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?
This can be controversial, but my opinion is that religious education normally is the opposite of critical thinking. If you teach the kids to accept beliefs just based on faith, you’re killing critical thinking.
People focus their energies on getting through the day for the most part of their lives. It is very hard for people to muster the time and energy to paying attention to politics, let alone ideologically political propaganda.
The vast majority flat ignore it entirely and remain in an apolitical state. This is a primary function of propaganda: insulating people from political action or thought that might alter the status quo.
Seriously, if you are AWARE of propaganda, you are also aware that you have been influenced by it. Propaganda is pervasive in civilizations. It is simply manipulation. TV ads and guys trying to pick up chicks are everyday uses of propaganda.
I go on Reddit and come here and I nod along and I’m like yes, yes, and then I leave and sometimes it feels like coming up from being underwater. We are quite literally surrounded in propaganda. It has never been easier to disseminate opinions, especially when the majority of our communications (mine for sure) come via text on a screen. It is in every single facet of our lives.
And so I talk to my brother and he always tries to get me to think more, he’s a smart guy. He says things like “Who benefits the most” from whatever, opinion I’ve talked to him about, and so frequently it goes back to corporations. I don’t want to get overtly political, but personally the best way I try to think about things is linearly: this thing we are talking about, trace it to its logical end point and origin. And then feel helpless again.
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? 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.
I was idly thinking about this the other day, how absolutely lonely it must be in say North Korea, where if you’re caught by the regime to be thinking the wrong thing you’ll get killed. I’d know its bullshit, but I’d be terrified of speaking out or asking questions, incase the person I’m speaking to is an agent of the state, or will suspect me of being an agent and inform the authorities incase I’m testing them.
It must be awful not knowing who’s a secret police, who’s a gullible rube for buying the propaganda and who’s just hiding behind forced conformity.
I don’t think many of them will believe the propaganda, but I bet the ones who do will be the happiest. Or least miserable I guess.
I find way too many people talking about “common sense” as if that was even a thing. It frustrates me to no end.
Decision fatigue is a real thing. Ask anyone who sat through three tests in one day; even if you have studied the material, it’s hard to focus after a while. It’s easy to fill our day with minutia that distracts us from the impostant issues.
I’ve recently gotten into BP debating and it teaches you a palette of skills useful in seeing through propaganda. (Seeing nuance in bad things, playing devil’s advocate, narrowing down disputes to very specific points of contention, explaining things with chains of cause and effect, putting facts into perspective, making sure to explicitly define words, …) I wish more people tried it – it would raise the quality of discourse in society so much.
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.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_the_Kool-Aid
it was a tool of mass suicide not a drug to get high on lol
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.
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.
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.
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 objectively 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.
No one, including you, is immune to propaganda.
I mean, honestly, I’m questioning if anything my parents told me is even real, or is it just exaggerated to make themselves seem like great parents in order to diminish my view on their toxicity.
It’s hard to distinguish between what’s a genuine doubt from a conspiracy theory.
That’s the thing with people.
Some have zero skepticism, and believe everything they see.
Others are overly skeptical and distrusts everything, including science.
It’s hard to find the right balance.
I find the right balance (for me) to be actively seeking out conversations that challenge my beliefs and worldview, being open to being wrong, and developing a good bullshit detector. I guess growing up during the Cold War helped instill in me a fair amount of distrust for authority of any kind helped. Even still I believed the propaganda about the US being a beacon of freedom and democracy until I was exposed to the truth of the matter, but still, I sought out counter-narratives and listened to the weight of evidence and was willing to admit to being wrong and changing my views, so… shrug
I try and explain this to people all the time but many don’t want to believe it.
There are 2 types of people in this world; those who are influenced by propaganda, and those who don’t know they are influenced by propaganda.
The average person has lots of critical thinking.
It’s just not a life hack to truth. You can critical think yourself into any conclusion. The average person uses critical thinking to reinforce their biased instead of challenge them.
That’s not critical thinking at all. Critical thinking is process that questions assertions and sources, and approaches them objectively. If it is ultimately just confirming your own bias, you haven’t used critical thinking.
This is a no true scottsman on critical thinking.
I’m going to copy my reply to Barney above.
We have all sorts of evidence for conflicting conclusions. Most of us do not have the time or resources get a lock on which evidence is truly trustworthy.
If you talk to a flat earther, or a dedicated follower of the oppossing political team, you will see they understand faulty sources, chains of logic, and deductive reasoning, they just only apply them in support of their position.
You can teach a person about bias in research or media and they will use that knowledge to discredit positions they don’t agree with.
You can say “that’s not critical thinking” and on one hand I agree, but teaching more thourough critical thinking skills won’t have the result we want: for people to make evidence based decisions about their life and society.
In my experience, Getting people to change their minds requires engaging their emotions. Decisions are made on the basis or shame, fear, anger, and more rarely, love, hope, and empathy.
The evidence needs to be there to support the emotion, but nobody ever changes their behavior on the strength of the evidence alone.
nobody ever changes their behavior on the strength of the evidence alone.
Simply not true, at all. People change behavior based on evidence all the time.
Critical Thinking requires a totally objective perspective, and emotion has no place in it.
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 others” 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.
Would you trust your 8 year old kid to not tell his best friend what you talked about at home?
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.
