Given enough exposure to propaganda you can get the working masses to believe whatever you want.
I’ve seen this first hand in Hungary. 20 years ago everyone was pro EU. Kids such as myself were dreaming about eventually becoming part of the US of Europe & while that was never realistic, the adults were also hoping for a better future in the EU. Before Covid we finally -kind of- got that better future, things have improved tremendously, but slowly over time propaganda completely turned the public opinion around. I’m convinced most people really don’t like thinking on their own about issues… Now even my 10-12 year old nephews know & believe that Brussels is the worst city on Earth with all the people being certifiably insane there. These days whenever I hear people talk politics It always starts with ‘EU bad’… (Though I too am reluctant to talk about my views openly nowadays, so no chance of anyone hearing that)
Perhaps Taiwan or even the US should invest more in more targeted western propaganda to counteract the Chinese influence, but this just sounds horrible, I effin hate propaganda.
How effective is it, I wonder?
With what happened in Hong Kong recently I imagine it can’t be too effective in the short term, but at the same time the slow trickle of disinformation and whataboutism and bots online preaching their BS can have a way of radicalizing and turning people.
And it’s not like the US’ trackrecord doesnt make it easy to show examples of us doing wrong around the world.
I highly recommend watching Larry Lessig’s “Our democracy no longer represents the people. Here’s how we fix it” speech from 2015.
He compares democracy in Hong Kong and the USA by looking at who nominates who eventually rules.
The people in China are terrible, and the people in USA are terrible. The vast majority of them are greedy, omnicidal, mass-extinction causing monsters. One is worse than the other, but both are so amazingly terrible that we should be boycotting both, and all the other dictatorships and oligarchies.
