(C) Alec Muffett's DropSafe blog.
Author Name: Alec Muffett
This story was originally published on allecmuffett.com. [1]
License: CC-BY-SA 3.0.[2]


Does mass media pave the way to fascism? | Wellcome Collection | Betteridge’s Law, Applies

2023-11-24 16:49:21+00:00

There’s a TikToker who recently coined the most-ever pithy summary of Darwin’s Origin of Species:

I figured out why there’s animals:

it’s because you can’t fuck if you’re dead*

In a similar vein there should be a summary of Fascism along the lines of:

If you want massed rallies of zombie-like followers,

try “mass communication” by any means possible

…but alas Civil Society prefer to wag the dog by its tail and look at any novel mass communication means to spread fear that it may be used by <outgroup> to <pursue undesirable ends>.

A classic of the genre, from 2018/history, but at least with some self-awareness:

Today, we live in an age of anxiety about ‘post-truth’ politics. ‘Fake news’, targeted messaging and seductive persuasion are rife. Digital technologies have created extraordinary new possibilities for the analysis of voter behaviour and also voter manipulation. But many of our contemporary concerns about the new dark arts of political persuasion and unconscious psychic life have a longer history. In the mid-20th century, psychologists’ curiosity and dismay about our susceptibility to manipulation and control crystallised. Their writings, though flawed and dated, still offer us food for thought in a new age of economic convulsion, population movement and toxic populist fervour. In the 1940s, Money-Kyrle was worried about the power of radio and other mass media to reveal and provoke our worst selves. In the 21st century, he would have been looking online. https://wellcomecollection.org/articles/W1bjRCYAACcAqvKh

I wonder if the “flawedness and datedness” will ever really stop?

[*] https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGeepdBFe/
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[1] URL: https://alecmuffett.com/article/14626
[2] URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

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