Lol authoritarian is such a non descriptice word. Like propaganda only is there at their bad countries we are so much better and have no propaganda at all.. most looks at the west to get tips for the best propaganda. Authoritarian is when stuff gets done.
this post was submitted on 03 May 2025
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I think the real problem is, people don’t know how to manage their emotions, and those end up swaying them left and right. Opportunistic antagonists will take advantage of those triggers.
Stop thinking with with your gut, take a pause to analyze your body response to emotions. Are you sweating? Are you afraid or is it actually warm? If you’re afraid, what specifically do you fear? Etc.
Propaganda, echo chambers, peer pressure, and even vicious cycles of self-pity, anger, sadness… will have a weaker hold on you.
Feel, but don’t stop thinking.
I am gonna take a biased and unsubstantiated leap in logic here but no. Not because most people are incapable of critical thinking but because it is intentionally not encouraged by western education. Critical thinking is something that has to be taught to people and most people have never had a reason to learn it. All they need to know is how to go to work and consume.
Do you believe that your media isn’t propaganda? Just because it seems less extreme doesn’t mean you’ve not been duped too.
There's too much lies in the world, I kinda developed a sort of "solipcistic" view of the world.
If I never witnessed it, I categorize it as "potentially false".
Of course, the entire news could be just fabricated. Nobody can tell for sure.
Anything beyond my immediate sorroundings could just be a stage. I could be in a truman show with everything I see being a deception, or in other terms "propaganda".
I'm not saying that everything isn't real, I just feel like that possibility should be entertained, to keep in mind as a potential possible explanation of what appears to be reality. Just as how a nation can lie to its people about reality, even the people closest to you, your parents, could also just be liars as well.
People never question if they are, in fact, the biological children of their parents, and just assume they are. That is another form of "propaganda". People just accept their parent's words as truth.
Propaganda is certainly everywhere. You cannot be sure what is real, other than the fact that "you" exist, in some form.
The concept of "the average person" is a good example of the type of crass generalisation that propagndists often use.
No, the average person does not have critical thinking. You are correct.
Well, here is me, who fell into nuclear propaganda.
Considering that critical thinking has to be thought to you, I think most people who skipped college may not have a good grasp on it.
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Do people in authoritarian countries actually just eat the propaganda? To what extent do they believe the propaganda?
Where I come from? Not much, but part of that is because the lies are so obvious and in conflict with people's lived experience that you can't even delude yourself into accepting them.
Social media is designed to override your critical thinking faculties.
Human beings aren't evolved to get news/information from such a wide variety of sources at such a fast rate. Your critical thinking faculties just get overrun.
Everyone has experienced this and accidentally shared an article from The Onion or whatever without noticing in the short term that they are responding to some kind of bias being confirmed.
I'd be very skepical and deduce that there is censorshop going on and the offical news could be exaggerated or entirely falsified
After you realise you are a hostage, what's the "good" response, in your opinion? Protest and get surpressed? Start a partisan group, and be afraid for your life 24/7? Join the surpressors for small benefits for your and yours, at the peril of others? Play along with the idea to "change it from the inside"?
Probably nothing revolutionary.
But if you don't believe the propaganda, you'd probably enjoy life more.
For example: there literally a list of steam games that some far-right nutjob compiled that declares a lot of games to be "Woke" or "DEI". Imagine how much fun they miss out on because they are so far up the kool aid cult and actually refuses to play those games.
And other times, it can save you from a lot of misery and perhaps save your life. See: Anti-Vax and Anti-Science propaganda. If you are able to see through that bullshit, you wouldn't die from a stupid horse dewormer or other psudoscience crap.
"You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind." -Mahatma Gandhi
The fight might not be right here, right this moment, but you can pass along the torch, the spirit.
Teach your children to be skeptical of the authorities, and be vigilent of propaganda. If they are getting involved in a "Hitler Youth" equivalvent, you'd intervene and stop them.
Treach kindness and empathy, but also decisiveness when the time comes to stand against injustice.
And also, pick your fights carefully, do not do this alone. Do not become a foolish dead hero, become a successful revolutionary. (Underground Movements)
Don't let them imprison your mind.
TLDR: The best you can do is just refuse to regurgitate the same propaganda. This is a passive thing that is, while subtle, an important part of the resistance.
Teach your children to be skeptical of the authorities, and be vigilent of propaganda.
I grew up in DDR. That act in itself is punishable. In mandatory state school, there was a lot "you live thanks to, and for others" propaganda. Teachers would get benefits if they succesfully got children to tell on their family, or their friends. The children who did so were lauded.
Would you trust your 8 year old kid to not tell his best friend what you talked about at home?
I think your imagination fails to understand the magnitute of surpressing a state can and will do. It's not just the state, and bad guys in it. It's everywhere. 1-in-3 people were informants to the stasi. Je stärker der Sozialismus, desto sicherer der Frieden.
I do think people without direct experience are unable to understand the depth or the totalitarian evil. It's just too terrifying to accept that one can be trully powerless, that any kind of resistance can lead not just to the destruction of themselves, but also their families, that the degree of bullying and control can be so high and the regard for human life so low.
It's too scary, so normal human minds just refuse it as a possibility and try to imagine more optimistic scenarios.
It's healthy not to lose hope, but it's also not good to underestimate the evil and unfair to look down on the people facing it.
I mean... where are you from? Looking at your post history you sound American.
You tell me.
Looking at the 2024 election results. I guess not. 😞
But 1/3 of eligible voters didn't even vote, so is that really about critical thinking? Or is it just laziness?
At the point of re-electing the fascistoid oligarch that your democracy barely survived the first time, is there a difference? If you can't critical think your way out of the couch for that one you're not critical thinking super hard.
But I didn't even mean it that way. Did you eat the propaganda before Trump? The anthem in sports matches, the pledge of allegiance in schools, land of the free, leaders of the free world, 80s movies with Russian bad guys, 00s movies with muslim terrorists, all that jazz?
Trump is critical thinking easy mode and you have the best first hand knowledge of propaganda in the past century. US cultural imperialism didn't start with Trump. If anything it ends with him.
I've recently gotten into BP debating and it teaches you a palette of skills useful in seeing through propaganda. (Seeing nuance in bad things, playing devil's advocate, narrowing down disputes to very specific points of contention, explaining things with chains of cause and effect, putting facts into perspective, making sure to explicitly define words, ...) I wish more people tried it – it would raise the quality of discourse in society so much.
Yes.