To a large degree I concur -- the one difference, and I do think it is significant, is the way that information overload plays into it.
In the pre-modern examples, the prescribed narrative was *enforced*, often quite violently. It's more like the 1984 example: think as we tell you to, or you will be ruthlessly punished.
What's different here is that nobody is *making* you believe this nonsense. Rather, the assertion in the article is that the real modern world is so damned complicated and grey that folks are often left in a haze of confusion, and the propaganda techniques are being used to exacerbate that, while at the same time providing an alternate narrative that, while mostly bullshit, is simple enough, consistent enough, and has enough grains of truth to it to be more intuitively believable than the truth. (At least, to some people.)
So yes -- there's a great deal of precedent. What's changed is that they've *systematized* it nicely, and specifically with an eye towards making it more effective and focused in modern culture. This scientific weaponization is what's new -- the difference between throwing a plague-bearing cow over the battlements vs. modern biological warfare...
no subject
In the pre-modern examples, the prescribed narrative was *enforced*, often quite violently. It's more like the 1984 example: think as we tell you to, or you will be ruthlessly punished.
What's different here is that nobody is *making* you believe this nonsense. Rather, the assertion in the article is that the real modern world is so damned complicated and grey that folks are often left in a haze of confusion, and the propaganda techniques are being used to exacerbate that, while at the same time providing an alternate narrative that, while mostly bullshit, is simple enough, consistent enough, and has enough grains of truth to it to be more intuitively believable than the truth. (At least, to some people.)
So yes -- there's a great deal of precedent. What's changed is that they've *systematized* it nicely, and specifically with an eye towards making it more effective and focused in modern culture. This scientific weaponization is what's new -- the difference between throwing a plague-bearing cow over the battlements vs. modern biological warfare...