Examination in literature of political power from mixing lies in with truths.

[msstice]

One of the effective techniques of wielding power is to make people doubt all their sources of information by mixing lies with truths in all sources. So the official outlets of news carry state propaganda and to prevent people from relying on other sources, the state itself uses agents to inject or encourage false information in these alternate channels to ruin their reputation and create a state of mind where citizens get exhausted and numb.

Russia uses this effectively but it is used in most countries I look at, mostly for focused issues at smaller scale. China I think does not. It simply blocks all other sources of information, though I suspect once it's grasp on information flow weakens it will resort to the same tactic.

In which books (any kind of fiction) is this aspect of human nature/government examined?

Thanks!

 

[Harpo]

The obvious example is George Orwell’s 1984.

 

[msstice]

The obvious example is George Orwell’s 1984.

Here the state was the only source of information and it kept saying different things at different times, "gas lighting," do I recall correctly?

 

[BAYLOR]

In Caverns Below by Stanton Coblentz in this one citizens, were encourages for the one good of society to be thoughtless and accept the status quo .

 

[msstice]

Ok. Is this some kind of meta thing happening here? How come there are two threads now?

 

[BAYLOR]

Ok. Is this some kind of meta thing happening here? How come there are two threads now?

I think it likely that It's topic thread from you're counterpart from parallel. universe which is somehow broken into on our universe .

 

[nixie]

Ok. Is this some kind of meta thing happening here? How come there are two threads now?

I've done my usual magic and the duplicate has disappeared.

 

[BAYLOR]

I've done my usual magic and the duplicate has disappeared.

Sent back to to it's parallel dimension .

 

[Swank]

I don't think I've seen the OP in any kind of fiction. What we are seeing now is that bad news sources don't numb the population, it divides them. That isn't what a state wants if it hopes to consolidate propaganda into a single source.

 

[msstice]

I don't think I've seen the OP in any kind of fiction. What we are seeing now is that bad news sources don't numb the population, it divides them. That isn't what a state wants if it hopes to consolidate propaganda into a single source.

The Soviet tactic was to mix lies into truths, keeping people off kilter, basically destroying their confidence. A less confident people are a more pliable people. If I remember it correctly 1984 did indeed describe this tactic.

In the US the state is not running the propaganda - individual politicians and political movements are, and polarization is an excellent outcome for them. Polarization brings money into politics, and herds voters into one camp or the other, helping entrench a two party system. It is harmful to the country because it deflects attention from solutions to core issues on which a majority of people have actually been shown to agree on.

 

[Pyan]

Well, this thread took all of ten posts to move from fiction to actual politics. Sorry, you know the rules.