So in the twentieth century, there’s a major current of American thought—in fact, it’s probably the dominant current among people who think about these things (political scientists, journalists, public relations experts and so on)—which says that precisely because the state has lost the power to coerce, elites need to have more effective propaganda to control the public mind. That was Walter Lippmann’s point of view, for example, to mention probably the dean of American journalists—he referred to the population as a “bewildered herd”: we have to protect ourselves from “the rage and trampling
...more
