An interesting parallel, they've studied cult recruitment and intelligent people are not less likely to join one. In fact, often times, the better they are at reasoning, the better they are at convincing themselves something bad is in fact ok.

It's self-evident. Propaganda is defused through rhetorical skills. You know, knowing about the general forms of sophism, all that stuff. Rhetorical skills correlate with intelligence.

> It's self-evident. Propaganda is defused through rhetorical skills

It's far from self evident. There is all kinds of nonsense that is catnip for overthinkers. The reason I paused at that assertion is that a lot of propaganda (and in general, military misdirection) is aimed at deceiving leadership.