Evil Communists…?
Communism since the ending of WWII have long since been portrayed as an evil and horrible way of living and showed the public this through many forms of propaganda. At first it was a few bits of comics and the occasional cartoon, but as time moved on it then was averted and portrayed in many movies by the 1980’s. It was shown in movies such as Red Dawn, Rambo: First Blood, and Rocky IV which were all made in the times before, during, or after Vietnam, the Invasion of Grenada, and Korean War. This for was probably the most effective way to show the general public the wrongness of communism and the people involved with it. But how did they achieve such a thing? By using the psyche of evil to appeal to common fears allowing the government to get inside people’s mind and keep an image of communism that was hard to prove wrong in the minds of many. The first way they did this was the plot lines of most of these movies, the lust for power. Taking control of the US and all other countries in the world and controlling them with an iron fist. Why taker this route? Because at the psychological definition of evil, evil is the exercise of power this power can allow them to hurt others physically, psychologically, erase morality, and commit crimes against humanity (Phillip Zimbardo). BY establishing that this is what they wanted it allowed the basic human instinct to show and realize that this person was evil in the mind and evil is something that is wrong and needs to be destroyed. Take the movie Red Dawn, in that movie the Soviets essentially want to take over the US and they do it by means of taking control of the Rocky Mountains, which was a good strategy, which allowed them to get control of America’s resources that can break us and wither us. They took control of major oil states that would make us obey since by that time oil was an essential part of how we lived, using it to heat houses, drive cars, run electricity, and would in turn hinder the government letting us surrender to them. From there though they weren’t going to stop either, at many points of the movie when conversation was hush, hush between the adult and kids they would talk about how the Soviets were going to move on from America and take over other places with the help of Cuba and that they had already started. Establishing that communism was after only power was the seed that allowed people to believe that it was bad. The government now has control of the general public by the lines of subconscious mind and they now will start to appeal to your fears. Common fears of the mind like those of separation harm to those you love, the threat of nuclear bombs that could turn into genocide and the threats of death and harm to yourself. Fears that everyone had at the time and again Red Dawn had many examples of these fears and how communists where portrayed. Within this movie in the first few minutes of it the Soviets came down and started to shoot at a school allowing the fear of not being able to be safe in somewhere you