All I read was “natural hangi pit”

We have those all around where I live.

Cross posted to New Zealand, because I read the comic and though a kiwi must have posted this till I read the community.

It is a combination of this and the power of propaganda.

When you can control the information that people consume, you can have a huge influence over what they think.
If you can influence the thoughts of a big portion of the populous, you can create control structures. You use these control structures to move people into their emotional decision making more often. The more often you can keep people in their emotional decision mode, the easier you can control what they do.
The thing is, the easiest way to keep people in their emotional thought mode, is to pull the fear and anger levers. Keep people afraid and angry, and you can steer society.

The other problem with this is, the people who see through this kind of thing are not the majority.
The people who can see through the techniques, are not always the traditionally “smart”; but higher intelligence is certainly an advantage.