Some notes for interview about this book: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674303102

Captive minds: A study of manipulation

I. The first part of our argument establishes the claim that manipulation is non-coercive compulsion and thus a form of domination.

• manipulation

making people puppets without their realizing it

subversive (sneakily undermining) compulsion. It harnesses its victims’ own faculties rather than crushing them under superior force. But its end is the same—to control them and shape their conduct according to the manipulator’s own designs.

II. Masses (from Propaganda chapter)

• James Madison

• “Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.”

III. Consciousness-raising (also from Propaganda chapter)

• Why is it unsurprising to find radical critique so often fueling reactionary populism?

• The Narodniki.

IV. Conspiracy theories

V. Demagoguery

VI. The second [part of our argument] leads to the conclusion that the open society, intended to be a bulwark against oppression, is in fact quicksand.

The conditions of open discourse and uninhibited expression might end up facilitating the manipulative threat to the free society. This, in fact, seems to be the current predicament in many countries.