Napoleon was able to manipulate the animals with his propaganda. He appointed Squealer who was his spokes person to transmit his ideas and finally pass his decisions to the rest of the animals. I can say that Squealer was Napoleon’s best weapon to use propaganda as he knew that Squealer was a brilliant talker. To pass his decisions was easy because Squealer was a very persuasive speaker who always managed to convince the animals about the ideas Napoleon was supporting. He used difficult words when he wanted to confuse the animals. He also changed his tone of voice when he wanted to achieve maximum effect. For example when he wanted to turn the animals against Snowball he told them their enemy, Snowball, was using “Tactics, comrades, tactics!” The animals of course didn’t know what “tactics” meant. Both Napoleon and Squealer used rhetorical questions to their speeches giving their own answers.
Napoleon knew very well the movement and the time of action to be taken to succeed. He used propaganda to control the minds of the animals hiding his real intention which was to maintain leadership. However in his strategy he also was using terror to make the animals obey him. For example, when some animals complained about the missing apples and milk goods given to the pigs, he justified it by saying that the pigs were the brain workers of the farm and they had to be kept in good condition to prevent Jones from coming back. Squealer’s actual words were “It’s for your sake that we drink that milk and those apples … surely there is no one among you who wants to see Jones come back?”
In many cases Napoleon used the dogs he trained to terrify the animals in situations when they disagreed with him and seemed that they would provoke any disturbance. Napoleon took those dogs from their mother when they were puppies supposedly that he was going to be responsible for their education but he was actually preparing them to be his bodyguards.
He often terrified the animals of attacks from others farms. He referred to the other farms as “armies of enemy” creating a physiological compensation to the animals. Another example of his terror acts was forcing the hens to give all their eggs for sale or he would stop feeding them.
His last clever action was to announce that the Animal Farm was declared a republic appointing himself as president since he was the only candidate as he supported. After this action we can see that the domination of Napoleon was prevailed and he decided that Squealer no longer had to explain anything to anyone. Events simply happened.
In conclusion I believe that propaganda was the most important tool in maintaining the domination of Napoleon in the Animal Farm. Presenting him as the perfect leader and their saver he managed to control the animals’ minds and win their absolute respect and obedience. Propaganda was so perfectly used that his real intentions for his own benefit couldn’t be seen. Finally, I want to say that the use of terror was part of his propaganda and was used only in cases when he wanted to make sure that no one would be able to disagree with him. If he had used excessive terror actions he could have turned the animals against him.
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