It works like this:

- As many people as possible are herded into two mainstream political factions who pretend to oppose each other while in reality working together to advance the interests of the powerful.

- Those who can't be herded into the two mainstream factions are herded toward fake "populist" factions, who then herd them into the mainstream factions.

- Those who can't be herded into either category are marginalized into invisibility.

By the time you get down to that bottom tier, their numbers are so inconsequential that you can keep them from having any impact by simply refusing them platforms on mainstream media and letting "democracy" do the rest, because you've got the majority right where you want them.

Most propaganda goes not toward the glaring, obvious lies like the Iraq invasion, but toward mundane control systems like the ideological herding funnel I just described. Really ham-fisted propaganda is the exception, not the rule in the west; the lion's share of the empire's manipulations just go toward keeping people marching to the beat of the imperial machine.

Reading by Tim Foley.