{"id":1245,"date":"2026-10-20T11:44:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-20T11:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meediaradar.ee\/?post_type=material&p=1245"},"modified":"2026-10-20T11:44:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-20T11:44:08","slug":"book-review-the-mind-in-the-shackles-of-political-manipulation","status":"publish","type":"material","link":"https:\/\/meediaradar.ee\/en\/materjalid\/book-review-the-mind-in-the-shackles-of-political-manipulation\/","title":{"rendered":"Book review. The mind in the shackles of political manipulation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Mirt Vissak<\/strong>, lead specialist (RaRa)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Political manipulation tends to call to mind brainwashing, Nazi Germany and George Orwell\u2019s 1984<\/em>. The common view is that manipulation in politics works by forcibly subjugating people\u2019s capacity to think: thinking is rational, and manipulation is an attempt to silence the voice of reason. In their recently published book Captive Minds: A Study of Manipulation<\/em> (2026), however, Avishai Margalit and Assaf Sharon take the opposite position: manipulation works not in spite of reason but precisely through it, exploiting its weaknesses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Power that goes unnoticed<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The authors focus on political manipulation and set aside the question of how manipulation may operate in people\u2019s private lives. The nature of manipulation is, however, presumably the same in both cases: it is an attempt to gain control over another person and subordinate their will to one\u2019s own while concealing one\u2019s true intentions. Like politics, then, manipulation is first and foremost a matter of power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In politics, someone can be compelled to act according to another\u2019s will either physically or mentally, for example through the threat of violence or through manipulation. Whereas the threat of violence is an obvious way of controlling another person\u2019s behaviour, manipulation is a so-called soft, often unnoticed exercise of power that works gradually, luring and sedating its target. It is the capture of a person\u2019s will in a way that leaves the victim with a false impression of freedom of choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Because manipulation works by hijacking the natural tendencies of human reasoning, liberal democracy, which rests on public opinion as the expression of the people\u2019s power, is especially vulnerable to it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Manipulation is often used precisely when the open use of force is ruled out. This is why manipulation has historically (and often unjustly) been associated with marginalised social groups that cannot resort to direct force \u2013 consider the archetype of the femme fatale. It follows that manipulation can operate not only from the top down, from ruler to people, but also from the bottom up. A typical example is the figure of the \u00e9minence grise, the puppet master behind the scenes who steers the ruler\u2019s decisions through flattery and insinuation. Flattery is precisely the form of manipulation that allows the weaker party to gain control over the stronger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The abuse of reason<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The authors stress that manipulation succeeds by abusing the natural tendencies of human thought processes. This is possible because cognitive abilities such as thinking cannot be separated from motivation \u2013 the preference for pleasure over discomfort. The authors\u2019 favourite example is rationalisation: the tendency to find justifications for holding on to one\u2019s beliefs rather than revising them in light of new circumstances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What happens, for instance, to a doomsday cult when the predicted end of the world fails to arrive on schedule? The authors refer to social psychologist Leon Festinger\u2019s famous study of how the membership of one such cult grew rather than shrank after the prophecy failed, because members went on believing the leader\u2019s explanation that the aliens who never came had simply given Earth a second chance. The leader succeeded in convincing his followers because he exploited people\u2019s tendency to rationalise beliefs that would be emotionally costly to abandon. It is precisely the capacity to defend beliefs in which we have invested heavily and which are closely tied to our identity that makes rationalisation a powerful cognitive mechanism \u2013 one a manipulator can easily put to work for his own ends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Democracy is especially vulnerable to manipulation<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the authors\u2019 view, rationalisation and other errors of reasoning fuel several forms of political manipulation: demagoguery, conspiracy theories and propaganda. Because manipulation works by hijacking the natural tendencies of human reasoning, liberal democracy, which rests on public opinion as the expression of the people\u2019s power, is especially vulnerable to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the one hand, in a free society manipulation is a more effective way of gaining power than direct force, because it operates covertly and leaves people with an impression of freedom of choice, which is an important liberal value. It is therefore not unusual for a manipulated person to emphasise their ability to think independently, setting themselves against the \u201csheep\u201d who trust the mainstream media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, democracy rests on public opinion, which shares the same weaknesses as human thinking in general. What works on the individual also works on the masses. In the post-Gutenberg society, where public debate increasingly takes place in visual form and is shaped by anyone with internet access, the role of editors as shapers of public debate has also diminished. Public opinion has been democratised, but instead of the enlightened public that 19th-century thinkers believed in, ignorance, demagoguery and conspiracy theories have raised their heads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Captive Minds: A Study of Manipulation<\/em> is nonetheless largely a hopeful read, and the authors warn against excessive pessimism. The book urges us not to abandon the ideals of democracy, but points out that the marketplace of ideas alone is not enough to protect people\u2019s freedoms, since successful ideas may in fact be backed by manipulators who skilfully exploit the flaws in our thinking. Continuous work is needed to expose the patterns that distort our thinking and to reduce the risk of people taking the bait.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mirt Vissak, lead specialist (RaRa) Political manipulation tends to call to mind brainwashing, Nazi Germany and George Orwell\u2019s 1984. The common view is that manipulation in politics works by forcibly subjugating people\u2019s capacity to think: thinking is rational, and manipulation is an attempt to silence the voice of reason. In their recently published book Captive … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1227,"template":"","material_type":[33],"class_list":["post-1245","material","type-material","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","material_type-33"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meediaradar.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/material\/1245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meediaradar.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/material"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meediaradar.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/material"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meediaradar.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/meediaradar.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/material\/1245\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meediaradar.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meediaradar.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"material_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meediaradar.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/material_type?post=1245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}