In 1984, George Orwell wrote of a world where the only colour to be found was in the propaganda posters. Such is the case in North Korea. Images of Kim Il-sung are depicted in vivid colours. Rays of yellow and orange emanate from his face: he is the sun.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the use of propaganda in totalitarian regimes to create a glorified image of leadership.
Barbara Demick's quote draws a parallel between George Orwell's depiction of a colorless world dominated by propaganda and the reality of North Korea, where vivid imagery of its leader, Kim Il-sung, is used to reinforce his cult of personality. The use of bright colors symbolizes the distorted reality that governments can create to manipulate and control their citizens, illustrating how imagery can be employed as a powerful tool in political propaganda.
In practice
In a discussion about the role of propaganda in authoritarian regimes.
In 2012, a five-year-old girl in Shandong province described to me how ten officials had chased her six-months-pregnant mother through the fields to prevent the birth of the family's second child, a boy. She died during the procedure.
If you look at satellite photographs of the Far East by night, you'll see a large splotch curiously lacking in light. This area of darkness is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
Herbert Hoover once ran on the slogan, 'Two cars in every garage'. Apparently, the Republican candidate this year is running on the slogan, 'Two families in every garage'.
I learned to be far more skeptical of what I'm told by presidents, no matter who the presidents are, and also to be much more cautious, always, in any action or vote that could lead to the use of American military power and most particularly what we call 'boots on the ground.'
It is an axiom of political life that you never raise expectations, whether in a political or military campaign, because your defeats are then magnified and your victories discounted.
Liberals seem to assume that, if you don't believe in their particular political solutions, then you don't really care about the people that they claim to want to help.
The politician attempts to remedy the evil by increasing the very thing that caused the evil in the first place: legal plunder.
All politics is a struggle for power; the ultimate kind of power is violence.
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