Propagandists play us like gullible puppets

Fake news has been a part of how humans try to dominate each other since well before the ancient Greeks used a hollow statue of a horse to smuggle troops into Troy to break a 10-year siege.

That ruse worked because it appealed to two basic human needs: The Trojans wanted to believe the Greeks had, as they pretended, lifted the siege and sailed away. They also wanted to believed that the Greeks had recognised their heroic resistance and had expressed that admiration by offering tribute, through a magnificent statue of a horse. So much for wishful thinking and vanity. Troy was razed.