I don’t know about y’all, but if I grew up in a country that never has the news criticizing its leaders, I’d be very skepical and deduce that there is censorshop going on and the offical news could be exaggerated or entirely falsified. Do people in authoritarian countries actually just eat the propaganda? To what extent do they believe the propaganda?
If you believe you’re the only one feeling this way you’re likely to doubt yourself. If it’s dangerous to voice how you feel, you won’t hear that others share this skepticism.
I am gonna take a biased and unsubstantiated leap in logic here but no. Not because most people are incapable of critical thinking but because it is intentionally not encouraged by western education. Critical thinking is something that has to be taught to people and most people have never had a reason to learn it. All they need to know is how to go to work and consume.
I think the real problem is, people don’t know how to manage their emotions, and those end up swaying them left and right. Opportunistic antagonists will take advantage of those triggers.
Stop thinking with with your gut, take a pause to analyze your body response to emotions. Are you sweating? Are you afraid or is it actually warm? If you’re afraid, what specifically do you fear? Etc.
Propaganda, echo chambers, peer pressure, and even vicious cycles of self-pity, anger, sadness… will have a weaker hold on you.
Feel, but don’t stop thinking.
Critical thinking is a skill that requires teaching and practice. If children are not given that preparation they won’t have that skill in adulthood. That’s why authoritarian governments care so much about controlling and/or limiting access to proper education.
Do people in authoritarian countries actually just eat the propaganda? To what extent do they believe the propaganda?
Where I come from? Not much, but part of that is because the lies are so obvious and in conflict with people’s lived experience that you can’t even delude yourself into accepting them.
Obedience doesn’t come exclusively from lack of understanding of the whole picture. Besides propaganda there is also brutal enforcement. Those who are aware of the situation are swiftly brought back to their place by force if they try anything funny. Many people are aware, but they cannot show it, and it’s near impossible to cooperate with others at this stage.
I mean… where are you from? Looking at your post history you sound American.
You tell me.
Looking at the 2024 election results. I guess not. 😞
But 1/3 of eligible voters didn’t even vote, so is that really about critical thinking? Or is it just laziness?
At the point of re-electing the fascistoid oligarch that your democracy barely survived the first time, is there a difference? If you can’t critical think your way out of the couch for that one you’re not critical thinking super hard.
But I didn’t even mean it that way. Did you eat the propaganda before Trump? The anthem in sports matches, the pledge of allegiance in schools, land of the free, leaders of the free world, 80s movies with Russian bad guys, 00s movies with muslim terrorists, all that jazz?
Trump is critical thinking easy mode and you have the best first hand knowledge of propaganda in the past century. US cultural imperialism didn’t start with Trump. If anything it ends with him.
Propaganda, is a craft, it’s a whole world of tricks and manipulations. Not just censorship and positive stories about the leaders. It can get shockingly sophisticated. We usually only take note of the obvious and obtuse propaganda.
People aren’t dumb for believing it, it’s a whole field of figuring out how to convince people about things. Often if the propaganda doesn’t work on you, that’s because it’s not designed for you, or it has worked but the goal of it wasn’t what you thought it was.
Yep. For example during the Soviet occupation here, the Colorado potato beetle got imported here somehow and given it doesn’t have any natural predators, it destroyed potatoes like crazy.
Well, guess what? According to Soviet propaganda it was intentionally done by Americans to destroy our “paradise” and our food.
Everything bad that happened was because the evil imperialists worked against our paradise.
The country being so poor it couldn’t afford enough toilet paper for its citizens? Westerners! All foreign fruit being very scarce and people standing in long lines to get it, while the ones in the back knew they probably aren’t getting any today? Also westerners’ fault. Meat being available only for the few lucky ones who came early, or were friends with the butcher? Yep, this one’s on westerners too.
Propaganda is not the usual over-the-top stories, it’s subtle. Would you today believe if someone told you that Americans have imported the Colorado potato beetle intentionally? And would you, if it was consistent with everything you’ve heard since you were a kid?
“Of course the Americans introduced the Colorado potato beetle! After all, where is Colorado? America! Check mate liberal”
For real though I hate those little fuckers. Every time I try and grow potatoes in a garden I get an infestation and it’s a pain to deal with in a small plot, can’t imagine how much of a nightmare they are on a proper field.
All foreign fruit being very scarce and people standing in long lines to get it, while the ones in the back knew they probably aren’t getting any today? Also westerners’ fault.
Do you know the history of the united fruit company? That one could be correct.
I’d be very skepical and deduce that there is censorshop going on and the offical news could be exaggerated or entirely falsified
After you realise you are a hostage, what’s the “good” response, in your opinion? Protest and get surpressed? Start a partisan group, and be afraid for your life 24/7? Join the surpressors for small benefits for your and yours, at the peril of others? Play along with the idea to “change it from the inside”?
Probably nothing revolutionary.
But if you don’t believe the propaganda, you’d probably enjoy life more.
For example: there literally a list of steam games that some far-right nutjob compiled that declares a lot of games to be “Woke” or “DEI”. Imagine how much fun they miss out on because they are so far up the kool aid cult and actually refuses to play those games.
And other times, it can save you from a lot of misery and perhaps save your life. See: Anti-Vax and Anti-Science propaganda. If you are able to see through that bullshit, you wouldn’t die from a stupid horse dewormer or other psudoscience crap.
“You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind.” -Mahatma Gandhi
The fight might not be right here, right this moment, but you can pass along the torch, the spirit.
Teach your children to be skeptical of the authorities, and be vigilent of propaganda. If they are getting involved in a “Hitler Youth” equivalvent, you’d intervene and stop them.
Treach kindness and empathy, but also decisiveness when the time comes to stand against injustice.
And also, pick your fights carefully, do not do this alone. Do not become a foolish dead hero, become a successful revolutionary. (Underground Movements)
Don’t let them imprison your mind.
TLDR: The best you can do is just refuse to regurgitate the same propaganda. This is a passive thing that is, while subtle, an important part of the resistance.
Teach your children to be skeptical of the authorities, and be vigilent of propaganda.
I grew up in DDR. That act in itself is punishable. In mandatory state school, there was a lot “you live thanks to, and for the group” propaganda. Teachers would get benefits if they succesfully got children to tell on their family, or their friends. The children who did so were lauded.
Do you think your 8 year old kid would not tell his best friend what you talked about?
I think your imagination fails to understand the magnitute of surpressing a state can and will do. It’s not just the state, and bad guys in it. It’s everywhere. 1-in-3 people were informants to the stasi. Je stärker der Sozialismus, desto sicherer der Frieden.
I do think people without direct experience are unable to understand the depth or the totalitarian evil. It’s just too terrifying to accept that one can be trully powerless, that any kind of resistance can lead not just to the destruction of themselves, but also their families, that the degree of bullying and control can be so high and the regard for human life so low.
It’s too scary, so normal human minds just refuse it as a possibility and try to imagine more optimistic scenarios.
It’s healthy not to lose hope, but it’s also not good to underestimate the evil and unfair to look down on the people facing it.
I think this USSR quote is a good answer:
We know that they are lying, they know that they are lying, they even know that we know they are lying, we also know that they know we know they are lying too, they of course know that we certainly know they know we know they are lying too as well, but they are still lying. In our country, the lie has become not just moral category, but the pillar industry of this country.
(Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn)
In any authoritarian system where indoctrination starts young you’ll probably have a fifth of the population that’s high on the coolaid or never questioned anything due to ideology or intelligence (or both). The rest know they’re lying, etc. And keep their mouths shut because they don’t want to go to Siberia or El Salvador.
Also applies to modern day Russia. Everyone knows the elections are fake, for example, but they keep their heads down.
Yeah, and just because you know they’re lying, doesn’t mean you know what the truth is, much less so how to prove it to someone else.
You learn that truth is a dangerous luxery you can do without, as power dictates, and can do so for generations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_the_Kool-Aid
it was a tool of mad suicide not a drug to get high on lol
I know. What you have hit upon here is my obviously unsuccessful attempt at making these people look more ridiculous than the OG death cult.
That’s not the point of the phrase — the statement refers to the true believers drinking poison unquestioningly, without entertaining the thought that it will kill them.
Check the story! They knew they were going to die. That was the point. He told them. He told them exactly what was up and they consented. Their minds were so twisted by his lies that they couldn’t imagine any other life. That’s what drinking the koolaid means: you subscribe to a belief wholeheartedly, even a crazy one, to the point where youd rather die than question it.
you subscribe to a belief wholeheartedly, even a crazy one, to the point where youd rather die than question it.
That’s what I said too, which is to say that the point is not the killing but the unquestioning nature of it.
It’d be so much better if that authoritarian fifth would drink the flavor-aid in the sense of killing themselves.
Yes.
Critical thinking has to be taught in order for a person have it. And when you either restrict/limit education (for example, making it so that one needs a lot of money for proper schooling, thus barring lower classes from getting the education they need) or alter the education to become indoctrination. (These methods are most efficient combined!) It’s why authoritarian people and parties want to control and/or destroy education systems so bad.
Being a history nerd, I’ve been convinced that the vast majority of people can be tricked into believing nearly anything. No one is immune to propaganda, it’s just a matter of circumistances and the education you receive.
If you had grew up in a society where everyone told you that, say, pigs are a type of lizard, and your school taught you that pigs are lizards, all biologists were bribed or forced into saying pigs are lizards, and all the books you read and all the movies or shows you watched said pigs are lizards, chances are that you would believe pigs are lizards.
I’d also like to note that the above scenario would work especially well if you had never actually spent time with pigs. For example, it’s a lot easier to convince someone that gay people are evil if they don’t personally know any gay people.
I also think that often people know that, for example, elections are fraudulent, but they are too scared to say anything and thus act like they aren’t.
often people know that, for example, elections are fraudulent, but they are too scared to say anything
People might vaguely understand that elections don’t produce good outcomes or have systemic bias. That’s then condensed to „elections are rigged“, regardless of the facts and details.
Most people know little about most things. It’s difficult to even have good fundamentals about most things in our complex world. So people will defer to their personal experience and information seeped into their minds by osmosis/exposure.
Things like an economy or political system are extremely complex already and not fully understood even by experts.
There is deeply emotional resistance to the idea of topics being too complex for the average person to understand. The “experts” promote something that superficially contradicts our lived experience? They must be corrupt liars! Down with the experts!
The economy had, on balance, positive trends in 2024? We felt poorer, so economists should be lynched! /s
Feels scarily like America is moving towards something like China’s Great Leap Forward https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward
The Great Leap Forward stemmed from multiple factors, including "the purge of intellectuals, the surge of less-educated radicals… Mao was dismissive of technical experts and basic economic principles…
Higher officials did not dare to report the economic disaster which was being caused by these policies… Mao did not retreat from his policies; instead, he blamed problems on bad implementation and “rightists” who opposed him…
…dozens of dams constructed in Zhumadian, Henan, during the Great Leap Forward collapsed in 1975 (under the influence of Typhoon Nina)… with estimates of its death toll ranging from tens of thousands to 240,000.
The failure of agricultural policies… suppressed the food supply… The shortage of supply clashed with an explosion in demand, leading to millions of deaths from severe famine.
We felt poorer, so economists should be lynched!
The contrast between people’s experiences in their everyday lives and what politicians or experts say is important.
If the economy is supposedly doing great but I can afford less and less and my life gets worse, that’s a contradiction.
The USA is moving more to something like the gilded age with more wealth disparity, more suffering for the poor, more violence.
The anti-intellectualism and anti-elitism of the cultural revolution was far more extreme. You are right that there are some similar ideas brewing.
When the political and economic system is no longer delivering for the population, it will turn against the (perceived) leaders. Trump and the right spins this very well by directing the anger against „woke“ liberal academics, foreigners, and away from the billionaires.
The „woke“ elites are also in crisis. The Democratic Party is in shambles.
Back in the 70s, I had one if those subversive high school English teachers - longish hair, no tie, wore bell bottoms, arranged the desks in his classroom in a circle, etc. His name was Mr. Clark.
Mr. Clark had an unusual teaching style that I really responded to. Much more Socratic, making us defend our ideas, but be willing to change our minds if someone had a better one. I liked his teaching so much, i took his classes 3 years in a row, including 2 Shakespeare classes.
It wasn’t until years after college, that i realized he wasnt really teaching us Shakespeare, he was teaching us to think, using Shakespeare as a vehicle. We were practicing Critical Thinking Skills every day for three years, without even realizing it.
It became so ingrained in me to question assertions and allegations without sources, and view everything subjectively before drawing a conclusion, that I found it very easy to resist propaganda. When Rush Limbaugh came on the radio in the late 80s, I was shocked that anyone was buying into his obvious bullshit, but my well-honed Critical Thinking Skills saw through his “logic” instantly.
At some point, I tried to look up Mr Clark, so I could thank him for being the most influential teacher in my life, but he had passed away about 5 years before. He literally taught me how to think.
The concept of “the average person” is a good example of the type of crass generalisation that propagndists often use.
Critical thinking is a skill, not an inborn gift. You may end up better at it than someone else by virtue of some as-yet-unknown genetic or epigenetic factor, but only if you both learn the skills and practice them.
Worse, even with learning and practice everyone fucks up at least a little. Even if the only place they fuck up is thinking that because they have the skill and practice that they can’t fuck up.
We’re all fucking meat bags filled with hormones and chemicals. That shit will override every bit of common sense and critical thinking that’s ever existed. Not every time, but eventually, and more than once in your life.
Propaganda is only propaganda if you aren’t part of the institution generating it. If you’re a random asshole in fascistan, or whatever, chances are that the propaganda is just noise, the same way commercials or waves crashing are. There’s no need to think critically if all you want to do is coast and get by.
So they “believe” it in roughly the same way that people believe if they work hard, they can achieve anything they want. Even if they know better, what’s the alternative? Seeing reality and still being stuck in the same place? Nah, even the ones that have practiced thoroughly aren’t fucking around most of the time. Why would they bother if they apply that critical thinking and realize nobody really gives a fuck as long as they aren’t too hungry, and the worst stuff is happening in some letter town? They wouldn’t. It’s too fucking depressing.
Also, you assume that critical thinking can overcome a lack of information. The “news” is always the news. If you have no other sources of data, critical thinking doesn’t apply until something contradicts that news. If you control what people see and hear, you control the people. There won’t be enough opposition to matter, if you’ve set up your regime right.
Do people in authoritarian countries actually just eat the propaganda?
They surely do in the USia, why wouldn’t they do it in other countries. It is only takes to convince third of a population but it has to be the loud third to maintain power in a modern “Democracy”
