Thread by @jenmercieca

From 2017, still relevant: When Paranoid Rhetoric and Falsehoods Prevail, Public Trust Crumbles | Essay | Zócalo Public Square zocalopublicsquare.org/2017/03/13/par…

“The demagogue does not recognize controversial attitudes. He declares his adversary a liar, a traitor to the only truth. Dissension is no longer a matter of opinion, but of heresy. The “party line” wins a sort of mystic holiness..."

"Totalitarian governments and their leaders are “infallible.” To question their policies is sin. As soon as complete power is obtained, the monopoly over all instrumentalities of communication gives unlimited propaganda possibilities to the totalitarian.”
Sigmund Neumann, 1938

“A mixture of gullibility & cynicism had been an outstanding characteristic of mob mentality before it became an everyday phenomenon of masses. In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything &"

"nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true. The mixture in itself was remarkable enough, because it spelled the end of the illusion that gullibility was a weakness of unsuspecting primitive souls and cynicism the vice of superior and refined minds."

"Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda.."

"on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism;"

"instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness." Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 382