This is a silly post. This really is a very silly post and it really shouldn't be upvoted.
The essence of the OP, "people fall for propaganda because they want to", is literally a classic "personal responsibility" argument with the underlying effort of deflecting blame from the system and environmental conditions (the all-encompassing propaganda apparatus influencing peoples' opinions) and attributing it to an individual's vague inherent qualities instead.
"You fall for propaganda because you want to" is frankly idiotic victim-blaming. Propaganda is highly manipulative and often appeals to people's empathy. You conveniently picked an absurd example of course, but Hamas killing Israeli civilians because of religious extremism and antisemitism, for example, is a much more believable narrative that would require active research to dispel, active research that many people literally don't have the online literacy or critical thinking skills to do. Because of their material conditions and the environments they live in.
People fall for propaganda because their environment has primed them to believe it. It wasn't Radio Free Asia that told me propaganda about China and North Korea, it was my parents and my teachers, people I trusted growing up. It was never as simple as saying "I don't believe it". I grew up thinking China and North Korea were bad and it took years of slow deprogramming until I was able to properly change my mind.
What is everyone else's excuse in your opinion? With how the sentence is phrased as a rhetorical question, do you think there isn't one at all, do you just ascribe other people's failure to reject propaganda as a personal, moral failing? In that case, are they lost causes, are they just inherently less virtuous than you are?
This post is completely reactionary in nature and everyone who upvoted it should question how uncritically they're consuming posts from a platform they trust. It attempts to take the current frustration we all feel from our environments believing propaganda narratives, and uses it to spread complete nonsense about how our ability to reject state propaganda somehow means we're somehow innately better than others. It is, ironically, a great example of how one's trusted environment can make one susceptible to dumbass, reactionary narratives.
It's the same kind of self-deceiving smugness that eventually lead so many of Reddit's self-styled New Atheists down a reactionary path, where feeling superior to the masses made them believe they were immune to being manipulated, which made many of them easy to manipulate by right-wing cults of personality.
Such self-deceiving smugness is poison against class solidarity, is hostile toward the people in general because of the bootstrappy attitude built right into it, and leaves the "I'm too smart to be fooled" believer more susceptible to manipulation over time.
I didn't feel it was worth it locking horns with the OP because of prior experience, but I'm glad you put it in your own words better than I would have.
It’s the same kind of self-deceiving smugness that eventually lead so many of Reddit’s self-styled New Atheists down a reactionary path, where feeling superior to the masses made them believe they were immune to being manipulated
It's exactly the opposite. The "brainwashing" model of propaganda places us, who have seen the truth through it, as an enlightened elite above the brainwashed masses, but this is simply not the case and it's not how propaganda actually works. Check out the sources in my other comment. The Red Sails article 'Masses, Elites, and Rebels' deals directly with your critiques of elitism here.
When did I say anything about brainwashing? You're conjuring up what you want me to have said, not what I said.
My point is that propaganda can influence us in subtle ways that don't have to be complete "brainwashing," and the belief that because you are (presumably) not "brainwashed" that you have completely escaped propaganda's influence is dangerously presumptive.
You didn't mention the term, but if your notion of propaganda is something that can just infect you without warning, then it's not really in line with the scientific views of propaganda and it's much closer to the brainwashing theory. If you just scrolled reddit or listened to a Jordan Peterson lecture every day, would you really be in danger of becoming an anti-communist because of it?
The point is to reject completely any "brainwashing" theories, even if in quotes, because they are unscientific and don't really explain anything. It's about recognizing that people buy into propaganda for specific reasons, exploring those reasons, and about formulating effective strategies to get them to "buy out" if possible. It's about actively rejecting said propaganda and getting people to do the same.
For all your pretenses of scientific rigor, you're claiming that a negative (that propaganda has zero effect on people exposed to it) has been proven, and proving a negative is one of the hardest, if not impossible, things to do.
Again, I didn't talk about brainwashing nor do I believe in the brainwashing theory you keep attributing to me. I said that the things we expose ourselves to have some influence over what we think and believe, and by extension our actions, even if it isn't necessarily predictable what that influence is. Even a reaction against the message is still influenced by that message because it wouldn't have happened otherwise.
that propaganda has zero effect on people exposed to it
That is not the claim, no one has ever claimed this. Propaganda definitely has an effect, but the way it works is different and specific, and it's possible to fight against it. Have you read the article I linked?
Again, I didn’t talk about brainwashing nor do I believe in the brainwashing theory you keep attributing to me
But you did explicitly mention, in your second comment, this:
My point is that propaganda can influence us in subtle ways that don’t have to be complete “brainwashing,” and the belief that because you are (presumably) not “brainwashed” that you have completely escaped propaganda’s influence is dangerously presumptive.
implying that "brainwashing" can exist at least in some limited fashion. You framed your critique only in regard to brainwashing and not the actual theory I'm a proponent of (the article explicitly deals with such points and proposes how to fight them). The point is that the way propaganda works is not by some invisible ever-present influence, but by socially licensing us to go along with certain things. In the same manner marketing and advertising work as well (the ads that don't simply reveal to us use-value of a necessary products, but those that attempt to create a specific brand image).
I said that the things we expose ourselves to have some influence over what we think and believe, and by extension our actions
This claim no one disagrees with, but that is not the same claim you made before. The point is that we rationally choose what we interact with and what we believe, and both of those things are underpinned by our material conditions, but it is possible to rationally make a choice against the prevailing default narrative in society.
That is not the claim, no one has ever claimed this.
The claim that a triumphant will is all it takes to overcome it (and by implication blaming people for not having that triumphant will) suggests that complete immunity to propaganda is just a choice of volition away. Even if it truly was, what is to be done about those who don't flip that propaganda rejection light switch, or don't even know it's there?
You in turn keep attributing what I said to "brainwashing theory." I didn't claim this and you keep throwing it at me anyway. It's tiresome and consequently we're talking past each other.
The claim that a triumphant will is all it takes to overcome it
No, the claim is that people have enough knowledge and access to information that they can debunk any piece of propaganda they see, but they make the rational choice not to and instead go along with it. This choice is not some free will idealistic choice, it happens due to the material conditions in which the people live and the social purpose of propaganda which lets them easily justify their dominant global position as a westerner. The point is that they don't have an actual excuse for "believing" propaganda, but that they go along with it mostly because they want to keep their privilege (or see it as a way to get some), even though on some level they know it's a bad thing.
Yeah, it's intimidating and uncomfortable to go against something that your in-group believes. Which, funnily enough, is another reason why propaganda works as well as it does. When a post like this is upvoted heavily, many people are likely to just ignore it or go along with it even if, in a vacuum, they would disagree. Because the threat of being shunned by a community you care about is a powerful deterrent. "You believe propaganda because you want to" is truly such an ignorant statement, it genuinely shocks me that this was upvoted so much.
I think it's more comfortable to buy into because it also covers over even slight hints of discomfort about propaganda that has already been absorbed (especially in entertainment) under pretenses of "this can't possibly have an effect on me, no matter how subtle, because I am too smart for that."
In this alternative account people aren’t “brainwashed” insofar as they don’t actually believe the lies, not in the way that we generally understand belief. It’s more correct to say that they go along with them, whether enthusiastically or apprehensively, because it’s actually their optimal survival strategy. When we concede that the time horizon and scope of responsibility within which we all make our decisions varies, it becomes much easier to see how their choice could be smart and intelligent. The enlightened critic can plead that if we all agreed to denounce the status quo in unison we’d be immensely rewarded, but the average worker in the first world cannot be accused of naiveté for preferring to keep a low profile, particularly after being subject — very often by that same critic — to so many grim stories of murder and of punishment and of how any attempt at radical change always goes awry.
This is called coercion. This article directly opposes your position.
It doesn't. The passage you quoted here nicely explains. The point of the passage is why the average worker in the west rejects communism. It doesn't provide cover for those actively spreading and positively engaging with racist propaganda. It illuminates the problem with our counter-propaganda and gives us a way forward.
From the same article:
Stop accusing the masses of being “brainwashed.” Stop treating them as cattle, stop attempting to rouse them into action by scolding them with exposure to “unpleasant truths.”
Accept instead that they have been avoiding those truths for a reason. You were able to break through the propaganda barrier, and so could they if they really wanted to. Many of these people see you as the fool, and in many cases not without reason.
Understanding people as intelligent beings, craft a political strategy that convincingly makes the case for why they and their lot are very likely to benefit from joining your political project. Not in some utopian infinite timescale, but soon.
If you cannot make this case, then forget about convincing the person in question. Focus instead on finding other people to whom such a case can be made. This will lead you directly to class analysis.
The key point for this discussion being number 4. The ones that are choosing to be racist will not be convinced by us, and a lot of the people in the west today simply live comfortable lives (especially relative to the Third World) that they don't want to change. In part, the racism gives them justification for this. An example.
This is not "victim-blaming", racist westerners are not the victims in this scenario. People aren't brainwashed, they buy into the propaganda willingly. This is just the Marxist scientific understanding of how propaganda works. If you want to learn more you can read this excellent article. Red Sails has a whole series of articles on the topic, and you can even find the same conclusions from some liberal research.
Nobody mentioned "brainwashing". This article is not a response to my comment. From what I gather, this article states that people buy into propaganda as a coping mechanism, out of convenience, because it's often easier to believe than the truth, in so far that they actively seek it out.
And that is absolutely true. People also actively seek out casinos. Does that mean gambling addicts are not victims of the gambling industry? When a doctor gets a patient addicted to opioids because he was paid by the Sackler family, is it the patient's fault when he eventually turns to heroin? When an woman moves back in with her abusive boyfriend after he half-assed an apology for hitting her for the 4th time in one week, is the woman not a victim?
I am not trying to frame westerners as "innocents" here, I am saying that turning this into an "individual responsibility" argument is reactionary, ignorant nonsense. Propaganda plays on our emotions and yeah, our laziness as well. It's easier to believe that Putin is invading Ukraine because he's an evil dictator who hates freedom than the very complex reality. But how is each individual supposed to find out the truth? A significant percentage of adult Americans are barely literate. What alternative do they have to the propaganda narrative?
If you don't agree that people can willingly stop consuming racist propaganda, and consequently that they are currently willingly consuming racist propaganda, what alternative is there? Cheering on for genocide and colonialism is absolutely a personal failing on the part of the people doing it. They have no excuse with the amount of correct information available to them.
When a doctor gets a patient addicted to opioids because he was paid by the Sackler family, is it the patient’s fault when he eventually turns to heroin? When an woman moves back in with her abusive boyfriend after he half-assed an apology for hitting her for the 4th time in one week, is the woman not a victim?
These are not equivalent examples. Addiction is not the same as being abused. Addicts obviously need help and shouldn't be punished for their addictions, but they do cause material harm to others. If a drunk driver kills someone, he is very much still at fault, despite the societal pressures that push him toward addiction. A certain level of individual responsibility does exist. Similarly, westerners that fund and cheer for genocide because they are racists are very much responsible for their own behavior. This doesn't mean we shouldn't work to build a society where we stop things like this.
The reason people buy into propaganda is not only as a coping mechanism (although that can be a factor). Many buy into it to justify their privileged lives that are only possible due to the oppression of the Third World and the internal colonies in the settler colonial states. Even with the declining standards of living, most people in the west live a lot better than the majority in the rest of the world. They want to believe all the racist propaganda about the rest of the world to justify their own ways of living.
Look at what Che said with regard to the liberation of Latin America in 1954 (source):
Given this background, with American reality being what it is, it’s not difficult to suppose what will be the attitude of the working class of the North American country when the problem of the abrupt loss of markets and sources of cheap raw materials is definitively posed.
This is, in my opinion, the stark reality facing Latin Americans. In the final analysis, the economic development of the United States and the need of its workers to maintain their standard of living means that our struggle for national liberation is not waged against a given social regime, but rather against the whole nation, bound as a bloc by the iron-clad supreme law of common interest, over their domination of the economic life of Latin America.
Graph comparison:
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I am not trying to frame westerners as “innocents” here
Comparing this to victim-blaming, and comparing their situation, as you have above, with abuse victims would suggest otherwise. If they're not innocent, but also aren't guilty by your standards, what are they? If you say they cannot make the choice, wouldn't that imply that they are innocent?
But how is each individual supposed to find out the truth?
How did any of us? How was the theory of Marxism developed in the first place? We all started researching due to a variety of reasons. We rejected the propaganda narratives and put in the time and effort to educate ourselves, we made a choice. No one did this for me, I did it by myself and for myself because I knew things had to change and went to search for answers. Coming to someone, asking questions, and learning from the answers in a choice we make. Communist propaganda and organizing also plays a big role here, of course, but there are already plenty of resources out there which any person in the west can access. We aren't asking them all to be Marxists on their own, we are just asking them not to be actively racist.
The racist westerners in question are constantly exposed to many narratives that run counter to western propaganda and they actively ignore them or try to "debunk" them. How many people do you see every day on social media writing off any story that goes counter to their set position? They actively reject the truth because their interests run counter to it - look at the graph above. They don't want these things to change, similar to this. There are still plenty of regular people in the west that do not cheer for genocide and do not make excuses for SS members, there are still plenty of people in the west that do support Palestinian liberation that aren't communists. There are plenty of people that just aren't informed who would listen to and accept the true facts when presented with them, but these are not the same people that cheer for and spread racist propaganda.
Of course, in the longer term, everyone would benefit from socialism, and we know that, but the average person doesn't - that's something for us to work on. Our methods cannot only be debunking propaganda, we have to offer a better alternative to the current system. But we cannot force people to listen to us. We have to entice them to join us, and not just through rhetoric, but also through action. Still, we cannot remove the responsibility from individuals that willingly go along with genocidal propaganda when there is so much counter-propaganda available (like the current situation with Gaza where a section of the west is cheering for genocide). We will most probably never be able to radicalize the ones cheering for genocide today.
I was typing up a big response to this and your other responses but I really think our disagreement comes down to philosophical questions about free will, what it means to be "guilty" and to what extend one is responsible for their own actions when considering the influences of their environment.
Comparing this to victim-blaming, and comparing their situation, as you have above, with abuse victims would suggest otherwise. If they're not innocent, but also aren't guilty by your standards, what are they? If you say they cannot make the choice, wouldn't that imply that they are innocent?
Good question, would it? That's the core problem. If I point a gun to your head and say "Call someone a racial slur" and you do it, is it your fault? Now what if your parents tell you to call someone a racial slur or they'll kick you out onto the streets and you do it, is that your fault? If all your friends tell you to call someone a slur or they won't talk to you again, is that your fault? What if just one friend tells you to do it? Where do you draw the line between environmental influence and individual agency? And if you're not at fault, are you innocent?
This is not a gotcha, I have no answer for this.
Yes it does, but that doesn't stop everyone from deviating. Plenty of people deviate and even go directly counter to it. Again, in your model of propaganda, why and how are any of us communists then? Being a communist runs directly counter to nearly all incentives and falls directly under state repression. I think you give too much credit to the propaganda machine of the west and too little to the actual people, whether they buy into it or not.
This is related to the other thing. If you asked me, I'd say we deviate because we're in different situations, different circumstances led us down different paths and had our lives gone slightly differently, we could be the ones cheering on genocide in Palestine just as easily. To me, correct me if I'm wrong, it seems like you'd argue otherwise. Do you think if some Elon bootlicker on twitter had lived your exact same life, same parents, same school, same job, that their views would differ from the ones you hold now? Why do you think we became communists?
I have thought about this and I think it's beside the point. I think we need to take another step back because we've gotten lost in random hypothetical examples which don't really matter here.
Dialectical materialism is not compatible with free will, but it's also not compatible with a mechanical determinism where only outside forces act to direct us. We are parts of the dialectic of history and it makes us just as we make it. We take action against those who stand opposed to communism. We condemn and fight them, while trying to get as many people over to our cause as possible. The point here is that we are not subjects external to history and only directed by it, nor do we freely choose our path without the effect of our material conditions.
I agree that it's not of our free will, but we are still parts of the whole, and it is through us that our history happens. We (social humans) live in our societies, we labour and produce, we interpret those relations of production into ideology, we struggle and fight for liberation. We organize and produce the propaganda and counter-propaganda - all shaped by our material conditions. In doing so we try to influence other people one way or the other. The theories that explain most accurately the actual laws that direct society and history, the ones that push forward the progress of history, these being class struggles and Marxism (dialectical materialism), we recognize as correct.
When our scientific understanding of propaganda informs our tactics which then most effectively get people over to our side, that is the correct theory of propaganda. The people choosing racist propaganda when plenty of the opposite is available are of course doing so due to their class position (and race, etc. and material conditions in general). It's not a free choice, but it's one they're making rationally, they aren't being brainwashed. That is the point of the article, and that is the point I interpreted from the original post. That people are not being manipulated insidiously by a propaganda machine that infects them as a virus infects a host, but that their ideology is influenced by their material conditions, and their beliefs are accordingly formulated rationally. This simply means that many westerners in particular are racist, but it's a rational choice (not a free one) they made based on their conditions, it wasn't imposed into them by brainwashing. Both their racism and the racist propaganda exist due to the same material conditions and social relations. For these same reasons, they are against us and everything we stand for, and we are against them in our political activity. For a variety of reasons, certain people make the opposite choice or even become communists, for whatever reason, people do choose not to buy into the propaganda.
The point of pointing this out is that we can rationally influence people if we approach them correctly, that the fight against propaganda is very winnable, and not a hopeless battle we are destined to lose because of some magical mode of operation of propaganda. This part is where the willing acceptance of propaganda comes into it. There are plenty of contradictions in the interests of each person - these are generalized to the level of classes (or other social groups in particular situations) - which in sum determine what that person is susceptible to buy into. The ones that most fervently cheer for genocide, we will never be able to convert because they will never make the choice, but there are plenty of others we can - those that are not buying into the racist propaganda, or are doing so only lightly, passively. Most of these people currently don't really care one way or the other, but the point is that we can make a lot of them care if we approach them correctly - we can get them to choose our side. Many of these people are already making the choice to educate themselves more and are discovering communism and similar theories.
It seems like we should have different standards of complicity when it comes to imperial core populations: the highest for those who gain the most benefits from imperial hegemony (e.g. white people), and then a lower one for those with fewer. There are certainly black neoliberals/fascists around, but there's a different story from self-interest for an Uncle Ruckus. Although it can maybe be said that they simply incorrectly think that they will benefit and act on that, at some level people know where they stand.
I agree generally, especially in terms of material gain to these people and potential reparations, but I also think that personal guilt should be determined on a case by case basis. However, every racist white westerner screaming about Hamas terrorists right now, when plenty of people are sharing actual correct information, is definitely complicit and is purposefully ignoring the evidence he is being given. Similarly, the outrageous stories about the DPRK that are circulated by the various CIA outlets or Yeonmi Park are simply too ridiculous for anyone to actually believe and take seriously, yet until recently people mostly shared them with glee. People go along with them due to other reasons, not an actual belief. Stories about Xinjiang are also not shared because people actually care and tried to inform themselves about the situation, but only due to (real or perceived) material gain (or even just emotional satisfaction) that the people sharing them get.
OP's being a bit bombastic, but his point is fundamentally correct. Yes, the most pervasive propaganda system in history gives everyone raised in it brainworms, but they can still escape them, they do have a choice that they're just not taking. It's not an easy choice, because the propaganda builds up layers of defensive brainworm fortifications that reject any attempt to undo them and because their material interests align with the status quo narrative, but it is still a choice that they have.
I think one could compare it to how historical apologia so often hinges on the fallacy of "oh well we can't be too hard on them for [absolutely heinous thing some historical figure did and/or said], after all they were a product of their time so we can't exactly hold them to modern standards can we?" Because yes, people are a product of their environment and that environment is so often actively toxic and full of brainworm spores that it seems inevitable that it will only create monsters, but everywhere and throughout time people have still overcome that poison and become better than it. I feel confident in saying that even where we have no extant records of it there were people opposing horror and injustice and being silenced for it, not even allowed to become a footnote in the historical record.
If they could do it, what is anyone's excuse today?
Did you just completely forget "You are not immune to propaganda?" What do you think that means?
When you say "Westerners don't have an excuse to fall for propaganda", what is the conclusion you're drawing from that? They have no excuse but they're falling for it anyways, is it truly just an individual moral failing? How come you don't fall for propaganda but everyone else does, what sets you apart from them?
Edit: Also, yes it fucking is. If I lie to you and you believe me, it's my fault for lying to you. This is literally the same "personal responsibility" argument that people bring up when talking about gambling addicts. Propaganda plays on emotion, it plays on our weaknesses, when you show someone pictures of crying children in destroyed buildings their first thought will not be "Hmm, what is the source on that?" for crying out loud.
This is a silly post. This really is a very silly post and it really shouldn't be upvoted.
The essence of the OP, "people fall for propaganda because they want to", is literally a classic "personal responsibility" argument with the underlying effort of deflecting blame from the system and environmental conditions (the all-encompassing propaganda apparatus influencing peoples' opinions) and attributing it to an individual's vague inherent qualities instead.
"You fall for propaganda because you want to" is frankly idiotic victim-blaming. Propaganda is highly manipulative and often appeals to people's empathy. You conveniently picked an absurd example of course, but Hamas killing Israeli civilians because of religious extremism and antisemitism, for example, is a much more believable narrative that would require active research to dispel, active research that many people literally don't have the online literacy or critical thinking skills to do. Because of their material conditions and the environments they live in.
People fall for propaganda because their environment has primed them to believe it. It wasn't Radio Free Asia that told me propaganda about China and North Korea, it was my parents and my teachers, people I trusted growing up. It was never as simple as saying "I don't believe it". I grew up thinking China and North Korea were bad and it took years of slow deprogramming until I was able to properly change my mind.
What is everyone else's excuse in your opinion? With how the sentence is phrased as a rhetorical question, do you think there isn't one at all, do you just ascribe other people's failure to reject propaganda as a personal, moral failing? In that case, are they lost causes, are they just inherently less virtuous than you are?
This post is completely reactionary in nature and everyone who upvoted it should question how uncritically they're consuming posts from a platform they trust. It attempts to take the current frustration we all feel from our environments believing propaganda narratives, and uses it to spread complete nonsense about how our ability to reject state propaganda somehow means we're somehow innately better than others. It is, ironically, a great example of how one's trusted environment can make one susceptible to dumbass, reactionary narratives.
It's the same kind of self-deceiving smugness that eventually lead so many of Reddit's self-styled New Atheists down a reactionary path, where feeling superior to the masses made them believe they were immune to being manipulated, which made many of them easy to manipulate by right-wing cults of personality.
Such self-deceiving smugness is poison against class solidarity, is hostile toward the people in general because of the bootstrappy attitude built right into it, and leaves the "I'm too smart to be fooled" believer more susceptible to manipulation over time.
I didn't feel it was worth it locking horns with the OP because of prior experience, but I'm glad you put it in your own words better than I would have.
It's exactly the opposite. The "brainwashing" model of propaganda places us, who have seen the truth through it, as an enlightened elite above the brainwashed masses, but this is simply not the case and it's not how propaganda actually works. Check out the sources in my other comment. The Red Sails article 'Masses, Elites, and Rebels' deals directly with your critiques of elitism here.
When did I say anything about brainwashing? You're conjuring up what you want me to have said, not what I said.
My point is that propaganda can influence us in subtle ways that don't have to be complete "brainwashing," and the belief that because you are (presumably) not "brainwashed" that you have completely escaped propaganda's influence is dangerously presumptive.
You didn't mention the term, but if your notion of propaganda is something that can just infect you without warning, then it's not really in line with the scientific views of propaganda and it's much closer to the brainwashing theory. If you just scrolled reddit or listened to a Jordan Peterson lecture every day, would you really be in danger of becoming an anti-communist because of it?
The point is to reject completely any "brainwashing" theories, even if in quotes, because they are unscientific and don't really explain anything. It's about recognizing that people buy into propaganda for specific reasons, exploring those reasons, and about formulating effective strategies to get them to "buy out" if possible. It's about actively rejecting said propaganda and getting people to do the same.
For all your pretenses of scientific rigor, you're claiming that a negative (that propaganda has zero effect on people exposed to it) has been proven, and proving a negative is one of the hardest, if not impossible, things to do.
Again, I didn't talk about brainwashing nor do I believe in the brainwashing theory you keep attributing to me. I said that the things we expose ourselves to have some influence over what we think and believe, and by extension our actions, even if it isn't necessarily predictable what that influence is. Even a reaction against the message is still influenced by that message because it wouldn't have happened otherwise.
That is not the claim, no one has ever claimed this. Propaganda definitely has an effect, but the way it works is different and specific, and it's possible to fight against it. Have you read the article I linked?
But you did explicitly mention, in your second comment, this:
implying that "brainwashing" can exist at least in some limited fashion. You framed your critique only in regard to brainwashing and not the actual theory I'm a proponent of (the article explicitly deals with such points and proposes how to fight them). The point is that the way propaganda works is not by some invisible ever-present influence, but by socially licensing us to go along with certain things. In the same manner marketing and advertising work as well (the ads that don't simply reveal to us use-value of a necessary products, but those that attempt to create a specific brand image).
This claim no one disagrees with, but that is not the same claim you made before. The point is that we rationally choose what we interact with and what we believe, and both of those things are underpinned by our material conditions, but it is possible to rationally make a choice against the prevailing default narrative in society.
The claim that a triumphant will is all it takes to overcome it (and by implication blaming people for not having that triumphant will) suggests that complete immunity to propaganda is just a choice of volition away. Even if it truly was, what is to be done about those who don't flip that propaganda rejection light switch, or don't even know it's there?
You in turn keep attributing what I said to "brainwashing theory." I didn't claim this and you keep throwing it at me anyway. It's tiresome and consequently we're talking past each other.
No, the claim is that people have enough knowledge and access to information that they can debunk any piece of propaganda they see, but they make the rational choice not to and instead go along with it. This choice is not some free will idealistic choice, it happens due to the material conditions in which the people live and the social purpose of propaganda which lets them easily justify their dominant global position as a westerner. The point is that they don't have an actual excuse for "believing" propaganda, but that they go along with it mostly because they want to keep their privilege (or see it as a way to get some), even though on some level they know it's a bad thing.
Yeah, it's intimidating and uncomfortable to go against something that your in-group believes. Which, funnily enough, is another reason why propaganda works as well as it does. When a post like this is upvoted heavily, many people are likely to just ignore it or go along with it even if, in a vacuum, they would disagree. Because the threat of being shunned by a community you care about is a powerful deterrent. "You believe propaganda because you want to" is truly such an ignorant statement, it genuinely shocks me that this was upvoted so much.
I think it's more comfortable to buy into because it also covers over even slight hints of discomfort about propaganda that has already been absorbed (especially in entertainment) under pretenses of "this can't possibly have an effect on me, no matter how subtle, because I am too smart for that."
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Why are you able to reject propaganda?
Edit:
This is called coercion. This article directly opposes your position.
It doesn't. The passage you quoted here nicely explains. The point of the passage is why the average worker in the west rejects communism. It doesn't provide cover for those actively spreading and positively engaging with racist propaganda. It illuminates the problem with our counter-propaganda and gives us a way forward.
From the same article:
The key point for this discussion being number 4. The ones that are choosing to be racist will not be convinced by us, and a lot of the people in the west today simply live comfortable lives (especially relative to the Third World) that they don't want to change. In part, the racism gives them justification for this. An example.
This is super idealistic IMO
This is not "victim-blaming", racist westerners are not the victims in this scenario. People aren't brainwashed, they buy into the propaganda willingly. This is just the Marxist scientific understanding of how propaganda works. If you want to learn more you can read this excellent article. Red Sails has a whole series of articles on the topic, and you can even find the same conclusions from some liberal research.
Nobody mentioned "brainwashing". This article is not a response to my comment. From what I gather, this article states that people buy into propaganda as a coping mechanism, out of convenience, because it's often easier to believe than the truth, in so far that they actively seek it out.
And that is absolutely true. People also actively seek out casinos. Does that mean gambling addicts are not victims of the gambling industry? When a doctor gets a patient addicted to opioids because he was paid by the Sackler family, is it the patient's fault when he eventually turns to heroin? When an woman moves back in with her abusive boyfriend after he half-assed an apology for hitting her for the 4th time in one week, is the woman not a victim?
I am not trying to frame westerners as "innocents" here, I am saying that turning this into an "individual responsibility" argument is reactionary, ignorant nonsense. Propaganda plays on our emotions and yeah, our laziness as well. It's easier to believe that Putin is invading Ukraine because he's an evil dictator who hates freedom than the very complex reality. But how is each individual supposed to find out the truth? A significant percentage of adult Americans are barely literate. What alternative do they have to the propaganda narrative?
If you don't agree that people can willingly stop consuming racist propaganda, and consequently that they are currently willingly consuming racist propaganda, what alternative is there? Cheering on for genocide and colonialism is absolutely a personal failing on the part of the people doing it. They have no excuse with the amount of correct information available to them.
These are not equivalent examples. Addiction is not the same as being abused. Addicts obviously need help and shouldn't be punished for their addictions, but they do cause material harm to others. If a drunk driver kills someone, he is very much still at fault, despite the societal pressures that push him toward addiction. A certain level of individual responsibility does exist. Similarly, westerners that fund and cheer for genocide because they are racists are very much responsible for their own behavior. This doesn't mean we shouldn't work to build a society where we stop things like this.
The reason people buy into propaganda is not only as a coping mechanism (although that can be a factor). Many buy into it to justify their privileged lives that are only possible due to the oppression of the Third World and the internal colonies in the settler colonial states. Even with the declining standards of living, most people in the west live a lot better than the majority in the rest of the world. They want to believe all the racist propaganda about the rest of the world to justify their own ways of living.
Look at what Che said with regard to the liberation of Latin America in 1954 (source):
Graph comparison:
Comparing this to victim-blaming, and comparing their situation, as you have above, with abuse victims would suggest otherwise. If they're not innocent, but also aren't guilty by your standards, what are they? If you say they cannot make the choice, wouldn't that imply that they are innocent?
How did any of us? How was the theory of Marxism developed in the first place? We all started researching due to a variety of reasons. We rejected the propaganda narratives and put in the time and effort to educate ourselves, we made a choice. No one did this for me, I did it by myself and for myself because I knew things had to change and went to search for answers. Coming to someone, asking questions, and learning from the answers in a choice we make. Communist propaganda and organizing also plays a big role here, of course, but there are already plenty of resources out there which any person in the west can access. We aren't asking them all to be Marxists on their own, we are just asking them not to be actively racist.
The racist westerners in question are constantly exposed to many narratives that run counter to western propaganda and they actively ignore them or try to "debunk" them. How many people do you see every day on social media writing off any story that goes counter to their set position? They actively reject the truth because their interests run counter to it - look at the graph above. They don't want these things to change, similar to this. There are still plenty of regular people in the west that do not cheer for genocide and do not make excuses for SS members, there are still plenty of people in the west that do support Palestinian liberation that aren't communists. There are plenty of people that just aren't informed who would listen to and accept the true facts when presented with them, but these are not the same people that cheer for and spread racist propaganda.
Of course, in the longer term, everyone would benefit from socialism, and we know that, but the average person doesn't - that's something for us to work on. Our methods cannot only be debunking propaganda, we have to offer a better alternative to the current system. But we cannot force people to listen to us. We have to entice them to join us, and not just through rhetoric, but also through action. Still, we cannot remove the responsibility from individuals that willingly go along with genocidal propaganda when there is so much counter-propaganda available (like the current situation with Gaza where a section of the west is cheering for genocide). We will most probably never be able to radicalize the ones cheering for genocide today.
I was typing up a big response to this and your other responses but I really think our disagreement comes down to philosophical questions about free will, what it means to be "guilty" and to what extend one is responsible for their own actions when considering the influences of their environment.
Good question, would it? That's the core problem. If I point a gun to your head and say "Call someone a racial slur" and you do it, is it your fault? Now what if your parents tell you to call someone a racial slur or they'll kick you out onto the streets and you do it, is that your fault? If all your friends tell you to call someone a slur or they won't talk to you again, is that your fault? What if just one friend tells you to do it? Where do you draw the line between environmental influence and individual agency? And if you're not at fault, are you innocent?
This is not a gotcha, I have no answer for this.
This is related to the other thing. If you asked me, I'd say we deviate because we're in different situations, different circumstances led us down different paths and had our lives gone slightly differently, we could be the ones cheering on genocide in Palestine just as easily. To me, correct me if I'm wrong, it seems like you'd argue otherwise. Do you think if some Elon bootlicker on twitter had lived your exact same life, same parents, same school, same job, that their views would differ from the ones you hold now? Why do you think we became communists?
I have thought about this and I think it's beside the point. I think we need to take another step back because we've gotten lost in random hypothetical examples which don't really matter here.
Dialectical materialism is not compatible with free will, but it's also not compatible with a mechanical determinism where only outside forces act to direct us. We are parts of the dialectic of history and it makes us just as we make it. We take action against those who stand opposed to communism. We condemn and fight them, while trying to get as many people over to our cause as possible. The point here is that we are not subjects external to history and only directed by it, nor do we freely choose our path without the effect of our material conditions.
I agree that it's not of our free will, but we are still parts of the whole, and it is through us that our history happens. We (social humans) live in our societies, we labour and produce, we interpret those relations of production into ideology, we struggle and fight for liberation. We organize and produce the propaganda and counter-propaganda - all shaped by our material conditions. In doing so we try to influence other people one way or the other. The theories that explain most accurately the actual laws that direct society and history, the ones that push forward the progress of history, these being class struggles and Marxism (dialectical materialism), we recognize as correct.
When our scientific understanding of propaganda informs our tactics which then most effectively get people over to our side, that is the correct theory of propaganda. The people choosing racist propaganda when plenty of the opposite is available are of course doing so due to their class position (and race, etc. and material conditions in general). It's not a free choice, but it's one they're making rationally, they aren't being brainwashed. That is the point of the article, and that is the point I interpreted from the original post. That people are not being manipulated insidiously by a propaganda machine that infects them as a virus infects a host, but that their ideology is influenced by their material conditions, and their beliefs are accordingly formulated rationally. This simply means that many westerners in particular are racist, but it's a rational choice (not a free one) they made based on their conditions, it wasn't imposed into them by brainwashing. Both their racism and the racist propaganda exist due to the same material conditions and social relations. For these same reasons, they are against us and everything we stand for, and we are against them in our political activity. For a variety of reasons, certain people make the opposite choice or even become communists, for whatever reason, people do choose not to buy into the propaganda.
The point of pointing this out is that we can rationally influence people if we approach them correctly, that the fight against propaganda is very winnable, and not a hopeless battle we are destined to lose because of some magical mode of operation of propaganda. This part is where the willing acceptance of propaganda comes into it. There are plenty of contradictions in the interests of each person - these are generalized to the level of classes (or other social groups in particular situations) - which in sum determine what that person is susceptible to buy into. The ones that most fervently cheer for genocide, we will never be able to convert because they will never make the choice, but there are plenty of others we can - those that are not buying into the racist propaganda, or are doing so only lightly, passively. Most of these people currently don't really care one way or the other, but the point is that we can make a lot of them care if we approach them correctly - we can get them to choose our side. Many of these people are already making the choice to educate themselves more and are discovering communism and similar theories.
It seems like we should have different standards of complicity when it comes to imperial core populations: the highest for those who gain the most benefits from imperial hegemony (e.g. white people), and then a lower one for those with fewer. There are certainly black neoliberals/fascists around, but there's a different story from self-interest for an Uncle Ruckus. Although it can maybe be said that they simply incorrectly think that they will benefit and act on that, at some level people know where they stand.
I agree generally, especially in terms of material gain to these people and potential reparations, but I also think that personal guilt should be determined on a case by case basis. However, every racist white westerner screaming about Hamas terrorists right now, when plenty of people are sharing actual correct information, is definitely complicit and is purposefully ignoring the evidence he is being given. Similarly, the outrageous stories about the DPRK that are circulated by the various CIA outlets or Yeonmi Park are simply too ridiculous for anyone to actually believe and take seriously, yet until recently people mostly shared them with glee. People go along with them due to other reasons, not an actual belief. Stories about Xinjiang are also not shared because people actually care and tried to inform themselves about the situation, but only due to (real or perceived) material gain (or even just emotional satisfaction) that the people sharing them get.
Or maybe both parts of the dialectic are mechanistic/deterministic? 🤔
OP's being a bit bombastic, but his point is fundamentally correct. Yes, the most pervasive propaganda system in history gives everyone raised in it brainworms, but they can still escape them, they do have a choice that they're just not taking. It's not an easy choice, because the propaganda builds up layers of defensive brainworm fortifications that reject any attempt to undo them and because their material interests align with the status quo narrative, but it is still a choice that they have.
I think one could compare it to how historical apologia so often hinges on the fallacy of "oh well we can't be too hard on them for [absolutely heinous thing some historical figure did and/or said], after all they were a product of their time so we can't exactly hold them to modern standards can we?" Because yes, people are a product of their environment and that environment is so often actively toxic and full of brainworm spores that it seems inevitable that it will only create monsters, but everywhere and throughout time people have still overcome that poison and become better than it. I feel confident in saying that even where we have no extant records of it there were people opposing horror and injustice and being silenced for it, not even allowed to become a footnote in the historical record.
If they could do it, what is anyone's excuse today?
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Did you read literally anything I wrote?
Did you just completely forget "You are not immune to propaganda?" What do you think that means?
When you say "Westerners don't have an excuse to fall for propaganda", what is the conclusion you're drawing from that? They have no excuse but they're falling for it anyways, is it truly just an individual moral failing? How come you don't fall for propaganda but everyone else does, what sets you apart from them?
Edit: Also, yes it fucking is. If I lie to you and you believe me, it's my fault for lying to you. This is literally the same "personal responsibility" argument that people bring up when talking about gambling addicts. Propaganda plays on emotion, it plays on our weaknesses, when you show someone pictures of crying children in destroyed buildings their first thought will not be "Hmm, what is the source on that?" for crying out loud.
it's a joke, chill