English – Debate
AFFIRMATIVE
That war propaganda should be illegal.

Rosalynd: speaker 1

Hello audience and teacher, I am here today to tell you why war propaganda SHOULD be illegal and how banning this will bring truth and justice back to society. War propaganda is defined as information of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular point of view. By making this bias and misleading form of promotion illegal, it will mean that it will be forbidden by law and no longer able to control, manipulate and take advantage of communities and people when they are most venerable. Today myself and my second team speaker will be arguing how war propaganda is biased and misleading and how these two key factors abuse a persons right to form their own opinion and suitably assess a situation, therefore choosing how they will act upon it without being discreetly manipulated into an unsafe and unhuman war environment where their lives are at risk.
So what does biased mean? Biased is unfairly prejudiced for or against someone or something. Which is exactly what war propaganda is, unfair. By exposing communities and people to war propaganda only one side of the issue is being promoted and heard. In the case of war the government authorities and war recruitment authorities are doing all they can to convince people to support or get involved in war. Even if it means bending the truth to get what they want. Propaganda is used so authorities, people or organisations can gain support, therefore they promote and provide information that puts them in a positive light and will convince people to get behind their cause and support their ideas. These authorities have the power, the power to manipulate and alter they way we think. When it comes to war propaganda they will often use fear to scare people when they are most venerable for fear of the enemy and fear of their safety. Taking advantage of this situation causes people to think illogically and become venerable to be easily manipulated and act without suitable or appropriate thinking. They scare mothers into thinking without supporting and following the instructions of the propaganda they will be killing their children, their husbands and their country. By dramatizing their issues they are able to seem more convincing and jump to the worst possible conclusion, which, then is exposed to communities thinking that that is what the future holds if we do not obey and support the ideas raised in the propaganda.
If someone wants to gain support from communities and large amounts of people they are not going to tell you all the reasons and flaws in the ideas they wish to put in place, or emphasize the negative reasons against them. Their aim is to tell you why you must support them and their ideas, even if it means bending the truth or skipping obvious flaws in their ideas. They will do everything they can to tell you why what they are doing is good and how it will benefit YOU.

The poem ‘Strangers meeting’ by Wilfred Owen, raises the issue of how propagandas highlights who the enemy is and how people are manipulated to resent opponent soldiers and presume that all citizens of the opposing countries and forces are out to destroy their country, women and children, and what they fight for. However the truth to this is that they are just like us. Being told the same lies following their governments listening to the propaganda. The quote “I am the enemy you killed, my friend. I knew you in the dark; for you where frowned. Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed. I parried; but my hands where loaded and cold. Let me sleep now.
This quote highlights how soldiers are convinced and commanded to kill each other… kill or be killed. The war propagandas convince that they must be killed; they must be stopped, as they are monsters out to kill you and all you love. When in reality they as well are only soldiers, just like their enemy. Owen talks about the death of a