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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] SunriseParabellum@hexbear.net 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Westerners aren’t helpless innocents whose minds are injected with atrocity propaganda, science fiction-style; they’re generally smug bourgeois proletarians who intelligently seek out as much racist propaganda as they can get their hands on. This is because it fundamentally makes them feel better about who they are and how they live. The psychic and material costs are rationally worth the benefits.

https://redsails.org/masses-elites-and-rebels/

[–] UmbraVivi@hexbear.net 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 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.