How to understand propaganda art in the post-truth era-and how to create a new kind of emancipatory propaganda art. Propaganda art-whether a depiction of joyous workers in the style of socialist realism or a film directed by Steve Bannon-delivers a message. But, as Jonas Staal argues in this illuminating and timely book, propaganda does not merely make a political point; it aims to construct reality itself. Political regimes have shaped our world according to their interests and ideology; today, popular mass movements push back by constructing other worlds with their own propagandas. In Propaganda Art in the 21st Century, Staal offers an essential guide for understanding propaganda art in the post-truth era. Staal shows that propaganda is not a relic of a totalitarian past but occurs today even in liberal democracies. He considers different historical forms of propaganda art, from avant-garde to totalitarian and modernist, and he investigates the us versus them dichotomy promoted in War on Terror propaganda art-describing, among other things, a fictional scenario from the Department of Homeland Security, acted out in real time, and military training via videogame. He discusses artistic and cultural productions developed by such popular mass movements of the twenty-first century as the Occupy, activism by and in support of undocumented migrants and refugees, and struggles for liberation in such countries as Mali and Syria. Staal, both a scholar of propaganda and a self-described propaganda artist, proposes a new model of emancipatory propaganda art-one that acknowledges the relation between art and power and takes both an aesthetic and a political position in the practice of world-making.

This book is titled after the world-renowned poem of Jose Maria Sison, "The Guerrilla Is Like a Poet," which celebrates with natural imagery and in a lyrical way the Filipino people's revolutionary struggle for national liberation and democracy against foreign and feudal oppression and exploitation. The book contains poems from Sison's Prison and Beyond, which won the Southeast Asia WRITE Award, as well as new poems that further develop the theme of struggle for national and social liberation as well as exile. It also carries articles of creative writers on the significance and relevance of his poetry. Sison is a Filipino revolutionary with extensive guerrilla experience and has been a recognized poet since his student days at the University of the Philippines. The publication of this book has been sparked by the effort of the Academy for Cultural Activism of the New World Summit to present the people's culture in the national democratic struggle in the Philippines.