"The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist....”
“[Why?] In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true. … Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.”
~ Hannah Arendt, from her book The Origins of Totalitarianism
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In this respect, the anti-vaccine conspiracy nutters, for all their posturing about allegedly being anti-authoritarian and standing up to tyranny, are falling into line with what the tyrants want.
Sure, the tyrants may want them silenced (unjustifiably of course) on this concrete issue. But in a more fundamental sense, a mentality that can't separate facts and plausible claims from those that are fantasy is what they ultimately want. It also allows them to conflate the more sane and rational critics of government covid policy with the irrationality of the nutters.
"anti-vaccine conspiracy nutters" says another victim of vaccine propaganda
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