Editing Propaganda (section)

==Children==

{{More citations needed section|date=January 2009}}
[[File: Propaganda do Estado Novo (Brasil).jpg|thumb|upright|A 1938 propaganda of the ''[[Estado Novo (Brazil)|Estado Novo]]'' (New State) regime depicting Brazilian president [[Getúlio Vargas]] flanked by children. The text reads: "Children! Learning, at home and in school, the worship of the Fatherland, you will bring all chances of success to life. Only love builds and, strongly loving Brazil, you will lead it to the greatest of destinies among Nations, fulfilling the desires of exaltation nestled in every Brazilian heart."]]

Of all the potential targets for propaganda, children are the most vulnerable because they are the least prepared with the critical reasoning and contextual comprehension they need to determine whether message is a propaganda or not. The attention children give their environment during development, due to the process of developing their understanding of the world, causes them to absorb propaganda indiscriminately. Also, children are highly imitative: studies by [[Albert Bandura]], [[Dorothea Ross]] and Sheila A. Ross in the 1960s indicated that, to a degree, [[socialization]], formal education and standardized television programming can be seen as using propaganda for the purpose of [[indoctrination]]. The use of propaganda in schools was highly prevalent during the 1930s and 1940s in Germany in the form of the [[Hitler Youth]].

===Anti-Semitic propaganda for children===

In [[Nazi Germany]], the education system was thoroughly co-opted to indoctrinate the German youth with [[anti-Semitic]] ideology. From the 1920s on, the Nazi Party [[Children's propaganda in Nazi Germany|targeted German youth]] as one of their special audience for its propaganda messages.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Goutam |first1=Urvashi |title=Pedagogical Nazi Propaganda (1939–1945) |journal=Proceedings of the Indian History Congress |date=2014 |volume=75 |pages=1018–1026 |jstor=44158487 |issn=2249-1937}}</ref> Schools and texts mirrored what the Nazis aimed of instilling in German youth through the use and promotion of racial theory. [[Julius Streicher]], the editor of ''[[Der Stürmer]]'', headed a publishing house that disseminated anti-Semitic propaganda picture books in schools during the Nazi dictatorship. This was accomplished through the [[National Socialist Teachers League]], of which 97% of all German teachers were members in 1937.<ref name="nizkor">{{Cite journal|last=Corelli|first=Marie|date=May–June 2002|title=Poisoning young minds in Nazi Germany: children and propaganda in the Third Reich|url=https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1G1-87508010|journal=Social Education|volume=66|issue=4|page=228|access-date=22 February 2020|archive-date=21 February 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210221202910/https://www.gale.com/subject-matter|url-status=dead}}</ref>

The League encouraged the teaching of racial theory. Picture books for children such as ''[[Trust No Fox on his Green Heath and No Jew on his Oath]]'', ''[[Der Giftpilz]]'' (translated into English as ''The Poisonous Mushroom'') and ''The Poodle-Pug-Dachshund-Pinscher'' were widely circulated (over 100,000 copies of ''Trust No Fox''...&nbsp;were circulated during the late 1930s) and contained depictions of Jews as devils, child molesters and other morally charged figures. Slogans such as "Judas the Jew betrayed Jesus the German to the Jews" were recited in class. During the Nuremberg Trial, ''Trust No Fox on his Green Heath and No Jew on his Oath'', and ''Der Giftpilz'' were received as documents in evidence because they document the practices of the Nazis<ref>{{cite web |last1=Mills |first1=Mary |title=Propaganda and Children during the Hitler Years |url=http://www.nizkor.com/hweb/people/m/mills-mary/mills-00.html |work=The [[Nizkor Project]] |access-date=22 February 2020}}</ref> The following is an example of a propagandistic math problem recommended by the National Socialist Essence of Education: "The Jews are aliens in Germany—in 1933 there were 66,606,000 inhabitants in the German Reich, of whom 499,682 (0.75%) were Jews."<ref>Hirsch, Herbert. ''Genocide and the Politics of Memory''. Chapel Hill & London: University of North Carolina Press, 1995. p. 119.</ref>