Assuming widespread literacy and other educational prerequisites for industrialization, two or three hours per citizen per month poking at the justifications behind the reigning political party’s most central claims, including (but certainly not limited to) seeking out and asking reasonable questions of those who already disagree with such claims, would be enough to utterly shred most historical propaganda efforts by sheer weight of numbers. If even half the people who attended one of Hitler’s rallies thought afterwards “Those were some pretty strong claims; I should go find some Jewish spokesperson to hear the other side of the story” and then made a reasonable effort to do so, do you think things would have gone the same way?
Of course not every statement!
Assuming widespread literacy and other educational prerequisites for industrialization, two or three hours per citizen per month poking at the justifications behind the reigning political party’s most central claims, including (but certainly not limited to) seeking out and asking reasonable questions of those who already disagree with such claims, would be enough to utterly shred most historical propaganda efforts by sheer weight of numbers. If even half the people who attended one of Hitler’s rallies thought afterwards “Those were some pretty strong claims; I should go find some Jewish spokesperson to hear the other side of the story” and then made a reasonable effort to do so, do you think things would have gone the same way?