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Remember Scarborough Re-Active Propaganda as Natural Ethics
Hart, Christopher
Hart, Christopher
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2018-10-14
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In chapter 2 Christopher Hart’s ‘Remember Scarborough. Re-Active Propaganda as Natural Ethics’ takes a popular and often reproduced poster called ‘remember Scarborough’ to propose the use of moral philosophy to recover the deeper meaning this and similar posters would have had following the German naval bombardments of towns on the North East English coast in December 1916. Hart asks, How did the official propaganda published following the bombardment of towns on the North East Coast of England, in December 1914, express deeply held moral outrage, and as such represented a real morality and not mistreatment of truth? At the core of his argument is that the poster ‘Remember Scarborough’ is not naïve propaganda or an exaggeration. Surveying the reasons given by the German high command and reporting of the bombardments in German newspapers, Hart argues there was no strategic justification for the attacks. Turning to deviancy theory and moral philosophy Hart proposes that the bombardments were an action of a German Navy, humiliated in a previous sea battle. They had to gain face with their high command and the German public that despite their attempts to justify the attacks, they expressed disregard for the Hague Convention (1906) and turned to revenge as a tactic, and as such, abandoned any claim to morality. The words and the images on the poster ‘Remember Scarborough’ are, according to Hart, much more than a call to arms; they express deeply held outrage that the attacks were an assault on humanity.
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Hart, C. (2018). Remember Scarborough Re-Active Propaganda as Natural Ethics. In Hart, C. (Ed.), World War I, Media, Entertainments & Popular Culture. Cheshire: Midrash.
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Midrash
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Book chapter
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en
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Chapter 2 from Hart, C. (2018). World War I - media, entertainments & popular culture. Cheshire: Midrash.
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9781905984213