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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (20083)	2/26/2002 3:39:22 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

I think Hitchens is probably raking it in hand over fist these days, and he's always a fun read, IMO. In the 21st century, do ham-fisted propaganda techniques like the Nazis used even work any more? Except for very poor people with no access to radio or television, probably not. Thus, the birth of "spin." The message has to be crafted to suit the audience, rather than beating the audience into submission to the message. Spin works everywhere if it's done well enough. There are a lot of people who don't want to hear anything bad about Bush after 9/11 - it's treason, don't you know, giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Anne Coulter was ranting about liberal re-education camps. Joking, I hope. But she's talking about thought control. When I was a teenager, to get a job working for the government, which included my part-time job at my state university, you had to sign a loyalty oath swearing that you were not a member of the Communist party, and that you did not want to overthrow the government. Also a form of thought control. The Communists, you see, were bad people because they did not believe in freedom of thought or freedom of association. Thus, you were not free to believe in communism or associate with non-communists if you were a communist.