No. 8

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Propaganda Is Not About to Disappear

18 December 2003

Studies

RiTo No. 8, 2003

  • Agu Uudelepp

    Propaganda expert, Ph.D. in government and political science

Conventional wisdom holds that propaganda is a way of brainwashing people, and somehow unethical. But scholars of government see propaganda as just as important in democratic states as in totalitarian ones.

Democracies have freedom of speech and conscience, as a result of which political forces have to persuade people skillfully in order to try to find a successor. Propagandists have over the millennia worked out the most effective methods. In democracies, control over the press and competition means that untruths and other unethical tactics lose their significance over time, but propaganda as a whole continues to evolve and survive.

Full article in Estonian

 

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