Bedrockgames
I post in the voice of Christopher Walken
I dunno. It's been a few generations since the last time we had large groups of people act on final solutions. The idea that somehow people were less likely to believe garbage and live in an information vacuum in the past seems a bit out of sync wiht history, considering what widespread beliefs of the time led to.
My sense is humans adapt to new media over time. When propaganda posters first came out, they were effective, but who really is persuaded by them to the extent people were in the old days? When the printing press was invented you had religious turmoil in Europe (there were lots of reasons for that, but the printing press and rapid dissemination of ideas I think was part of it). Now we have another massive shift in communication technology. I think it is taking us time to adapt to it (and you see it when you look back and think about the kinds of arguments and memes that were influential a few years ago that have lost their persuasiveness over time). But instant communication on a global scale is probably going to take us time to get use to. I agree, that there is something unique about now, versus the 30s and 40s, is not accurate. People clearly were wiling to believe all kinds of nonsense in that time