Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not so sure it is, when there are so many well-funded, concerted efforts to deliberately induce ignorance in people. Radio and books have at least some bottleneck where you can at least try to cut off deliberate falsehoods. Obviously that doesn't always work, but social media makes it effectively impossible. Not only do you have official sources of propaganda, you live in a swamp of anecdotes that are impossible…
> I'm not so sure it is, when there are so many well-funded, concerted efforts to deliberately induce ignorance in people. Radio and books have at least some bottleneck where you can at least try to cut off deliberate falsehoods. I don't see how you can believe these things at the same time. If these efforts to induce ignorance are indeed so well-funded and concerted, how can bottlenecks be an obstacle? Indeed why co…
Of course if the money can shut you down entirely, you can't succeed. But it's hard to completely control radio and books. It can be done, but only by making your totalitarianism clear. It's more effective if people think they came to their conclusions on their own, and have been exposed to "all sides".
Today, they can bolster their organized propaganda with a sufficiently effective astroturf campaign (magnified by social media). The two provide confirmation for each other, and appear to be independent. They may even actually be independent; they don't need to formally coordinate if they roughly agree on the ends.
So people believe they're getting "all sides" of the story, and there's no need to shut down disagreement. Instead, people hear the message from two sources that affirm each other, and disregard any disagreement willingly.