> The common theme of Le Bon and Bernays was that such groups as "the voters" are inherently not capable of making deliberate choices, and those choices will be made for them by propagandists. I find that depressing, but their arguments for it are convincing.

It wasn't always the case that "fake news" aka propaganda made so much headway. The degree to which that was happening from ~2015 until now is a unique phenomenon not paralleled since Lippmann's time.