“Propaganda becomes ineffective the moment we are aware of it” –Joseph Goebbels
What a smart fellow he was. No one ever said a genius can’t be a monster or vice versa. And great men might be great just as much because they are evil as due to the fact that they are good.
Propaganda, then, works in the same way as human defenses do. The more we tend to be aware of our defenses, the less well they tend to work. Although all of us use defenses every minute of every day, most of us try very hard to keep ourselves unaware of that fact.
If you do not believe that, try bringing up the subject of “defense mechanisms” sometime with another human being. You will be surprised at how many people apparently don’t have them at all! Others have never heard of them.
But I assure you that almost everyone you bring up this topic with will instantly become very uncomfortable and try to shut down the conversation very fast. Sure we may use them every minute of the day, but that doesn’t mean we want to be reminded or even aware of that. Selective amnesia works wonders. That which the conscious mind doesn’t want to hear about is simply pushed into the unconscious where it can continue its work in under the comforting silken tent of stealth. Not knowing is about as important as knowing or maybe even more important. Sure we want to learn many things, but the desire for ignorance is just as great.
Never underestimate the human tendency for selective amnesia, confirmation bias, willful ignorance and necessary delusion. That we are wholly rational creatures, like the fleshly version of that binary artificial brain on which you are reading these words, is one of the greatest cons of the human condition.
