Yeah so much western propaganda is essentially just accusing this or that country of being like the USA. I genuinely don’t understand why it’s so effective
The same reason why slave-ocrats said that enslaved people liked to be enslaved, but were in constant fear of revolts. They live in fear of being treated like they’ve treated others.
And they’ve been taught that history is over, there’s no alternative, which means other places must be exactly like the US. It’s inconceivable that other places could be run differently even while those places are thought of as other.
It’s even worse, they automatically assume those places must be worse. So if US politicians are being unaccountable corrupted bureocrats, the others must be complete tyrants, if US police is murdering and brutalizing people left and right in the open without any repercussion, the others must be worse than gestapo, and so on and on.
Thanks for the essay! I just finished it, it’s some of the most pointed and relevant stuff I’ve read in a long while. I especially liked this bit towards the end:
When we proudly assert that we are for the individual over the collective, we’re essentially saying that some people count as people, and some don’t. At the heart of liberalism lies dehumanization; we should not forget that slave ownership was one of the original “individual rights” that was so fiercely fought for by American revolutionaries.
Therein the arguments against socialist states. Every death under socialism is a failure of the government, because it dared to try to solve problems collectively. Under capitalism, deaths are due to the individual’s failures, and therefore no one’s responsibility.
Also it’s hilarious how the author thought to compare Marx with Tupac
It works because America’s propaganda regime is so hegemonic and overwhelming that the vast majority of Americans assume everywhere else is just like america - All cops are violent, all soldiers are used for foreign wars of aggression, all politicians are corrupt and believe in nothing. The idea of a political leader who acts from firmly held convictions, wants to help people, and is uninterested in using their position for wealth and power simply isn’t something that exists in the average American’s conceptual framework of reality. They readily believe so much propaganda because in many ways the propaganda simply tells them that other places are just like the US they experience every day.
Definitely. Americans in particular are surrounded by media that affirms and reaffirms their supposed greatness, but libs across the west believe similar stuff and it’s not just because they’re in an echo chamber. emizeko shared this article that goes into another aspect of liberal myth making: westerners agree with this shit because they want to.
Westerners aren’t helpless innocents whose minds are injected with atrocity propaganda, science fiction-style; they’re generally smug bourgeois proletarians who intelligently seek out as much racist propaganda as they can get their hands on. This is because it fundamentally makes them feel better about who they are and how they live.
I believe that, on the contrary, the process of Western propaganda is better understood in terms of “licensing”: the issuing of moral license for the bourgeois proletariat to profitably go along with bourgeois designs without the feeling of shame overwhelming. In this alternative account people aren’t “brainwashed” insofar as they don’t actually believe the lies, not in the way that we generally understand belief. It’s more correct to say that they go along with them, whether enthusiastically or apprehensively, because it’s actually their optimal survival strategy.
I think everyone is well aware of how little change they can truly effect within liberal democracy. How much carnage their governments cause at home and abroad. What happens to people who protest… Accepting that all the people our government subjugates deserve it brings a sort of comfort. Pride, even.
I do disagree with the article somewhat. Though it is probably more splitting hairs than anything else.
From my point of view it seems less that they want to believe it, and more that they aren’t given the tools to properly analyze it. They are given fiction as their “tool” for understanding the world, and when the propaganda resembles their fiction, they don’t question it because it matches their toolset.
Of course, there’s still no excuse for not breaking out of that pattern and refusing to learn more. I agree with the article there. I’d say almost everyone here did at some point, even under awful circumstances where it would’ve been much easier to just “switch off” and remain content. Though intellectual laziness is one of the biggest virtues in the west.
That’s true. Though being politically illiterate doesn’t explain why libs are so incurious, to the point of dismissing evidence before even looking at it. Their ignorance is willful to an extent because they know on some level that they benefit materially from playing along. Or if they don’t benefit, then they can at least avoid getting punished for rocking the boat.
Yeah, I can’t ascribe much agency or self awareness to the us burgerosie. I’ll grant that most of them have normal human faculties but the ones i interact with are profoundly ignorant and incurious to the point where they might as well be ayerdales for all the intellectual function they utilize
Yeah so much western propaganda is essentially just accusing this or that country of being like the USA. I genuinely don’t understand why it’s so effective
Because the other half of the propaganda is convincing people that the USA isn’t like the USA. No idea how that one works so well either thought.
The same reason why slave-ocrats said that enslaved people liked to be enslaved, but were in constant fear of revolts. They live in fear of being treated like they’ve treated others.
And they’ve been taught that history is over, there’s no alternative, which means other places must be exactly like the US. It’s inconceivable that other places could be run differently even while those places are thought of as other.
It’s even worse, they automatically assume those places must be worse. So if US politicians are being unaccountable corrupted bureocrats, the others must be complete tyrants, if US police is murdering and brutalizing people left and right in the open without any repercussion, the others must be worse than gestapo, and so on and on.
Sounds about right!
https://redsails.org/masses-elites-and-rebels/ explains it well
Thanks for the essay! I just finished it, it’s some of the most pointed and relevant stuff I’ve read in a long while. I especially liked this bit towards the end:
Also it’s hilarious how the author thought to compare Marx with Tupac
It works because America’s propaganda regime is so hegemonic and overwhelming that the vast majority of Americans assume everywhere else is just like america - All cops are violent, all soldiers are used for foreign wars of aggression, all politicians are corrupt and believe in nothing. The idea of a political leader who acts from firmly held convictions, wants to help people, and is uninterested in using their position for wealth and power simply isn’t something that exists in the average American’s conceptual framework of reality. They readily believe so much propaganda because in many ways the propaganda simply tells them that other places are just like the US they experience every day.
Definitely. Americans in particular are surrounded by media that affirms and reaffirms their supposed greatness, but libs across the west believe similar stuff and it’s not just because they’re in an echo chamber. emizeko shared this article that goes into another aspect of liberal myth making: westerners agree with this shit because they want to.
I think everyone is well aware of how little change they can truly effect within liberal democracy. How much carnage their governments cause at home and abroad. What happens to people who protest… Accepting that all the people our government subjugates deserve it brings a sort of comfort. Pride, even.
I do disagree with the article somewhat. Though it is probably more splitting hairs than anything else.
From my point of view it seems less that they want to believe it, and more that they aren’t given the tools to properly analyze it. They are given fiction as their “tool” for understanding the world, and when the propaganda resembles their fiction, they don’t question it because it matches their toolset.
Of course, there’s still no excuse for not breaking out of that pattern and refusing to learn more. I agree with the article there. I’d say almost everyone here did at some point, even under awful circumstances where it would’ve been much easier to just “switch off” and remain content. Though intellectual laziness is one of the biggest virtues in the west.
That’s true. Though being politically illiterate doesn’t explain why libs are so incurious, to the point of dismissing evidence before even looking at it. Their ignorance is willful to an extent because they know on some level that they benefit materially from playing along. Or if they don’t benefit, then they can at least avoid getting punished for rocking the boat.
Yeah, I can’t ascribe much agency or self awareness to the us burgerosie. I’ll grant that most of them have normal human faculties but the ones i interact with are profoundly ignorant and incurious to the point where they might as well be ayerdales for all the intellectual function they utilize
“Burgerosie” is much more fun than “labour aristocracy.”