ABSTRACT
The ancient Greeks saw the art of persuasion as a form of rhetoric and recognized that logic and reasoning were indispensable components for communicating one's ideas successfully. For the philosopher of Stagira, the objective of persuasion was to communicate a point of view or position which would help people understand the truth regarding facts. Like persuasion, propaganda has in primis the aim of changing people's perceptions, beliefs and attitudes in order to stimulate certain behaviours rather than others and/or change their opinions. In this way, propaganda exercises a kind of social control, implementing the extremely ancient strategy of distraction by diverting the attention of the public from important problems through the use of meaningless information and thus taking its mind off the essential while giving it the illusion of being informed. In the US, propaganda obtained remarkable results in motivating the public and mobilizing it without the slightest constraint.
