World Peace!

WW I has to be included in the old style propaganda, but at the same time, it's a continuum. Newspapers are also unidirectional one-to-many tools for propaganda. Small newspapers are harder to shut down, since radio and TV require more money and equipment than newspapers, both to end and receive, but governments find it easy enough to control newspapers.

Where the dictators fit into the theory is that, in many ways, they were the disintegration of world control by one or two old powers, ie Britain and France, Holland before them, Spain before that, and so on. Think of it as not masses as individual people, but masses as individual countries who threw off the British imperialist yoke.

Just as not all individuals with newly found freedom behave themselves well, not all countries with newly found independence behave well.

Look at China now. They are caught in an odd mixture of throwing off the imperialist yokes (westerners at first, then the Japanese) while having to cope with peer-to-peer communications, both internally and externally. Global trade is far more important to them than it was to Hitler, Stalin, or Mao.

Ah well, time to stop rambling :-)

Since I'm already OT, may as well add "Thanks for all the fish, Cmdr Taco."