As some of you may be aware, Sweden recently issued an updated war pamphlet to 4.8 million Swedish homes. It is the first war pamphlet issued in 30 years by that government. The Swedish war pamphlet is nothing more than an emergency preparedness pamphlet or poster, that is put out by governments to help their citizens prepare for an emergency. Sweden’s pamphlet attracted media attention because it accompanied the alarming message that war with Russia was possible. The Swedish pamphlet inspired me to create a faux version for the United States of America.
War pamphlets are sometimes confused with war propaganda and sometimes it is hard to distinguish them apart. FEMA puts out emergency preparedness brochures and posters all the time. Before some of you get your pitchforks ready, note that the British put out war pamphlets during the Revolutionary War as both advisory and propaganda. The Jehovah Witnesses put out many pamphlets out during World War II. They offered hope during the worldwide upheaval. One, caught my attention when I first saw it and it remains in my conciseness years later. It was titled; “Conspiracy Against Democracy”. It had the poignant message; “if you believe in freedom, read this book” inscribed on the cover under the flags of the United States and Great Britain.
Both tugged at my consciousness and they compelled me to create a somewhat serious, but also tongue and cheek pamphlet of my own for the American people. I will never get the reach of 4.8 million households, but if two, three or four households use it as a starting point of discussion, it would make me happy. Regardless, it was fun creating it.
Oh, and the government agency; “Protecting Democracy from the Demagogue” is obviously fake.
Click here to download the pamphlet in PDF format. (1MB)
For those of you on slower internet connection, use this link to download a compressed version, also in PDF format. (588kB)
Feel free to download and share as you like.
I’d also appreciate your comments on how to make it better, or more fun.
That is quite clever of you!
Suggestions:
Instead of “Nuclear war is threatened” something like The threat of nuclear war or Donald Trump is threatening nuclear war.
The way it is written sounds more like “X is threatened” substituting X for Democracy is understood as Democracy is under threat. Substituting X for Nuclear war is understood that it is nuclear war under threat thus wanting to preserve nuclear war. Compare to how the first is written “The judicary’s {sic} independence is threatened’ understood that this entity is being threatened.
On paragraph that starts “If you are contacted by source telling you to ignore the hate speech …………” you may want to remove the following words ‘is pointed out to you’.
You may want to emphasis the sentence “It is important to note that you are not alone”.
What about making some pics not so retro? Maybe give a touch to that Stalinist pic a trompas and Stalin combo look.
What about adding some insets of pics surrounding that last pic (man with raised hand) with pics of work that is done by immigrants? Workers in the field, cleaning after national disasters, serving, etc. I believe this would go rather well with “Brought to you by an immigrant who cares about American democracy”. Regardless of what some may think, immigrants do care for the USA.
How about the threat of millions of Mexicans fleeing the despotic socialist Obrador? You know, the Mexican version of Hugo Chavez (“Visit beautiful Venezuela and please bring us toilet paper”).
What kind of pamphlet do we need for that eventuality?