Being successful is about learning from the mistakes you have made, hence not making it again as you have learnt your lesson and in keeping with that make better decisions next time.
Totalitarian Propaganda can controlled well educated people by conveying the regimes beliefs, almost forcing it down their subjects throats.
So when it works it usually shows an "Evil" or "Enemy" of the state, and obviously without proper methods of evaluating the truth decent people will believe it for example look at the DPRK or Iran.
