# Quote — Noam Chomsky, Media Control

> The means that were used were extensive. For example, there was a good deal of fabrication of atrocities by the Huns, Belgian babies with their arms torn off, all sorts of awful things that you still read in history books. Much of it was invented by the British propaganda ministry, whose own commitment at the time, as they put it in their secret deliberations, was "to direct the thought of most of the world." But more crucially they wanted to control the thought of the more intelligent members of the community in the United States, who would then disseminate the propaganda that they were concocting and convert the pacifistic country to wartime hysteria. That worked. It worked very well.

- Author: [Noam Chomsky](https://www.leafyquotes.com/noam-chomsky.md)
- Book: [Media Control](https://www.leafyquotes.com/noam-chomsky/media-control.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky#Media_Control:_The_Spectacular_Achievements_of_Propaganda,_(1991)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/noam-chomsky/media-control/the-means-that

## More from this book

> And it taught a lesson: State propaganda, when supported by the educated classes and when no deviation is permitted from it, can have a big effect. It was a lesson learned by Hitler and many others, and it has been pursued to this day.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/noam-chomsky/media-control/and-it-taught.md)

> Let's begin with the first modern (U.S.) government propaganda operation. That was under the Woodrow Wilson Administration. Woodrow Wilson was elected President in 1916 on the platform "Peace Without Victory." That was right in the middle of the World War I. The population was extremely pacifistic and saw no reason to become involved in a European war. The Wilson administration was actually committed to war and had to do something about it. They established a government propaganda commission, called the Creel Commission which succeeded, within six months, in turning a pacifist population into a hysterical, warmongering population which wanted to destroy everything German, tear the Germans limb from limb, go to war and save the world.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/noam-chomsky/media-control/lets-begin-with.md)

> The role of the media in contemporary politics forces us to ask what kind of a world and what kind of a society we want to live in, and in particular in what sense of democracy do we want this to be a democratic society? Let me begin by counter-posing two different conceptions of democracy.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/noam-chomsky/media-control/the-role-of-the.md)