Being dumb or not is completely irrelevant here. Capitalist countries governments are merely the comittees to organise the bourgeoise state, and capitalism run on one and only one principle: more profit.
You don’t have to be an idiot or insane to be fooled by effective messaging …
i’m convinced that this is the weakest point of any leftist message; when you tell people that they’ve succumbed to propanganda, they hear: “you’re so stupid that propaganda works on you” and it incenses them against listening to anything further.
Which is of course itself an example of how effective the “propaganda only works on stupid people” messaging is at isolating victims of misinformation from any arguments pointing out misinformation.
It’s maddening, and the only remedy is more effective messaging about verifiably true information.
Which is in turn made more difficult by the truth tending to be much more complicated than plausible lies made into slogans and sound bites.
Example:
“Transfer municipal funds to other professionals better equipped to handle certain tasks in an effective and nonlethal manner than police officers are” is much more unambiguous about what most people want than “defund the police”, but good luck fitting that on a sign or getting to say that on the news before being interrupted!
Being dumb or not is completely irrelevant here. Capitalist countries governments are merely the comittees to organise the bourgeoise state, and capitalism run on one and only one principle: more profit.
Especially when you factor in that propaganda is much more effective than most people are aware of/willing to admit.
You don’t have to be an idiot or insane to be fooled by effective messaging and messaging doesn’t have to make sense in order to be effective.
Otherwise, the fascist Republican party would have no chance of getting CLOSE to winning any major elections, let alone the presidency.
i’m convinced that this is the weakest point of any leftist message; when you tell people that they’ve succumbed to propanganda, they hear: “you’re so stupid that propaganda works on you” and it incenses them against listening to anything further.
Which is of course itself an example of how effective the “propaganda only works on stupid people” messaging is at isolating victims of misinformation from any arguments pointing out misinformation.
It’s maddening, and the only remedy is more effective messaging about verifiably true information.
Which is in turn made more difficult by the truth tending to be much more complicated than plausible lies made into slogans and sound bites.
Example:
“Transfer municipal funds to other professionals better equipped to handle certain tasks in an effective and nonlethal manner than police officers are” is much more unambiguous about what most people want than “defund the police”, but good luck fitting that on a sign or getting to say that on the news before being interrupted!