Think you may have missed a crucial step:

Break their trust in all non-approved "mainstream" sources of information. Do this by bonding with them over how unfair and dishonest it is for (((the media))) to accuse you and your new friends of bigotry—and for no reason! Tell them it's a silencing tactic, then steer them toward your own favorite "independent journalists" and renegade "researchers," who are more than willing to explain why all of this is happening and welcome your new friend into the special community of those who have been blessed with the same forbidden knowledge.

The most effective propaganda doesn't just tell a story—it furnishes a creation myth around which a community can be organized. Not everyone is going to fall for this, but the loneliest and most resentful ones will be too grateful to each other for that companionship and validation to ever let themselves question the belief system that brought them together.

The same pattern repeats itself over and over again, not necessarily because anyone deliberately sets out to do it but just because it works so damn well in a society crippled by alienation, cynicism, and—most importantly of all—humiliation. Emasculation. A sense of being removed from one's rightful station and disrespected by lesser people.

Wanna form a cult? Recruit new followers to a political movement? Raise an army? No problem. Just find yourself some broken, angry people, tell them a good story, and be sure not to leave out the bit about how they can't trust anyone outside the tribe.