Propaganda doesn't totally rob people of agency free will (more accurate term), if it did this site wouldn't exist. People do have the capacity to develop critical thinking, skepticism, and a basic curiosity about the world that allow them to develop some resistance to propaganda.
You can hold people accountable for failing to even attempt to do this.
“Better” is not the same thing as “more competent in some respect”. “Better” implies inherent worth, that someone for some reason, possibly even a literal physical disability, who cannot access the same level of knowledge as us but still desires to and is a leftist, would not be worth as much as people as people who are able to access more knowledge are.
That's just semantics, in which case the word better can signify either concept and anything in between.
No it’s not semantics, it’s what the person you responded to meant.
That's fair, my prior response didn't fully take into account the context of the discussion, sorry
But I disagree, because the top comment (my interpretation of it at least) seems to be making the common vulgar determinist reduction of all choices and actions to simple results of material circumstances. I don't think this is a particularly useful or accurate reduction, especially in the context of this post.
If the comment is more pushing back on a general trend of liberal exceptionalism I don't have as much of a problem. But the post itself isn't an example of this exceptionalism, nor are value judgements as to a given person's ability to critically engage with things.