A relevant quote from Joseph Goebbels about the nature of why ideal propaganda is simple:
There was no point in seeking to convert the intellectuals. For intellectuals would never be converted and would anyways always yield to the stronger, and this will always be ‘the man in the street.’ Arguments must therefore be crude, clear and forcible, and appeal to emotions and instincts, not the intellect. Truth was unimportant and entirely subordinate to tactics and psychology.
Intellectual activity is a danger to the building of character.
The rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitive. In the long run basic results in influencing public opinion will be achieved only by the man who is able to reduce problems to the simplest terms and who has the courage to keep forever repeating them in this simplified form, despite the objections of the intellectuals.
What you want in a media system is ostensible diversity that conceals an actual uniformity.
Tl;dr swaying public opinion is about maintaining an illusion of objectivity and propaganda is never meant to work on informed people, it’s meant for the average Joe that is much more easily manipulated by emotions.
I don’t personally subscribe to NatSoc ideology, but I’m incredibly interested in history and what can be learned from it. Thus when it comes to propaganda, Joseph Goebbels was bar-none the best at what he did, which makes his essays ever more insightful and chilling.
