I think this is the mechanism propaganda takes advantage of. Where there's a gap in people's understanding, they can very easily inject their version of events into people's heads and people will broadly accept it. The knowledge vacuum wants to be filled when pushed for a decision. In fact it doesn't even need to be this highly overt form that we saw in the 20th century dictatorships, even relatively weak forms can still grip hard and then people are reluctant to walk back from them after the fact.

Some would accuse faithfuls of potentially being traitors merely for voting differently to how the group had done previously, on tenuous information, even though they had no idea whether the person they voted for was a traitor or not! Here we see how, when intentionally directed, propaganda can sustain the creation of the scapegoats out of those who dissent.