The levels of disinformation coming out of Russia and China are very different than in the west. In the west, governments tend to try and justify their atrocities, not hide the fact that they ever happened. Even when Western governments do try to deny that something happened, it never seems to work very well. Either journalists get a hold of it, or an opposing faction takes control and releases the information.

Americans who are ignorant of American atrocities have actively chosen ignorance. That's not true in China or Russia, and it's definitely not true in North Korea. There is certainly a movement to try and make America that way though.

What is that quote about how the goal of a propagandist is not to get you to believe their lies, but to get you to believe everyone fighting them is just as dishonest?

Anyway, yeah, no, not all sides on every issue are equally dishonest, and any sources found to be deceptive should be pushed back on.

That's a very centrist view. When you chose to ignore everything, you miss when anti-human behavior becomes normal.

sockpuppet.

You can just be against both types of propaganda?

This view is about on par as bad as the propaganda itself.

Propaganda by definition is something that isn't true. It might be wholly untrue, or partially untrue, or twist facts in a specific way to evoke an emotional response while staying "technically" true - with the singular goal to smear the opponent, lest actual fact be debated.

Political debate should always be about debating facts and adopting one's view to reality, not twisting and churning reality to fit one's agenda. It has to stay objective and factual for it to be worth anything.

This is a mistake a lot of people make when it comes to debate. They take facts (often cherry picked, wilfully ignoring aspects that are contrary), draw conclusions, then treat those conclusions as the facts themselves and are unwilling to budge from those conclusions even when presented with further information that proves those conclusions incorrect.

I have a perfect anecdotal example that happened just a few days ago. A right wing "commentator" published numbers of sexual assault reports in various European countries, comparing early 2000s to 2024-2026. The numbers have obviously increased, and this commentator immediately correlated it with immigration numbers - except for one country, Poland. This is obviously an overly simplified conclusion that disregarded things like reporting guideline changes (which means more cases are treated as sexual assault - e.g. in the early 2000s, an upskirt photo would have you charged with harassment in many countries but today it's considered sexual assault), the improving trend of reporting itself (meaning women are less afraid to report if they're assaulted, as police take it more seriously), and also the addition of spousal rape, which 20 years ago wasn't really codified. The numbers are especially obvious in e.g. the UK, where reporting also includes the offender's race - and the data clearly shows that each racial group tracked, roughly matches the makeup of the population (e.g. Asians make up ~9.3% of the population and around 8% of reported SA cases are committed by an Asian assailant, or ~82-83% are committed by white people and they make up ~82.9% of the population). If the increase in SA numbers was due to an increase of immigration, these percentages wouldn't match up.

But it's incredibly easy to whip up some frenzy by omitting these supporting facts, and people are generally too lazy to look them up themselves. They see a narrative that resonates with them emotionally and go with it regardless if it's the reality.

This is the danger of propaganda. All it does is push people to the extremes and create societal clashes. It doesn't help political debate, it snuffs it out, and leads to an inability to cooperate.

Politics at the end of the day should be about cooperation, the ability to solve problems in a way that leaves everyone happy - or, more likely, the least unhappy. But how can you do that when everyone is frothing at the mouth because of propaganda? How can you have an objective debate when everyone is emotionally charged and unwilling to compromise, when the whole thing goes from supporting a view with facts, to supporting a team no matter what? This isn't sports. Your allegiance isn't to a team regardless what they do, but to a stance, to an ideology that can be debated - and if your team shifts their ideology to the point it doesn't fit YOUR ideology, you should be under I obligation to continue supporting them.

One should only have unfaltering loyalty to a single thing. Truth. Let that be scientific truth, historical truth, or personal truth. Propaganda is contrary to that. Therefore one should combat propaganda, regardless if it's against their personal beliefs or in support of it. In fact one should be against propaganda especially if it's supporting their beliefs. Because how can you say, with a clear heart, that you believe in something when you base that belief on lies?

its on you if you are drinking the koolaid of propaganda, propaganda more or less hsould be ignored and heavily fact checked for biases so you can be more informed what you are consuming. You are more or less like conservatives, they drink propagand whole sale without questioning it.

The point of totalitarian propaganda is not to make you believe it, the point of totalitarian cacophony is to invalidate the notion of truth, so dipshits can shrug and say "Who can say, really? Everyone lies!" when word of fucking genocide comes out.

All propaganda should get pushback. Maybe western propaganda should get more but typically pushback is at least allowed.

ML doesn't even allow you to fact-check their propaganda. That makes it so much worse, even if it had an equal level of factual information as western propaganda (it doesn't).