Why We Believe What We Believe

As someone who teaches Political Philosophy to high school students I have been fascinated with political socialization – why we believe what we believe. This relationship between democracy, elitism, and propaganda has intrigued me for over forty years. All the major political philosophers from Plato and Aristotle to Niccolò Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau as well as modern observers such as Gaetano Mosca, Robert Michels, Vilfredo Pareto, Walter Lippmann, Jacques Ellul, Noam Chomsky, and Murray N. Rothbard, have written extensively on the topic.

Elitism and the Myth of Pluralism an Amazon book list

Media Culture Wars: Engineering Consent and the Obedience to Authority an Amazon book list

Here are three very engaging items which touch upon these themes:

Democracy, War, and the Myth of the Neutral State, by Marco Bassani, professor of history of political theory at the University of Milan

Why Do Some People Not Understand Jacques Ellul? By Daniel Bois

Ben Swann interview: Why RT Has The State Department So Concerned