the fact our overlords push so hard that communism is so evil is what made me look into it.
turns out its just a number of ideologies that basically wants to get rid of them in different ways, so no shit in retrospect.
And so we pat ourselves on the back for not falling for the “capitalist propaganda,” not recognizing all the propaganda that we have fallen for. I’d mention some examples but of course that would garner downvotes and disapproval, and thus the cycle continues.
Who cares about downvotes? Give us your best examples - if they are indeed good, you may encourage people to think more about them, which is worth more than any amount of upvotes in the grand sheme of things.
Okay, here’s a whole bunch I can think of off the top of my head.
- Opposition to DEI initiatives, feminism, affirmative action, immigration, etc., are rooted in racism/sexism. Even dislike for certain movies is rooted in racism/sexism.
- People are being stolen from and/or their privacy is being violated when companies use public data about them to train AI, target ads, etc. People get really mad about this.
- On a similar note, AI art “has no soul” and AI artists aren’t “real artists.”
- Hamas and/or Israel are evil. Pick whatever position you want on this conflict, there’s a flood of propaganda pushing it and reasoned discussion that goes against it is hard.
- Everything Elon Musk does is somehow evil or idiotic.
- Cryptocurrency is a scam. AI is a scam. <insert some other new technology> is a scam.
- Religion is bad.
- All cops are bastards.
- Unions are good and corporations are bad. Heck, the “capitalism is bad” message in this comic is itself propaganda.
- Cancelling major NASA initiatives like Artemis or Mars Sample Return (or James Webb, Space Shuttle, etc. historically) would be a disaster for space exploration and science, despite their wildly spiralling costs.
Okay, that last one is perhaps getting down into the weeds of one of the more particular communities I find myself in. :)
Of course, there are other communities out there that I’m not commonly in that I expect have the opposite “everyone agrees” views on a lot of these things - DEI is part of some “gay agenda” conspiracy to groom children, Elon Musk is an infallible messiah, cops are the thin blue line protecting us from criminals, unions are destructive to the economy and cause unemployment, and so on and so forth. Propaganda is highly specific to its target audience, as this comic suggests.
The fundamental problem is just that in any significant group or community there are always hot-button issues that “everyone agrees” about, and attempting to question or discuss them with any nuance gets shouted down.
Those ideas you listed are indeed often spread by means of propaganda, but the word propaganda has gained a negative connotation that is itself lacking nuance and is thus undeserved.
Any information disseminated that reflects the views or interests of any particular doctrine or cause - even just your own - is propaganda. If you have publicly expressed any sort of political opinion at all, you have engaged in propaganda.
The word was more useful when widely disseminating information required lots of resources or coordinated effort. Now that anyone can easily do so in a second, the word casts too wide a net to be useful in determining what information is expressed in earnest, and what information is deceptive.
When I see propaganda I first consider where it’s coming from. Does it have the backing of mainstream media? Is it publicly/privately funded? Is it facing opposition, and if so from who? Is it grassroots or is it astroturfing?
Edit: Using the comic we’re commenting under as an example, it is indeed propaganda. That of course is not a useful categorization, so we’ll consider its’ source. The creator of this comic Alzward is independent and their funding seems to come both from crowdsourcing and from selling access to their comics on Webtoons. The scale suggests this is just an independent artist supporting themselves, and that their art - and by extension this comic - is not influenced by money to a great extent. From this we can infer that the views expressed in this comic are expressed in earnest by the artist. The artist’s views may themselves be influenced, but that’s beyond the scope of this discussion. In other words, this is grassroots propaganda.
Propaganda derives from the foreign missions of the catholic church to propagate their faith. This was later generalized to include any messaging with the intention of propagating a belief system, and, after WWI began to also be inflected by a sense that it is deliberately misleading.
The word “propaganda” isn’t what needs “saving.”
I’m not trying to “save” the word propaganda. In highlighting its over-broad definition in combination with its negative connotation, I am actually advocating against its use.
“saving”
Also, don’t use quotes around something the person you’re responding to didn’t say. You are now the second person I’ve responded to in this thread to have done so.
I’ll “definitely” stop doing that for you.
How are those conspiracy theories? They are consensus you disagree with that people are sensitive about? Where is the conspiracy? Just that most people disagree with you?
A lot of these “theories” that you disagree with have no conspiracy in them. Mate you’re just angry that most people disagree with you.
I never said they were conspiracy theories. This is about groupthink and propaganda, with “propaganda” in this context being on the looser end of its definition since it’s not literally government-organized. It’s just a list of things that people in the communities I frequent have a common belief in that can’t be easily debated due to the strength of that shared belief.
This isn’t about whether I personally agree or disagree with these points. I actually do agree with some of them, I just recognize that it’s difficult to discuss them with any nuance. I don’t like it when people agree with me for mindless reasons either.
Not the OP but let’s fish for down votes.
The Azov battalion are Nazis in Ukraine and Russia is actively trying to exterminate them.
The Russian military brought peace to Syria while the US funded Syrian terrorists.
We call Iran terrorists while the US actively terrorized Iran by murdering their generals without provocation.
The US actively pirates Iranian shipments.
The US changes the definition of words to fit their needs. US isn’t in a recession because the government changed how we define recessions.
China is actively committing a deathless genocide because like institutionalized racism we are generalizing the concept of cultural genocide to cover all definitions of genocide.
The Chinese economy is bad because they only grew 5%.
The fentanyl issue is blamed on everyone except the US own incompetence. Whether it be Purdue, or Mexico or China but definitely not a US enforcement issue.
And that’s just off the top of my head.
*Edit. I see my votes have turned positive now that I’ve clarified my personal position on the Ukraine conflict. But let me point out that my facts didn’t change only that I’ve pointed out I’m against Russia.
But this is my point. We should stop down voting facts simply because they’re uncomfortable. That’s how we get presidents like Trump.
except for the first all of these are interesting. As for the first: I am pretty sure there are nazis on both sides, and the Azov-thing is a very very flimsy excuse for the war.
![[Alzwards Corner] Never could happen here](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/f554a50e-b397-4ea1-9cab-40fd25d3dcb5.png){kind=link}