Not at all. People are rather easy to manipulate, if you control the flow of information. Hypnotic power is not required.
The formula is simple: promote emotionally powerful events that support your agenda, ignore events that inspire feelings counter to your agenda, deify supporters, demonize opponents, censor and ostracize anyone who speaks against the agenda.
That formula has led nations to war, sent innocent people to prison, changed laws, overthrown governments, led to acts of terror, and caused hundreds of millions (perhaps billions) of deaths throughout history.
Well, with your formula you have just described work of media since invention of printing press. However, it doesn't work as easy as you described. Almost every political campaign tries to utilize this playbook, and absolute majority of of them fail. In fact, looking for the best historical examples fitting your argument one may find they generally comes from countries which strictly regulated their media.
For full effect, it requires control of the flow of information. It has indeed often failed in America and other countries where people had relatively free access to information.
But with digital information replacing newspapers, magazines, and TV, and with access to digital information being filtered through a handful of companies, those companies have immense power approaching that of governments that strictly regulate the media.
The formula is simple: promote emotionally powerful events that support your agenda, ignore events that inspire feelings counter to your agenda, deify supporters, demonize opponents, censor and ostracize anyone who speaks against the agenda.
That formula has led nations to war, sent innocent people to prison, changed laws, overthrown governments, led to acts of terror, and caused hundreds of millions (perhaps billions) of deaths throughout history.