Watch this…

Radio Free Asia: "did you know in North Korea they eat babies?"

Me: "I don't believe that."

Radio Free Asia: "WHAT?!?!? How did you do that???"

See. And I'm just a dumbass who does nothing but smoke weed and watch pirated b-horror movies. Whats everyone else's fucking excuse?

People fall for this shit because they want to, not because the state department has magical brainwashing powers. Propaganda doesn't mean people don't have fucking agency.

  • UmbraVivi [he/him, she/her]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    Why are you able to reject propaganda?

    Edit:

    In this alternative account people aren’t “brainwashed” insofar as they don’t actually believe the lies, not in the way that we generally understand belief. It’s more correct to say that they go along with them, whether enthusiastically or apprehensively, because it’s actually their optimal survival strategy. When we concede that the time horizon and scope of responsibility within which we all make our decisions varies, it becomes much easier to see how their choice could be smart and intelligent. The enlightened critic can plead that if we all agreed to denounce the status quo in unison we’d be immensely rewarded, but the average worker in the first world cannot be accused of naiveté for preferring to keep a low profile, particularly after being subject — very often by that same critic — to so many grim stories of murder and of punishment and of how any attempt at radical change always goes awry.

    This is called coercion. This article directly opposes your position.