AllTop Viral!

If ever there was a time we needed a superhero fighting for truth, justice, and a reminder that it’s the American way, it’s now. Fortunately, that Superman comic you may have seen floating around social media is real, and Mental_Floss tells the story behind it.

The goal was to resist the invasion of pseudo-science promoting the supremacist ideology embraced by the Nazis using the most American of concepts: advertising.

The Superman comic that recently went viral was the handiwork of one tolerance organization: the Institute for American Democracy. Led by an Episcopalian priest, the Institute’s lineup of leaders resembled a walk-into-the-bar joke: Among its officers were a Catholic bishop, a rabbi presiding over the Synagogue Council of America, and labor movement honchos. The Institute’s goal was to “blanket the nation with poster, billboard, cartoon, and blotter advertising—expertly planned to ‘sell’ the American public a greater appreciation of the American Creed.”

And it did. Al Segal, a columnist for the Indiana-based Jewish Post, wrote in 1947 that the Institute was “hitting anti-Semitism and allied hates between the eyes in street cars, buses and newspapers all around the country.” In 1953, The New York Times called the Institute’s work “Do-Good advertising” that proved “mass media advertising can sell an idea, just as it can sell soap or chewing gum.”

Not surprisingly, these organizations came under fire from the infamous House Un-American Activities Committee for not explicitly denouncing communism in their work, yet, in the end, our hero came out of it unscathed.

Full story at Mental_Floss.

Advertising for social justice.