British officials publicized the Semitic ideal but suppressed its real-world realization

Evidence

And when the British government secured the most compelling evidence of the beginning of the Semitic future—the meeting between Faisal and Weizmann—they stepped back. ‘No Publicity’, Sykes wrote on the file cover of Clayton’s report. The dream of the political Semite could be promoted as an aspiration, but its realisation was to be kept hidden. Sykes did not provide an explanation. Perhaps he did not consider that the Jewish and Arab worlds were ready, that the collaboration required for the success of the political Semite was such a departure that more time was needed. — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 690

Categorization

• SEED: Article angle: propaganda that promotes an ideal it simultaneously suppresses in practice — the ‘No Publicity’ phenomenon as a general imperial technique across history.
• DEEPTHINKING: The tension between promoting an aspiration publicly while hiding its realization because the collaboration itself was too much of a departure is a genuinely subtle point about how propaganda relates to its own ideals.