Comment by inigyou
7 days ago
A Russian and an American are sitting next to each other on a plane.
The American says "I'm impressed by the propaganda you have in Russia."
"Oh it's very good, but it's nothing compared to the propaganda you have in America." replies the Russian.
"Huh? We don't have propaganda in America." says the American.
"Exactly." says the Russian.
As a Russian, I deeply appreciate this. In Russia, it seemed obvious to even the most parochial peasant that there was propaganda, while in America, the vast majority of the society not only fails to consider the possibility, but is cholerically allergic to the very idea.
Edit: recognising that there is propaganda != knowing what is and isn't propaganda. That's all I meant.
The American government has propaganda but it really sucks at it. All the people skilled in manipulating behavior work at our ad agencies, and hence our actual propaganda is mostly "Use this detergent! Take this drug! Drive this car!"
Lol, someone completely missed the point… American propaganda is such a part of the culture, it gets barely noticed. Even movies that has military equipment, the military gets to have heavy input towards positive depictions of american military. US military has paid millions in marketing to all the sports organizations for promoting the military. Etc etc. This is just one aspect of the propaganda.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military%E2%80%93entertainment...
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Propaganda is just advertisements for the government, right?
Hard to say. Advertisements have at least a pretense of persuasive intent. Propaganda mostly operates in the absence of contrary information.
If every parochial peasant could recognize Russian official propaganda, why are so many people on board with whatever the propaganda says?
I mean, it took longer than the Great Patriotic War before Putin's popularity started visibly falling and people started questioning what the entire "SVO" is for.
Surely [a] they don't really give a shit anyway and [b] they don't want to fall out a window
I think Russians are used to knowing it's dangerous to disagree with dear leader and there's no advantage to disagreeing so they just go along with whatever he says
I mean, if the American propaganda is "you are evil" and the Russian propaganda is "fuck those guys", you don't have to agree on every particular. People have nationalism everywhere.
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Recognising that there is propaganda != being deeply savvy about what the propaganda is. However, I've found it to be an article of faith in America that the US just doesn't engage in that kind of thing--less so in recent years, as the crisis of belief and confidence in institutions has ricocheted, egged on by the disinformation and demagoguery of the Trump years.
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