![]() ![]() They make no attempt to educate the masses into becoming fit for self-government they are content merely to manipulate and exploit them. ![]() Candidates need, in addition to rich voices and good diction, to be able to look ‘sincerely’ at the TV camera.”The political merchandisers appeal only to the weaknesses of voters, never to their potential strength. Billboards will push slogans of proven power. Radio spot announcements and ads will repeat phrases with a planned intensity. These include scientific selection of appeals and planned repetition. “Both parties,” we were told in 1956 by the editor of a leading business journal, “will merchandize their candidates and issues by the same methods that business has developed to sell goods. prefer to make nonsense of democratic procedures by appealing almost exclusively to the ignorance and irrationality of the electors. But now that the campaign season is here, it may be sobering to re-read some passages from this blueprint for how media can bypass our rational defenses, sneak up and infect our thinking. ![]() I wrote about and quoted from it over a year ago, here. Aldous Huxley’s 1958 Brave New World Revisited is arguably one of the most prescient cautionary books on the present and future of propaganda and manipulation-if also an unintended handbook for some on how to manipulate our minds. ![]()
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