I would really rather that these were actual examples, and not conspiracy theories. We all have our own unsubstantiated ideas about what shadowy no-gooders are doing, but I'd rather hear about things that are actually happening.
A KGB spy and a CIA agent meet up in a bar for a friendly drink.
“I have to admit, I'm always so impressed by Soviet propaganda. You really know how to get people worked up,” the CIA agent says.
“Thank you,” the KGB says. “We do our best but truly, it's nothing compared to American propaganda. Your people believe everything your state media tells them.”
The CIA agent drops his drink in shock and disgust. “Thank you friend, but you must be confused... There's no propaganda in America.”
“Democrats are liberal/progressive”
In reality, they’re pretty conservative.
Democrats are liberals. Republicans are too. Both of them are reactionary.
That’s only true if you use the international definition of “liberal”. In America, “liberal” means “left wing”. And we’re talking about American politics.
In America, “liberal” means “left wing”.
No it doesn't. Widespread ignorance does not change objective reality. This sort of thinking is Hyperliberalism. Just because most Americans are politically illiterate doesn't mean the definition is changed. 40% Americans also believe the entire universe is only 6000 years old.
If you ask an american political scientist to define "liberal" they will tell you the "international" definition. If you allow technical and scientific terms to be subjected to "language just evolves" you end up with a Tower of Babble type situation where different groups of people are unable to communicate with one another despite using the same language and society collapses.
If you ignore the actual usage of words then you’re speaking your own language and talking only with your own in-group bubble.
This was not a conversation about the political science term “liberal”. It is about lies told to everyone. We’re obviously discussing common usage.
We’re obviously discussing common usage.
Saying something is obvious doesn't make it true. The only noun you use in your first comment is "Democrats" so how is this not a discussion about politics? I am having a discussion about politics and I'm going to do my best to use political terminology in its established scientific meaning not a niche dialect that you believe is "common use."
The world is much bigger than the USA. Americans only make up 15% of the English speaking world. What you call "common use" is just "ignorant and wrong" to the rest of us.
"Owning a car = freedom"
"You need a big truck/SUV to haul things" (it's just a coincidence that people drove much smaller cars before a multibillion dollar deluge of advertising)
"It's consumers' responsibility to reduce plastic pollution by recycling, and recycling is effective" (whoever came up with this one belongs in the PR scumfuck hall of fame)
"Owning a car = freedom"
Unfortunately in a country where the infrastructure is so hostile to public transit or even pedestrian/biking amenities that it's nearly impossible to live, work or function without a car unless you're lucky enough to live in a dense urban community, I can see how people might believe this.
https://futurism.com/the-byte/scientists-recycling-backfired It's not that it is useless, it' just not the solution
That Israel is not a colonial state. All it's founders defined it as a European colonial project. It was and is allied with all the colonial powers and projects like Britain, the US, apartheid south Africa, and Rhodesia. Its funding association was called the Palestine Jewish colonization association. It's bank was called the Jewish colonial trust. The Jewish national fund and the Zionist project at large was from the beginning concerned with building segregated colonies.
First, lands were bought with foreign funding from feudal land lords, and their inhabitants were entirely dispossessed, kicked out. Then when awareness of the ultimate goals of the Zionist project crystalized and resistance against Palestinian dispossession mounted, the lands were ethnically cleansed by force and the people massacred. 700 to 800 thousand Palestinians were ethnically cleansed in one continuous military operation that spanned two years from 1947 to 1948.
Zionist leaders fully acknowledged that Palestinian demographics were a core issue to the Zionist project, that the Palestinian population had to be removed at any cost, which is exactly what Israel did. What lead to the Palestinians being defenseless in this situation? Colonial Britain abetted the formation of heavily armed Zionist militias with soldiers numbering in the tens of thousands. The arms of Britain's colonial military presence were inherited by the Zionist forces that it supported. All this while Britain summarily excecuted any Palestinian found in possession of a firearm.
This is not to mention the enthusiastic support of european antisemites for the Zionist project, or its strict early opposition by antifascist jews.
The idea that Israel has any right to exist on Palestinian land is a lie that has been so heavily proliferated, it has to be debunked when it should be paid no consideration at all.
America is the greatest country in the world. Only those who haven't travelled much would believe that.
It is a libertarian's dream country though. No where else is it so easy to get others to invest in your idea.
People believe insane shit about North Korea because they heard other insane shit about North Korea.
That's one of the wildest ones, like it just bypasses the critical thinking part of their brains. "Yes, there's a town in North Korea surrounded by fake fields, which are harvested by fake farmers. They all live in fake homes and go into a fake school that that has power but don't have any windows."
South Korea has potemkin villages on its side of the border. The government pays people to live there for a few weeks out of the year. Otherwise they’re empty. Source: been there.
It is hilarious how the villages are remarkably similar (and I say that to the South's credit, in some respects), but one gets called "Propaganda Village" and the other -- if it is mentioned at all -- is merely called by its name. It's that meme about "Our noble government, their nefarious regime" in such a literal and direct portrayal that you couldn't write it in a parody without it being seen as too hamfisted.
Those people in North Korea believe the wildest things. No, I will not reflect on the irony of thinking North Koreans believe Kim Jong Un doesn't shit or whatever based on nothing but headlines I've read.
Japan’s single party state is democratic and freedom-pilled!
But yeah lol. The US throwing stones about democracy is hilariously hypocritical.
Also Russia is collapsing and on the verge of invading the rest of Europe.
Poland was only when the Nazis invaded. Honestly, being under Soviet occupation would be soooo much more preferable than Nazi occupation.
Also I wouldn’t really call the conflict in Georgia invading Europe lol.
So basically you’ve got Ukraine and an example from the 40s. Which was also related to the coming war with the Nazis. That’s not a giant pattern.
They don't say what you claimed in that clip, but also it's just a random talk show. If we start treating what people say on US talk shows as official policy, then I can find you lots of utterly unhinged stuff too.
I can even do you one better https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR3063.html
That note at the beginning lmao.
"NONONO, WE DON'T ACTUALLY MEAN THE THINGS WE PUBLISHED, THAT'S RUSSIAN DISINFORMATION"
These are objective facts that even mainstream western media now openly acknowledges, here are a few examples for you from just the past month
- https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/when-how-will-ukraine-war-russia-end-2024-3bh9bvswr
- https://asiatimes.com/2023/12/exclusive-150000-ukraine-soldiers-killed-in-action-through-october/
- https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/zelenskyy-putin-year-end-conference-rcna130656
- https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/22/world/europe/russia-ukraine-war.html
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/12/22/ukraine-ammunition-shortage-russia-war/
- https://www.economist.com/europe/2023/12/17/ukraines-army-is-struggling-to-find-good-recruits
- https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/15/politics/ukraine-us-aid-western-officials-warning/index.html
- https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/16/world/europe/ukraine-kherson-river-russia.html
- https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67714719
- https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/15/world/europe/ukraine-military-recruitment.html
Your post history would be a lot funnier if it didn’t truly express the limits of your understanding.
Most of my post history is about getting illegally evicted by my oldest friend after I came out as bi and starting a new job at amazon to stay homed while I figure that shit out. You'd have an easier time laughing at that except for the fact it makes me ignorant of modern history?
"Russia is winning" is premature, but Ukraine absolutely is collapsing, as evidenced by the press-ganging.
Republican talking points. All of them. Pick literally anything they say about guns or economics. Literally anything.
It's wild how unburdened they are by having to conform to observable reality, they can just go nuts and say whatever. Jewish space lasers? Fuck it, why not, throw some alien clones in there too
Literally anything regarding China, especially Xinjiang if you talk to anyone from
I was talking to a mate about Palestine and he immediately went for the "bUt TiAnAm3n SqU@r3 k1LLeD oVeR tEn Th0uSaNd" and the "Ch1n@ cEnOcIde iN UygHuRs Th0" with the swiftness of a 737 flying into the 2nd tower. They will disregard who originally makes these claims and are 100% unfazed by say, World Uyghur Congress being totally in support of the genocide in Gaza, the response being either dismissal or "you're too much into politics and also ableism".
Communism=Authoritarianism
I was taught in school the characteristics of authoritarianism and a couple weeks later, when i was being taught about communism, the same characteristics were said
Going a step further, the idea of authoritarian. Every ideology with a state relies on some type of authority to function, as a term it is an attempt at equating fascism and communism and serves as holocaust trivialization.
The Black Book of Communism counts Nazi soldiers killed on the eastern front, Soviet soldiers and civillians killed by Nazis on the eastern front, and all the hypothetical unborn children of the dead on both sides as "victims of Communism."
Of course, all the people currently living in tent cities a few blocks from my apartment in Free America are simply homeless because they're dumb individual people who made dumb individual choices. All the people struggling to put food on the table simply didnt work hard enough. Don't ask why it seems to be happening to everyone all at once though, that's communist talk.
Does anyone still believe this? It's been debunked so many times.
IIRC there's some evidence that cold temperatures weaken the immune system. Assuming it's valid, that does mean that cold could be the deciding factor between contracting a cold or fighting if off.
Now obviously germ theory is correct and it takes external infection to catch a cold, but it's a pretty safe bet you're being more or less constantly exposed to COVID and the flu whenever you're in an indoor public space.
communism means no freedom / no food / whatever. anti-communist propaganda was a massive and very successful effort in the west
Here's a specific one that we are told about history: that we work less than our ancestors did thanks to automation and labor-saving devices. Truth is that the period of history (granted I'm talking specifically about European history) where people did the least amount of work per year was probably the middle ages (the other top contender for "least work required to live" is hunter-gatherer societies), until right before the industrial revolution. The industrial revolution sees people go from working for about half the year to working through the entire year, and from having relatively slow schedules to absolutely brutal ones. Kids went from working half days (when they worked at all) to working full time, and the compensation everyone got bought them fewer luxuries than their grandparents had when they were literally peasants.
There's been some clawing back of our lost free time in the past century - and without modern productivity many of the things we take for granted simply wouldn't exist - but we're still pretty deep in the red compared to back then, and of course there are plenty of places in the world where working conditions are still comparable to the worst times of the industrial revolution. I'm not a "Retvrn" guy but I think this bit of context regarding modern work culture compared to the ten thousand years preceding it is something everyone should know, but that our society constantly paints over with misrepresentations of what the past looked like.
And stress, damn stress 24/7 ever since mobile phones appeared. Some company tequires you to answer even if it's your off day.
