"Harold Laswell ... explained a couple of years after this in the early 1930s that we should not succumb to what he called democratic dogmatisms about men being the best judges of their own interests.... In what's nowadays called a totalitarian state, military state or something, it's easy. You just hold a bludgeon over their heads, but as societies become more free and democratic you lose that capacity and therefore you have to turn to the techniques of propaganda. The logic is clear—propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state...."
Noam Chomsky

January 1, 1970

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Original Language: English

Sources

Interview on WBAI (January 1992).

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky