was advertised as such. It was just sitting in GameStop. Pre-owned, no case, dirt cheap. "America's Army True Soldier" was it's title. It was a decent enough game on the Xbox 360 (Played a bit like the Ghost Recon Series). But I remembered as a kid being surprised to see a game made by the Army. And it definitely showed in some aspects. Like how in the PvP of the game you're never fighting US Troops, they always show you as the Troops and the enemy as generic bad guy. Even if you're playing split screen against someone, that's what it's like

[warfighter]

Not digging the AI Art. If youre gonna talk about topics just show the actual images of those things, not a goofy AI generated Anime depiction of it. I`d be fine with your video having drawn anime images, but these are AI pal.

[Wabu_]

This is why I love South Korean films, those film makers doesn't hestiate on potraying its military on a negative light, for example on Korean war film "Taeguki" it doesn't just potray NK negatively but it also potrays South Korean military and police officials killing innocent civilians and unarmed POWs.

Also South Korean drama "D.P" potrays hazing and assault within its own military based on real life events.

This is probably the case because South Koreans had long history of oppression and censorship during the military dictatorship era, and people won democracy through mass protests which putted significant pressure on the government to submit.

Obviously Americans never went through any of that which makes them more oblivious to propaganda in general

[johndia]

I’ve noticed that when most Americans say “freedom” they mean classical liberalism. In that respect many countries around the world do hate freedom

[brokenrecord]

most TV cops shows are also "advised" by police departments

[randomdude]

As an English speaker you run into this problem far too often due to US dominance, and extend of it sometimes goes to absurdity. And this makes the irony to stand out even more when US complains about propaganda when others do it. Yes, they are not any better, but if you are telling people you are the "good guy" why do you need the same thing "bad guys" do?

[joshuagregoire]

"The media is the most powerful tool in the world"-Malcolm X

[miming]

Michael bay's transformers has to be the most blatant us military recruitment ad it made me want to enlist even though I'm not American 😂