My Life In Propaganda: A Memoir about Language and Totalitarian Regimes

is Magda Stroińska's personal account of growing up with communist propaganda in Eastern Europe. She looks at the influence of her family history that contradicted what she was taught at school, the cognitive and emotional effects of compulsory school readings, socialist realist art and film, Radio Free Europe and Voice of America and their role in shaping her generation's collective view of the world. The book demonstrates that democracy can never be taken for granted. Through her chosen field of linguistics, she analyzes ways in which propagandistic language, such as ‘doubletalk,' Orwellian ‘Newspeak,' ‘weasel words,' and, more colloquially, ‘bullshit,' is used to distort reality. This book demonstrates that democracy can never be taken for granted.