People look back on Nazi Germany and think, “How could they not see through all those waves of bullshit? They must have been beaten down by the war, unsophisticated, uneducated.” But none of that is really the truth. Germany was highly educated, probably moreso than most of the countries on earth today. And, sure, there were real societal struggles after the war, but that’s always true. The truth is that propaganda is highly designed rhetoric that knifes directly into some of the most vulnerable aspects of the human psyche -- fear of others, the need to blame, the attraction to the biggest spectacle, the belief that you should be in total power over your nation, and that your group of people are special. And now, as America, the UK, and other nations across the planet are dealing with that exact same rhetoric come back with new packaging, and distributed unceasingly via modern digital channels, maybe you start to realize that unless people are educated about propaganda, trained in how to actively counter it, and protected from its massive, unrelenting screed, yeah, it’s pretty goddamned effective.