All Propaganda is Dangerous, but Some are More Dangerous than Others: George Orwell and the Use of Literature as Propaganda

The true battles of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union were fought on the ideological front: pitting democracy and capitalism against totalitarianism and communism. The Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was formed in the late 1940s to help combat the spread of Communism across Europe and in the United States. Part of the “psychological warfare” included the use of propaganda. Around the same time, British author George Orwell had recently published Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. Both novels, due to the anti-Communist overtones, were adopted by the OPC as part of a larger anti-Soviet campaign. By examining the use by intelligence agencies of Orwell’s works during the Cold War and the potential use of those works in a post-9/11 global society, this paper aims to illustrate the fickle nature of literary works as propaganda