• eldavi@lemmy.ml
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    4 months ago

    time alone doesn’t inoculate you from propaganda. referring to events you didn’t witness firsthand, in a country you don’t live in, with certainty about what you saw on western news – that’s not firsthand knowledge, it’s a mediated narrative you’ve absorbed as fact. propaganda doesn’t require lies; it just needs selective framing that feeds your outrage. wanting all governments to “burn to the ground” isn’t independent thinking – it’s a script that’s been handed to you, and your inability to see that is exactly how propaganda works.

      • eldavi@lemmy.ml
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        4 months ago

        you trust a handful of self-selected people who told you stories you already wanted to believe. that’s not evidence – it’s confirmation bias. first-hand accounts can be wrong, embellished, or shaped by their own trauma and exposure to propaganda before they ever left. you’re not a historian or a judge; you’re someone who listened to stories that matched what you saw on tv and decided they must be the whole truth. the fact that you can’t imagine any other explanation – that you’re certain everyone who disagrees is just “the system” lying to you – is the fundamental problem. that’s exactly what being propagandized looks like from the inside.

          • eldavi@lemmy.ml
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            4 months ago

            you’re doing it again. you’re assuming that just because someone has a job in the us and spoke to you, they’re automatically a credible, unbiased source. that’s not how memory, trauma, or propaganda work. people can genuinely believe what they’re saying and still be wrong – also still be repeating a version of events shaped by decades of exile and media reinforcement.

            you also keep framing this as “real people” vs. “the other side,” as if the chinese government’s official account is the only alternative to fallible informants. that’s a false choice. there are historians, journalists, and researchers who don’t work for either the ccp or the us government and who have pieced together more nuanced versions than either “nothing happened” or the narrative you’re holding onto and they’re very easy to find.

            the fact that you won’t entertain the possibility that your sources might be incomplete or shaped by their own biases – and instead mock anyone who questions you as ignorant of how jobs work – says you’re not actually weighing evidence. you’re defending an identity. and that’s what someone who’s been propagandized does, whether they realize it or not.