To be fair, everyone’s views are shaped by propaganda of some kind, it’s quite literally unavoidable if you exist within any society. Lots of people like to think that their ideas are just the product of their own independent thinking, but that isn’t really how people work.
The key is to be constantly aware of it. Never follow someone blindly.
That’s true, but you still follow some propaganda. You are aware of it, great, but what’s the difference between someone following the propaganda being aware of it and someone following it blindly?
Intent, mindfulness, and informed decision making?
I mean, knowing that something is technically propaganda does not make it wrong or make it taboo to repeat. The word has a negative connotation because it’s typically used to describe the “other” guys, sure, but its meaning is very broad.
If I were to say the phrase “fuck Nestle” or even just the term “DeGoogle” one could correctly label those as anti-corporate propaganda with an agenda to harm the interests of an untold number of shareholders. Heck, thanks to broadly diversified 401k investment fund options, I am probably one of them and future me could lose entire dollars.
Is anybody on Lemmy going to shake their finger at me for repeating those two pieces of targeted, agenda-driven propaganda though? I certainly don’t feel icky for saying it. I bet I could even say something negative about the president of the united states without feeling embarrassed. :]
You’re not wrong. I like to think I’m immune to proponganda because I’m anarchist but it’s pretty obvious that I can be fooled just as easily as anyone by the pretense of speaking truth to power
My then history teacher said everyone is affected by propaganda, even trained and studied individuals like him. To think you are immune to influence from other people is very naive.
The current state American society has been in for the last 10 to 15 years is heavily a consequence of Russian info ops. Many countries run info ops. But no country has done as much damage as Russia
Yeah, no. American Oligarchs did social media. Youtube, Twitter, facebook, instagram all American. First they did it for money now they are doing it openly for power. Cambridge Analytica, anti-vax, anti-trans, anti-abortion, anti-immigrant all of these are made by Americans to poison the world. And they are going to do much worse with AI. Americans destroyed the world.
Yea naw, my parents watch WeChat short videos and read their BS articles and they constantly regurgitate anti-Democrat rhetorics, and whenever someone gets shot by police, they fucking cheer, the homeless people, anyone with a “mental illness”, even George Floyd, they think trials are waste of time and resources, they want the system to just skip the trial and want the suspects dead.Can’t even blame “Americans” for this, the CCP has full control of the content, they clearly aren’t censoring it.WeChat is literally poisoning the Chinese Overseas Diaspora. Its another tentacle of the CCP’s power. There’s no doubt they also infect social media platforms like facebook, xitter, etc…They sow chaos, and untimately, whatever the CCP does damages the repututation of anyone who is ethnic Chinese or looks ethnic Chinese. They are infaming Sinophobia by being the worse representatives of my people. And all the abuse that I have endured from my parents is from this toxic culture, fuck this “filial piety” BS, fuck conservatism. I’ve been helping out in my parents bussiness, and they still say I’m useless. I really wanna go back in time and shoot confucious for inventing the stupid ass religion, fuck your 孝順, its literally parental indoctrination to control their children. Evil ass shit. Fuck confucious.Nvm
I assumed the US was disseminating right-wing propaganda among the chinese diaspora, given that they do it with every other one.
What does China even get out of turning your parents into right-wing psychos? America gets a community that is happy to work with them against their home country.
You understand the difference between a medium and the content on that medium right?
That’s a rhetorical question since you clearly don’t.
Do you? Control over the medium is far more powerful than being a mere user of that medium.
No other country has done as much? We’re gonna just ignore how much support Israel has thrown behind Trump? Netanyahu was meeting and communicating with him during the 2024 election cycle, all while ignoring the Biden administration! Snubbing a sitting president for a prospective candidate!
Yes, but most propaganda is not specifically fascist in nature.
While that is true, some propaganda is definitely more harmful while some others are relatively harmless.
I am not going to believe your propaganda! My pristine, untainted thoughts won’t take this slander. /s
ML is basically the same too.
whipping out my Horseshoe Theory graph
So, as you can see, the tips of the horseshoe are where the Russian Propaganda lives.
Hey horseshoe theory, wanna… touch tips?
I prefer the Pac-Man interpretation
So I’ve seen.
Yeah, let’s just ignore the right-wing think tanks, the majority of conservative/MAGA influencers who aren’t on Russia’s payroll, and right-wing “news” organizations. It’s totally just Russia and not right-wingers trying to destroy the country to grab all the power for themselves…
They haven’t been on russias payroll for years.
They genuinely believe the shit they swill. By and large the paid agents were 5 to 10 years ago.
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If you look into it an amazing amount of them are further funded by Russia. Not solely but enough to make them bigger than they’d be otherwise.
If you look into it an amazing amount of them are further funded by Russia.
You seem to know more than me based on your response. You are claiming an amazing amount are funded by Russia, are there any decently recent sources which support your claim that you can direct me to? Do these people also take money from US-based right-wing organizations?
What’s so insidious about russia’s psiop over the last few decades is that all they’ve done is gently nudge the dial. They’ve sown distrust of traditional media and of democratic institutions, they’ve polarised discourse to that communities that mostly rubbed alongside one another reasonably well now are so idealogically opposed to each other that the middle ground has evaporated.
And if you think “haha stupid MAGAs” falling for propaganda, I got news for you buddy, you’ve fallen for it too.
You’ve fallen for propaganda that convinces you that there is an external enemy to worry about instead of actually looking at the situation critically. Right-wing organizations drive right-wing talking points.
They’ve sown distrust of traditional media and of democratic institutions
Pretty sure they did that to themselves. I didn’t need Russia feeding me propaganda to see through the bullshit, and many others reached that conclusion on their own. The Fairness Doctrine being repealed is one big reason why traditional media failed. Russia didn’t do that.
they’ve polarised discourse to that communities that mostly rubbed alongside one another reasonably well now are so idealogically opposed to each other that the middle ground has evaporated.
Right-wingers and liberals alike have polarized discourse. Leftists aren’t innocent either, especially MLs (many of whom seem to be biased towards Russia), but there are plenty of leftists I have interacted with or witnessed that were exceedingly fair, empathetic, and human.
Liberals blame anybody to the left of them for not falling in line, constantly mock or berate them for demanding better, and do absolutely nothing meaningful to improve their preferred party or seriously advocate for greatly improving the human condition in America. As for the right, we all know what they do.
middle ground has evaporated.
Politics and governance shouldn’t be a game of tug of war where the Republicans have a monster truck pulling their side and Democrats are pretending to hold the rope on their side. It shouldn’t be a tug of war game at all - that is what breeds polarization.
Yeah, I don’t think they need to be on Russia’s payroll anymore. They’re in deep.
How is Russia controlling their talking points now? I’m responding to the OP’s meme. Is everybody on the right threatened, blackmailed, or are otherwise under duress? We know they aren’t the most intelligent bunch, but they are being traitors for their own reasons - for the most part.
The major talking points mostly came from the aforementioned organizations and outlets even when some of these people were being paid.
Huh? My point was that the people are pushing the insane bullshit on their own accord now because they believe it
What are some major talking points that Russia seeded in their heads that persist to this day or overtly inspire some of the right-wing talking points we presently see? These people are pro-American in their minds - many likely believe they are more pro-American than anybody else.
I personally like to listen to both sides of the story so that I can absorb 2x the disinformation
They cancel each other out if you’re lucky
It depends on the phase. Sometimes you get constructive interference and they add up instead.
I only trust cats :3
I see you’re in the (warm furry pockets) of big cat!
Some feel special for being contrarian!
This is true. Also there are zero mainstream media outlets that are not propaganda of some kind or another at this point. When you intentionally read all kinds of biased news it becomes more and more obvious.
I mean, sure, like a year ago but at this point I also don’t trust what the government and mainstream media say.
I’m against the corporate elite which is why I parrot the media they stuff in my face!
Damn… I’m desperate, but even I wouldn’t suck that
Russia and China have been manipulating discourse in the US since 2016; and American media is happy to let them.
Same statement from me, very different result. Death to fascists!
THE LARGEST MOST COMMONLY WATCHED BEST FUNDED MEDIA OUTLET ISNT MAINSTREAM MEDIA!!1!
😡
So 80% of lemmy.ml users?
Downvoted not because I disagree but because I’m tired of political crap in non-political crap communities.
That’s fair
Lol, I felt like a dick replying that, but I figured someone would go to lemvotes, see i downvoted it and assume i’m maga or something. Nope, totally agree with it, just tired of seeing politics in the places I go to avoid politics lol
Don’t feel bad, bro. I am shitposting and there was literally a political meme comm that I didn’t post this on instead. Today just seemed like a good day for it. You had a valid take though, I’m sure you’re not the only one
I’ve checked the rules and I don’t think this comm is explicitly non political
@Decoy321 or any other mods: Might not be a bad idea to enforce tagging of political content, and then make a sticky with a quick how-to on filtering, so users can easily skip the whole category if they so choose
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