The new propaganda is liberal. The new slavery is digital.

What is modern propaganda? For many, it is the lies of a totalitarian state. In the 1970s, I met Leni Riefenstahl and asked her about her epic films that glorified the Nazis. Using revolutionary camera and lighting techniques, she produced a documentary form that mesmerised Germans; her Triumph of the Will cast Hitler's spell.

She told me that the "messages" of her films were dependent not on "orders from above", but on the "submissive void" of the German public. Did that include the liberal, educated bourgeoisie? "Everyone," she said.

Today, we prefer to believe that there is no submissive void. "Choice" is ubiquitous.

Phones are "platforms" that launch every half-thought. There is Google from outer space if you need it. Caressed like rosary beads, the precious devices are borne heads down, relentlessly monitored and prioritised.

Their dominant theme is the self. Me.

My needs. Riefenstahl's submissive void is today's digital slavery.

Edward Said described this wired state in Culture and Imperialism as taking imperialism where navies could never reach. It is the ultimate means of social control because it is voluntary, addictive and shrouded in illusions of personal freedom.

Today's "message" of grotesque inequality, social injustice and war is the propaganda of liberal democracies. By any measure of human behaviour, this is extremism. When Hugo Chávez challenged it, he was abused in bad faith; and his successor will be subverted by the same zealots of the American Enterprise Institute, Harvard's Kennedy School and the "human rights" organisations that have appropriated American liberalism and underpin its propaganda. The historian Norman Pollack calls this "liberal fascism". "All is normality on display," he wrote. "For [Nazi] goose-steppers, substitute the seemingly more innocuous militarisation of the total culture. And for the bombastic leader, we have the reformer manqué, blithely at work [in the White House], planning and executing assassination, smiling all the while." Whereas a generation ago, dissent and biting satire were allowed in the "mainstream", today their counterfeits are acceptable and a fake moral zeitgeist rules. "Identity" is all, mutating feminism and declaring class obsolete.

Just as collateral damage covers for mass murder, "austerity" has become an acceptable lie. Beneath the veneer of consumerism, a quarter of Greater Manchester is reported to be living in "extreme poverty".

The militarist violence perpetrated against hundreds of thousands of nameless men, women and children by "our" governments is never a crime against humanity. Interviewing Tony Blair ten years on from his criminal invasion of Iraq, the BBC's Kirsty Wark gifted him a moment he could only dream of.

She allowed Blair to agonise over his "difficult" decision rather than call him to account for the monumental lies and bloodbath he launched. One is reminded of Albert Speer.

Hollywood has returned to its Cold War role, led by liberals. Ben Affleck's Oscar-winning Argo is the first feature film so integrated into the propaganda system that its subliminal warning of Iran's "threat" is offered as Obama is preparing, yet again, to attack Iran.