Word of the Day for Friday, August 17, 2007

agitprop \AJ-it-prop\, noun:

Propaganda, especially pro-communist political propaganda disseminated through literature, drama, music, or art.

Despite its explicit program, when the symphony was first performed in 1957 a Russian audience always on the lookout for subtexts quickly interpreted it as being about the crushed Hungarian uprising of the previous year. This officially sanctioned work of agitprop was read as an encrypted denunciation of the Soviet regime.
-- Justin Davidson, "Musical Explosions, Moving and Martial", Newsday, May 22, 1999

The essay was a farewell to the men of the left, a brilliant, impassioned piece of agitprop that galvanized women in communes, bookstores, hippie coffee houses and underground newspaper offices all over the country.
-- "Memoirs by women writers get personal with a host of issues, from politics to pregnancy to parent care", Washington Post, January 14, 2001

Neither writer offers a shred of evidence for her claims, which makes these books second-rate agitprop rather than "first-rate sociology."
-- Kim Phillips-Fein, "Feminine Mystiquers", The Nation, March 19, 1999

. . .nationally televised agitprop designed to appear nonpartisan while actually pushing the ideology of the party in power.
-- Peter Beinart, "The sleazification of an American ritual", The New Republic, February 3, 1997

Agitprop comes from Russian, from agitatsiya, "agitation" + propaganda.

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for agitprop

found this in my e-mail today. so the word really DOES exist. i thought some clever tibak just made it up. ka ignoy jud nako oi, hehehe.