The Institute for Propaganda Analysis was set up before world war 2 to teach the American public about propaganda. Many academics and researchers from across th

The Institute for Propaganda Analysis was set up before world war 2 to teach the American public about propaganda. Many academics and researchers from across the political spectrum sought to educate the people in the face of (mainly) foreign related propaganda. To understand how it works and inoculate against it and it was very popular. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Propaganda_Analysis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Propaganda_Analy... It was abolished. Closing statement (1942): "The publication of dispassionate analyses of all kinds of propaganda, 'good' and 'bad', is easily misunderstood during a war emergency, and more important, the analyses could be misused for undesirable purposes by persons opposing the government’s effort." In other words, the USA had a national program to educate the public about the dangers of propaganda, to see the signs and to resist it but they explicitly abolished it because they wanted to do propaganda themselves and they recognised that a population resistant to propaganda would hurt their own country. ---- For today: Propaganda works and is effective. Everyone does it. Them and us. There's a paradox: no one is immune to propaganda if they can't see themselves being influenced by it. By resisting propaganda you will resist your own thoughts and political in group and so it's dangerous psychologically and will hurt socially and politically.