this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2023
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This is a silly post. This really is a very silly post and it really shouldn't be upvoted.
The essence of the OP, "people fall for propaganda because they want to", is literally a classic "personal responsibility" argument with the underlying effort of deflecting blame from the system and environmental conditions (the all-encompassing propaganda apparatus influencing peoples' opinions) and attributing it to an individual's vague inherent qualities instead.
"You fall for propaganda because you want to" is frankly idiotic victim-blaming. Propaganda is highly manipulative and often appeals to people's empathy. You conveniently picked an absurd example of course, but Hamas killing Israeli civilians because of religious extremism and antisemitism, for example, is a much more believable narrative that would require active research to dispel, active research that many people literally don't have the online literacy or critical thinking skills to do. Because of their material conditions and the environments they live in.
People fall for propaganda because their environment has primed them to believe it. It wasn't Radio Free Asia that told me propaganda about China and North Korea, it was my parents and my teachers, people I trusted growing up. It was never as simple as saying "I don't believe it". I grew up thinking China and North Korea were bad and it took years of slow deprogramming until I was able to properly change my mind.
What is everyone else's excuse in your opinion? With how the sentence is phrased as a rhetorical question, do you think there isn't one at all, do you just ascribe other people's failure to reject propaganda as a personal, moral failing? In that case, are they lost causes, are they just inherently less virtuous than you are?
This post is completely reactionary in nature and everyone who upvoted it should question how uncritically they're consuming posts from a platform they trust. It attempts to take the current frustration we all feel from our environments believing propaganda narratives, and uses it to spread complete nonsense about how our ability to reject state propaganda somehow means we're somehow innately better than others. It is, ironically, a great example of how one's trusted environment can make one susceptible to dumbass, reactionary narratives.
It's the same kind of self-deceiving smugness that eventually lead so many of Reddit's self-styled New Atheists down a reactionary path, where feeling superior to the masses made them believe they were immune to being manipulated, which made many of them easy to manipulate by right-wing cults of personality. 
Such self-deceiving smugness is poison against class solidarity, is hostile toward the people in general because of the bootstrappy attitude built right into it, and leaves the "I'm too smart to be fooled" believer more susceptible to manipulation over time.
I didn't feel it was worth it locking horns with the OP because of prior experience, but I'm glad you put it in your own words better than I would have.
Yeah, it's intimidating and uncomfortable to go against something that your in-group believes. Which, funnily enough, is another reason why propaganda works as well as it does. When a post like this is upvoted heavily, many people are likely to just ignore it or go along with it even if, in a vacuum, they would disagree. Because the threat of being shunned by a community you care about is a powerful deterrent. "You believe propaganda because you want to" is truly such an ignorant statement, it genuinely shocks me that this was upvoted so much.
I think it's more comfortable to buy into because it also covers over even slight hints of discomfort about propaganda that has already been absorbed (especially in entertainment) under pretenses of "this can't possibly have an effect on me, no matter how subtle, because I am too smart for that."
https://redsails.org/masses-elites-and-rebels/
Why are you able to reject propaganda?
Edit:
This is called coercion. This article directly opposes your position.
OP's being a bit bombastic, but his point is fundamentally correct. Yes, the most pervasive propaganda system in history gives everyone raised in it brainworms, but they can still escape them, they do have a choice that they're just not taking. It's not an easy choice, because the propaganda builds up layers of defensive brainworm fortifications that reject any attempt to undo them and because their material interests align with the status quo narrative, but it is still a choice that they have.
I think one could compare it to how historical apologia so often hinges on the fallacy of "oh well we can't be too hard on them for [absolutely heinous thing some historical figure did and/or said], after all they were a product of their time so we can't exactly hold them to modern standards can we?" Because yes, people are a product of their environment and that environment is so often actively toxic and full of brainworm spores that it seems inevitable that it will only create monsters, but everywhere and throughout time people have still overcome that poison and become better than it. I feel confident in saying that even where we have no extant records of it there were people opposing horror and injustice and being silenced for it, not even allowed to become a footnote in the historical record.
If they could do it, what is anyone's excuse today?
Its not victim blaming to say westerners dont have an excuse to fall for propaganda
Did you read literally anything I wrote?
Did you just completely forget "You are not immune to propaganda?" What do you think that means?
When you say "Westerners don't have an excuse to fall for propaganda", what is the conclusion you're drawing from that? They have no excuse but they're falling for it anyways, is it truly just an individual moral failing? How come you don't fall for propaganda but everyone else does, what sets you apart from them?
Edit: Also, yes it fucking is. If I lie to you and you believe me, it's my fault for lying to you. This is literally the same "personal responsibility" argument that people bring up when talking about gambling addicts. Propaganda plays on emotion, it plays on our weaknesses, when you show someone pictures of crying children in destroyed buildings their first thought will not be "Hmm, what is the source on that?" for crying out loud.
it's a joke, chill