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[Alzwards Corner] Never could happen here
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2024
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Okay, here's a whole bunch I can think of off the top of my head.
Okay, that last one is perhaps getting down into the weeds of one of the more particular communities I find myself in. :)
Of course, there are other communities out there that I'm not commonly in that I expect have the opposite "everyone agrees" views on a lot of these things - DEI is part of some "gay agenda" conspiracy to groom children, Elon Musk is an infallible messiah, cops are the thin blue line protecting us from criminals, unions are destructive to the economy and cause unemployment, and so on and so forth. Propaganda is highly specific to its target audience, as this comic suggests.
The fundamental problem is just that in any significant group or community there are always hot-button issues that "everyone agrees" about, and attempting to question or discuss them with any nuance gets shouted down.
Those ideas you listed are indeed often spread by means of propaganda, but the word propaganda has gained a negative connotation that is itself lacking nuance and is thus undeserved.
Any information disseminated that reflects the views or interests of any particular doctrine or cause - even just your own - is propaganda. If you have publicly expressed any sort of political opinion at all, you have engaged in propaganda.
The word was more useful when widely disseminating information required lots of resources or coordinated effort. Now that anyone can easily do so in a second, the word casts too wide a net to be useful in determining what information is expressed in earnest, and what information is deceptive.
When I see propaganda I first consider where it's coming from. Does it have the backing of mainstream media? Is it publicly/privately funded? Is it facing opposition, and if so from who? Is it grassroots or is it astroturfing?
Edit: Using the comic we're commenting under as an example, it is indeed propaganda. That of course is not a useful categorization, so we'll consider its' source. The creator of this comic Alzward is independent and their funding seems to come both from crowdsourcing and from selling access to their comics on Webtoons. The scale suggests this is just an independent artist supporting themselves, and that their art - and by extension this comic - is not influenced by money to a great extent. From this we can infer that the views expressed in this comic are expressed in earnest by the artist. The artist's views may themselves be influenced, but that's beyond the scope of this discussion. In other words, this is grassroots propaganda.
Propaganda derives from the foreign missions of the catholic church to propagate their faith. This was later generalized to include any messaging with the intention of propagating a belief system, and, after WWI began to also be inflected by a sense that it is deliberately misleading.
The word "propaganda" isn't what needs "saving."
I'm not trying to "save" the word propaganda. In highlighting its over-broad definition in combination with its negative connotation, I am actually advocating against its use.
Also, don't use quotes around something the person you're responding to didn't say. You are now the second person I've responded to in this thread to have done so.
I'll "definitely" stop doing that for you.
I think there's an important distinction to make here between how people come to believe something, and whether or not they're true. Propaganda can cause people to believe things that are true for incorrect/wrong reasons.
Are all of these believed by people for bad reasons due to propaganda? Sure. Are all of them false? I don't think so. Most of them have some truth in them, but oversimplify or overgeneralize from those facts, and nuance is important in understanding them.
Yup. At least one of those bullet points is something I actually believe myself, I just recognize that a lot of people who believe it haven't really thought about it.
I'd agree with all of these in a heartbeat! Thanks for sharing. I feel like most of these are matching the general vibe I get from lemmy anyways. However, I'm sure there are more than enough things on here and in my bubble "everyone agrees" about that are just wrong, like you said. The Israel/Hamas thing was the latest example where I disagreed with lots of people. Maybe some other comments will show me some of my own wrong opinions.
We are all victims of some sort of propaganda, you can’t deny that, I love lemmy but a lot of people here give ‘I know everything and I am right’ kind of vibe which I don’t like, especially on the subjects mentioned above
Well done, got my hackles up with at least 3 of those.
How are those conspiracy theories? They are consensus you disagree with that people are sensitive about? Where is the conspiracy? Just that most people disagree with you?
A lot of these "theories" that you disagree with have no conspiracy in them. Mate you're just angry that most people disagree with you.
They didn't say they were conspiracy theories, they said they were propaganda. It's true but gives them an unfairly negative connotation.
~~Why put in quotes something they didn't say?~~ ~~edited because they fixed it.~~ never mind, they undid their correction for some reason.
I never said they were conspiracy theories. This is about groupthink and propaganda, with "propaganda" in this context being on the looser end of its definition since it's not literally government-organized. It's just a list of things that people in the communities I frequent have a common belief in that can't be easily debated due to the strength of that shared belief.
This isn't about whether I personally agree or disagree with these points. I actually do agree with some of them, I just recognize that it's difficult to discuss them with any nuance. I don't like it when people agree with me for mindless reasons either.