The conclusion that every government came to after Bernays' "Crystallizing Public Opinion" is that the society who can be arbitrarily manipulated by propaganda is better because it's something like adding a rudder to a rudderless ship.

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themafia 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Society has a rudder. You couldn't claim a society exists _without_ one. It's a defining characteristic.

What society doesn't have is a _fast_ or particularly responsive rudder. It moves slow and hates capricious changes. It frustrates capital which wants to move quickly and change as often as is needed to derive greater profits.

They're not manipulating you for your own good. They're doing it for money.

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staplers 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If democracy is predicated on independent thought and decision (free speech, free vote), then the "rudder" in this analogy becomes authoritarianism with an additional step.

	▲	popalchemist 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yes, I am not advocating for it. Just pointing to the historical moment when the insight became concrete enough to deploy. The propaganda arm of the modern economic apparatus is -literally- The Matrix. The political / economic theories that inspired The Matrix are works like Society of the Spectacle which express exactly what you just said in extreme detail; that whoever has control or even just a significant influence over the images and words that move through peoples' minds in effect has them enslaved in a form of Panopticon.

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amelius 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Except foreign powers can also control that rudder.