All we can do is ignore them.
Unfortunately, most people are too stupid to do that. We can’t expect stupid people to make smart decisions.
have sex with their moms
The problem is that this has been decades in the making. A lack of education in the likes of civics, us history, critical-thinking skills (fallacies, research and analytics). If such education is a vaccine against false rhetoric (bad propaganda), then to reverse course is going to take an extremely long time.
Neurons take time to rewire no less, and if you didn’t arrive to your worldview by rational means, rational logic will not get you out of that overnight.
The only short-term solution I see is redirection of existing anger to the billionaires, and using mockery and satire as a way to short-circuit people’s preexisting biases. For whatever reason, this breaks barriers like little else.
Came to say education is the key, but you said it better.
Had an elementary school science teacher in 70s and 80s who hammered us every year on fact vs. opinion, critical thinking, how to test hypothesis, etc. Every year I thought, “Oh FFS we get it already, move on.”
Apparently not many of us GenXers got the memo, even those who were in those classes with me.
And your last paragraph fucking nails it! People need a threat to rally against. Feed 'em the billionaires, let the merely rich see their coming fate and they’ll change their tune.
And yes, comedy is a powerful opinion maker. No one wants to be on the receiving end of laughter. We’re hardwired to avoid humiliation and tribal scorn at all costs.
You just described using the same tools they’ve used against us.
I remember watching the brilliant documentary series “Cold War” by CNN/BBC and one episode had a segment on Radio Free Europe, the American radio station set up to counter the Soviet propaganda radio.
It was obviously also propaganda even if it tried to be more open than the Soviet radio.
Anyway, the guy managing the station spoke about how to gain listeners and build trust.
He put it bluntly, saying that you need “Good, solid news” especially information that people can verify on their own, and mentioned simple stuff like accurate weather reports.
Now this obviously require people to be looking for accurate news, something that seems to be less and less important to more and more people.
In a better world, the proper way to counter propaganda is by consistently providing a more accurate and reliable source of information.
Counter propaganda, informing people why it’s propaganda, and not mimicking propagandist by censoring alternative opinions.
Can I respond with out you taking it as an affront?
Maybe, give it a try.
Did you not like my answer?
I liked it but my criticism is it is binary. Like in a shouting match the only way to win is to shout louder.
What do you think should be done?
Youll just laugh it off.
I’m listening, what is it?
I say, love the propagandist. Not their propaganda. Love them as a person. Understand their ideology comes from a place of hurt. Make them want what you have. A settled mind and a clean soul. Im not saying you can change them but I’ll listen to the person who can defuse a shouting match over the people shouting, every time.
The goal wouldn’t be to swoon the propagandist to your side. It would be to take away their power. That power comes from people listening. If you can expose them to be consumed by only their own opinion you take that power away.
Also, disengage. We are scared, terrified, of words. They provoke us, and we give them power. Stand tall on your own morals and let the waves crash on your shores. Dont get swept to sea every time a storm is raging.
You can laugh now.
Why don’t you just say it, stop trying to be cute.
I’ve tried that so many times.
Problem is, this is the education people need before it happens. Critical thinking. Once it’s part of their identity everything you say is just a lie aimed at dismantling what they “know” to be true.
Unfortunately republicans have been destroying education for decades, and Fox news and AM radio have been preying on the weak minded for just as long.
In 2012 the official GOP platform in Texas was to fight critical thinking education in public schools.
“We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) and critical thinking, which are skills that are intended to challenge the students’ fixed beliefs and undermine parental authority”
They caught backlash and dialed it in, came at it from new directions. Now it’s CRT and such.
Lies and defending the undefendable should definitely be censored otherwise they multiplies
No one said lies, I said opinions. Like your opinion of what’s undefendable will not be exactly the same to every other person opinion of what is undefendable.
If something is accused of being a lie, the accusation should come with evidence. If proven to be a lie then of course take it down. However if my favorite color is teal and I take down someone’s post for saying their favorite’s indigo; then that is censorship based on bias, and should not be allowed.
The OP asked about combating propagandist. This can be anyone. Propagandist are of any ideology, theology, social group, culture. I feel my original answer is very healthy advice.
No one said lies, I said opinions. Like your opinion of what’s undefendable will not be exactly the same to every other person opinion of what is undefendable.
By the undefendable I mean stuffs like neo Nazism , settler colonialism, intentionally murdering innocent civilians etc. Those are not matter of opinions
How crude. A Nazi isn’t an opinion but Nazis would have opinions, as all people have opinions. What differentiates this, however, is that that being a Nazi is an action. They act out, have things they physically do, like cause harm.
Nazis think nazizm is an opinion. Propagandist thinks their propaganda is an opinion. Trump play over the term opinions too to promote undefendable actions. Nazism is an ideology so not not every nazi act but can promote statements that lead to real harmful actions on inocent people
After over a decade of consideration I came to similar conclusions. I’d like to add: a unifying national propaganda. The media used to be better about messaging. It’s important for a country to project its values in the form of unifying propaganda. It needs to be louder than the foreign propaganda stares at russia
I’ve found a stick works just fine but if you get something heavier you do more damage
What a strange first example where ostensibly you are expressing support for the pro slavery dude who did the beating with the cane.
I’m saying the abolitionist dude should’ve bought his own cane.
Fight fire with fire.
They just want war
Bats, chains, frozen whole tuna…
It depends. Block them, regulate them, limit their reach or scope. Publish counters on the same scale or in a more efficient way.
I don’t think propagandist is defined clearly enough to list or discuss concrete counter-strategies. A lobby org lobbying for a law could be considered propagandist.
My biggest concern right now is on the micro level. Propaganda foot solders are like putty men in power rangers. We shouldn’t struggle this hard.
You play a different game so that even if you lose on the propaganda front, you still win gains elsewhere.
They always deflect so stay focus and real mehsi’s hassan book about debades
Propaganda like what? Like the news being all fake?
You can’t. According to the turing test if machines get good enough at faking content, you can never be sure again whether news are real or fake. Every picture, every news article could be written by the AI and telling you bullshit fake news that the oligarchs (who own the “news” media empire) want you to see.
The only way to know anything at all is to have seen it with your own eyes, or somebody who you trust has seen it with their own eyes, you need to talk to them in person or drive to the event to see it for yourself. In other words, you can only know things that are close enough to yourself to be within your range of movement. Everything else is essentially unknowable, especially if it’s a politically controversial topic.
I find it hard to believe that their is a technology humans cant break. If its simply AI thats behind it all I have faith there is someone who can figure out how to short circuit it.
Hell, if its simply an army of bots swarming every human input just overwhelm them with inputs. Make it extremely difficult for the bots to not turn on themselves unless they are marked with a unique identifier. Then they identify themselves.
You need to first identify who they are. Follow the money, and you’ll see their ties. That’s how you defeat them: by starving them of your energy, and not participating in their Roman bread and circuses.
For those unaware of what I’m talking about, there’s this thing called energetic participation. You may have heard it said as “predictive programming”. This is a technique used in most media today, and to keep it brief, the propagandists tell everyone who watches something with subliminal messaging approved by them what some people will do sometime in the future (using things like numerology, astrology, etc.), and how they want us, the consoomer, to respond appropriately to the problem they’ll cause. Gauging the reaction, they’ll provide the “solution” that will lead to a worse quality of life than before. They’ll do this every single time they want something to make people’s lives more miserable than previously.
Case in point: this current talk on digital ID’s. Well, first, they create the issue necessary for it (importing poverty and invading a Caucasian-majority country like the UK or US with 3rd world criminals released from their home country’s prisons), then they gauge the reaction (calls for the government to fix it), and then, after some time, they provide the fake solution (digital ID’s to “stop the invasion”, “stop the flippin’ terrorists”, and “protect the children”, all kinds of nonsense like that).
They told us that they would do this in some piece of programming in the past, and we didn’t catch onto it, likely because the propagandists didn’t want us to notice what they were planning on doing so we could stop them. They don’t want us to, and that’s the point. This is a simplification of energetic participation, as it’s much more nuanced than that.