Stuff like this is, I think, a good demonstration of the thesis that Roderic Day advances: Westerners aren't anti-Communists because of the dastardly propaganda, it's the other way around: they believe this plainly absurd shit because they want to.
They are good little Roman citizens, always ready to believe that Rome is killing bad guys because that conquest is how they got their material abundance in the first place.
I'm definitely still internalizing his argument, but I think Roderic's broader point is that the imperial proletariat (assuming you're in the west like myself, if not, then I apologize for projecting)
So it's not that ignorance doesn't play a role, I also was ignorant of a lot of history until just a few years ago, but it's more that we have instinctively internalized that openly fighting back against these propaganda narratives would not materially benefit us, even if we haven't made that overtly clear to ourselves. (Now in my own words:) It's much much easier for us to simply go with the imperial flow, because, even if we're poor as shit by first-world standards, we still have it better than the third-world, global south proletariat (and we do so because we benefit from their exploitation!). It's definitely an uncomfortable indictment, but at least brings the power of propaganda down to a less mystical level.
Of course, there absolutely are people who revel in and relish the propaganda, just look at
Stuff like this is, I think, a good demonstration of the thesis that Roderic Day advances: Westerners aren't anti-Communists because of the dastardly propaganda, it's the other way around: they believe this plainly absurd shit because they want to.
They are good little Roman citizens, always ready to believe that Rome is killing bad guys because that conquest is how they got their material abundance in the first place.
I definitely believed Red Scare stuff because there was no readily available evidence to the contrary.
I'm definitely still internalizing his argument, but I think Roderic's broader point is that the imperial proletariat (assuming you're in the west like myself, if not, then I apologize for projecting)
So it's not that ignorance doesn't play a role, I also was ignorant of a lot of history until just a few years ago, but it's more that we have instinctively internalized that openly fighting back against these propaganda narratives would not materially benefit us, even if we haven't made that overtly clear to ourselves. (Now in my own words:) It's much much easier for us to simply go with the imperial flow, because, even if we're poor as shit by first-world standards, we still have it better than the third-world, global south proletariat (and we do so because we benefit from their exploitation!). It's definitely an uncomfortable indictment, but at least brings the power of propaganda down to a less mystical level.
Of course, there absolutely are people who revel in and relish the propaganda, just look at