There are two types of fear abroad in our capitalist democracy, fear regarding the control of information and the resulting manipulation of public opinion. First is that the rigid, hierarchical structure of the mass media means results in information being tightly controlled, the meaning of events strictly determined from above. The second fear is that people are swamped by information, meaning is only broadly defined, the mass of people are allowed, nae, positively encouraged to indulge in fantasy and counter-logic (you can prove anything with facts...).
It doesn't take too much braingrind to realise these two modes of manipulation are closely related, in practice they are intertwined. Rigid control of information is reinforced by exaggeration and fantasy. Fox News is Exhibit A in this case; it turns out no news is better than Fox News.
It's important to recognise neither of these modes of manipulation are not more oppressive or more insidious than the other, though the former might be more obvious. The latter method is icongraphy, broad outlines within which people can determine their own meaning to some degree. Walter Benjamin called it the aestheticisation of politics, which he saw as specifically fascist.
Adolf Hitler was a case in point. Hitler the man was a particular individual, no special talents nor redeeming features; not exactly an aryan superman (not even a vegetarian). Hitler the politician was a deliberately sculpted icon. He may not have been a ruined shopkeeper, impoverished lecturer or disgruntled officer, but a great many of the petty classes, whose lives were crushed the depression, could see an aspect of them in him; one which recovered their dignity (it goes without saying at the expense of others).
Benjamin's response to the aestheicisation of politics was to call for the politicisation of art. More generally this means the continual feeding of the class point of view into each aspect of everyday life (this we take as a practical, as well as intellectual job). Rooting out the material origin of icons demystifies them. It robs them of their power.
