Power and Persuasion Exhibition - British Library

This morning I had no plan, so I jumped on the internet and checked out what was going on in London today. Around the 6,000 adverts for musicals, I found a propaganda exhibition at the British Library. Being a psychology and media student this peaked my interest, and the more fun e-learning I do usually involves a bit of propaganda too, so off I went!

No photos inside.

There was heaps of interesting reading in there, easy 3 hours burned. There was one small problem though, in that all the texts were on half an A4 in small text and with poor line spacing. No reason, but in the dark of the exhibition, you had to pretty much be 5cm away from it to read it, so it had it's moments waiting for people to move along. Needlessly frustrating.

Some memorable nuggets for me:

• People've been 'gamifying' things forever, there was a wacky little 'Risk' like game of the English invading Pretoria
• Some of the British propaganda was interesting to hear about too. There were some examples where it was said the Germans were mulching their own dead soldiers to make Soylent Green! As was their 'counter-propaganda' options, eg. telling people the German leaflet drops were poisoned so no-one would read them.
• Some fun parallels to Mussolini as an aviator etc in 1935, the 'big man' - bit like Putin and his adventures these days.
• Horrendous Nazi video on 'how to spot a Jew'. Couldn't actually finish watching that one, it felt like a parody but it was legit!
• Bosnian superman comic, written for kids to get them to be careful around unexploded ordinance. Backfired and had to be withdrawn because kids were running into minefields specifically so Superman would come and save them. (Kids!) 

Russian propaganda during the cold war, police watching from the symbol of American Liberty

More modern stuff hit home too. A pamphlet about watching out for terrorism for Londoners following the bombings. How to best survive nuclear fallout in your home. 

Some great videos with John Pilger, Noam Chomsky, some bloke in Tony Blair's employ. Some good points around the Western Media these days too. THEN I'LL STOP DORKING OUT I PROMISE.

• Some Russian dude told John Pilger that, eventhough the media over there is terribly controlled and everything, absolutely everybody knows so it's not as effective. We aren't as aware or critical of our media messages in western countries, so we're actually in a worse-off position for that kind of shit. INTERESTING.
• Tony Blair's dude was talking about 'moral equivalence'. Reminded me of that stuff in media, the 'two sides' always being identified and given equal screen time and air time, even if they mightn't be equally reputable sources. The guys example was, Saddam says NATO dropped Napalm on a school. NATO says, no we didn't. Throw enough of that stuff around and eventually you think, maybe they did some of it?

That's the kind of thing a university education gets you, amazing commentary like above. Top stuff!

Popping out to lunch, I was again struck by a 'holy crap I live in London' moment. Not the nicest place in the world where I was eating, there's a dead pigeon over there and heaps of trash, but holy shit! London!

Moment slightly ruined by druggy coming over and using every trick in the book to get a couple bucks out of me, but yea. This place! Amazing.