"Two legs good, four legs bad"
The use of propaganda in George Orwell's Animal Farm is ever-present. The pigs, especially Napoleon and Squealer, used it constantly. They had a song, they had a slogan, they had a flag, etc. Throughout the novel, the pigs used propaganda. When they were trying to gain power, they were very anti-human, and they used the song of the revolution to rally the animals to rebel against Mr. Jones and the humans. It starts out with Old Major persuading the animals that their lives would be better without humans and teaching them the song Beasts of England, which the animals used to motivate themselves to the cause of revolution. The sheep memorize the slogan, "Two legs good, four legs bad" promoting animalsim and condemning humans,even though the sheep don't fully understand the meaning of the slogan. Squealer uses clever techniques to convince the other animals that the pigs should get all the milk and the apples. He says, “You do not imagine, I hope, that we pigs are doing this is a spirit of selfishness and privilege?... Our sole object in taking these things is to preserve our health. Milk and apples (this has been proven by Science, comrades) contain substances absolutely necessary to the well-being of a pig. We pigs are brainworkers. The whole management and organisation of this farm depends on us… It is for your sake… Do you know what would happen if we pigs failed in our duty? Jones would come back!” (36). Squealer, a master of propaganda, uses the threat of Jones to convince the other animals that the completely unfair division of rations was completely acceptable and even good. There is the use of anti-enemy propaganda from both the animals as well as the humans. Frederick and Pilkington, the two neighbor farm owners, spread horror stories about Animal Farm so that no human would want to trade with them and so that they might attack Animal Farm and subdue the animals. Napoleon tells his animal subjects that the neighbor farmers were out to attack them, creating more anti-human feelings among the animal. There was Snowball vs. Napoleon propaganda, such as "Vote for Snowball and the 3-day week" and "Vote for Napoleon and the full manger." Napoleon uses lots of anti-Snowball propaganda, saying he was an enemy, an agent of the humans, set out against the animals, and he says anything that goes wrong on the farm was to be blamed on Snowball. In many instances, Squealer convinces the other animals that their memories were at fault and the rules were actually something different, opposed to what they remembered the rules being. The pigs repeatedly lie about farm production numbers to convince the animals that their work is paying off and their lives were better than before. The list goes on and on. Napoleon was able to brainwash the animals into believing anything that he said, especially with the aid of propaganda-specialist Squealer. He would tell the animals what he was doing was to their benefit, even though Napoleon reaped all of them. All the other animals believed that Napoleon was infallible even though he was committing injustices against them, using their slogan, "Napoleon is always right." In the end, Napoleon changed the most sacred rule of all, "all animals are equal" to "all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others," giving himself supreme power over all the animals, and the other animals did not even recognize this as wrong. This is the power of propaganda, the power to exploit one's followers for the gaining and maintaining of power.