If you want to start deploying such weapons, suppressing people outright, it’s by no means certain you’ll win. The underlying argument of Marcuse’ piece, the thing he uses to secure necessity, is that propaganda works. If you start giving people the power to shut up those they disagree with, what makes you think they’ll come down on your side? People taught not to think, and to go with the populist pull all their lives, are not suddenly going to choose wisely and in the interests of, as M rather ironically put it considering your antipathy for utilitarians, ‘Freeing the Damned of the Earth.’
If you want to start deploying such weapons, suppressing people outright, it’s by no means certain you’ll win. The underlying argument of Marcuse’ piece, the thing he uses to secure necessity, is that propaganda works. If you start giving people the power to shut up those they disagree with, what makes you think they’ll come down on your side? People taught not to think, and to go with the populist pull all their lives, are not suddenly going to choose wisely and in the interests of, as M rather ironically put it considering your antipathy for utilitarians, ‘Freeing the Damned of the Earth.’