Public fears of post-truth, hybrid warfare and foreign propaganda are gaining prominence. The purpose of this article is to show such concerns are hardly novel. I will make analogies between the contemporary debate and the problematization of public opinion and propaganda in the United States in the 1920s, juxtaposing the works of Edward Bernays, Walter Lippmann and John Dewey. I examine the incommensurabilities and overlaps in their understandings to extract three types of perspectives towards propaganda: liberal, neoliberal and democratic. Furthermore, I am interested in how to theoretically make sense of the internal contradictions and paradoxes in anti-propaganda attitudes and discourses.
Георги Медаров (Sun,) studied this question.