How to participate in ‘War Lies Bingo’
3 min readThe heritage of Environment War 1 continues to be eerily suitable now. In 1928, the leftwing British war resister Arthur Ponsonby printed a reserve titled Falsehood in War-Time, Containing an Assortment of Lies Circulated During the Nations In the course of the Wonderful War. Its lessons have huge relevance, that continues until today. In 2001, a leftwing Belgian thinker termed Ann Morelli codified the key themes of the professional-war propaganda Ponsonby experienced determined into a 10-stage checklist as follows:
We do not want war.
The enemy by itself is to be blamed for the war.
The enemy is inherently evil, resembling the devil.
We defend a noble cause, not our possess desire.
The enemy commits atrocities on goal our mishaps are involuntary.
The enemy utilizes illegal weapons.
We experience modest losses, those people of the enemy are huge.
Artists and intellectuals back again our result in.
Our induce is holy, it has a sacred character.
Whoever uncertainties our propaganda, is a traitor.
How startlingly timely is this nowadays?
Ponsonby, by the way, is the male at ideal, again of the picture above, which was taken at the 1938 conference in Netherlands of the Intercontinental Council of War Resisters Intercontinental. Understand who the other folks have been, listed here.
And right here at proper is Dr. Morelli, photographed with Angela Davis, in 2012.
In honor of Dr. Morelli’s perform in developing the previously mentioned, super-useful checklist, I’ve produced a recreation named “War Lies Bingo”, or “Morelli Bingo”, that I invite you to enjoy with me when Pres. Biden provides his Feb. 7, 2023 Point out of the Union tackle. (You can also enjoy it with any group of mates, whenever you want.)
To make the bingo cards I had to have a checklist of at least 16 objects, that the video game-maker then randomized on to grids for me, of which I purchased 20… So I had to increase some of Morelli’s primary 10 propaganda tropes to make the further six. (Each individual a single also had to be stored small.) I hope I did justice to her—and Arthur Ponsonby’s— intent.
The grids are all in this 50K PDF that you can obtain.
I guess if we are going to enjoy on Feb. 7, each player must opt for one particular of the 20 grids, then place a big verify on every item as it will get voiced by the Prez. Shout “Bingo” when you get a total line or column, or “Full house” when you get that. (Mark the time when you attain any of all those scores and post your winning image onto Twitter or whatever…)
Of program, the key place of this is not to participate in a sport, but to turn into a lot more and more proficient in recognizing, contacting out, and difficult professional-war propaganda every time it is generated.
And I are unable to conclude this article with no supplying a significant shoutout to David Swanson, a leading gentle in Earth Past War and other antiwar businesses. Back again in 2016, my business Just Planet Textbooks did a re-situation of his powerful book War Is A Lie. In that ebook, he up-to-date a large amount of the sorts of observations that Ponsonby and Morelli had manufactured about the mother nature of war propaganda.
It is particularly depressing that this function of propaganda debunking nevertheless requires to be carried out, far more than 100 a long time just after WW-1… Sigh.
(Also, if you engage in War Lies Bingo with a team of your pals, produce & enable me know how it goes!)
