Well... words and decades of circumstances. If you removed the circumstances (the religion, the conflict, the money, geography, etc) then the words would be absolutely hollow.
I think we tend to credit words where often circumstances are doing the heavy lifting. For example try to start a riot with words in Rodeo Drive. Now try to do it in Nanterre. Or better yet, try to start a riot in Nanterre before a 17 year was shot by police, vs. after.
You'll get a sense of just how valuable your words really are.
Quite so, which is why retrospective analysis like "The CIA helped start The Paris Review and that made literature friendly to neoliberal ideology" are confections of confirmation bias. Nothing is ever that pat. But tidy little conspiracies are also never the goal. A nudge is both all that is realistic to aim for and a few successes are all you need to shift public perception.
Arming every ambitious cult leader wannabe from some retrograde backwater with an information war WMD deserves some caution.
Reminds me of the idea of a "tipping point." When we hit this point, words can really get people moving. This has been true for big changes like revolutions and movements, like Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, or Fridays for Future.
Words might not do much without the right situation, like the parent mentioned with Rodeo Drive and Nanterre. But they're still important. They can guide people's anger and unhappiness.
In the case of Weimar Germany, the severe economic instability and social discontent following World War I created a fertile ground for radical ideologies to take root. When these conditions coincided with persuasive rhetoric, it catalyzed significant societal change. So, while words can indeed be powerful, they're often most effective when spoken into pre-existing circumstances of tension or dissatisfaction. They can then direct this latent energy towards a specific course of action or change.
That also can be modified with words though (but for both good and bad). Unfortunately, those with expertise in this domain may not have all of our best interests at heart.
> If you removed the circumstances (the religion, the conflict, the money, geography, etc) then the words would be absolutely hollow.
There's also the problem of non-religious faith based belief.
There were plenty of well-off people who flew to Syria to go behead other people.
Anyway this doesn't matter that much. Sure, you can imagine a world totally different from ours where there would be zero differential risk between a chess-playing computer and a language-speaking computer. But we live in this world, and the risk profile is not the same.
I think we tend to credit words where often circumstances are doing the heavy lifting. For example try to start a riot with words in Rodeo Drive. Now try to do it in Nanterre. Or better yet, try to start a riot in Nanterre before a 17 year was shot by police, vs. after.
You'll get a sense of just how valuable your words really are.