It should be noted that Feddit.org was included to represent Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
I did not include Baraza.africa as that was too encompassing as it covers the whole African continent.
Hopefully this post inspires more countries to join the blue club!
Choose the most efficient phrase from these options:
Notice how the message still gets across with that third one? It still tells you “these are lies or exaggerations that have misled you” without needlessly classing the source with a catch-all term that obfuscates their position as human beings with the right to live?
Nothing about the term tankie does or should deny their right to live. Advocating for the deaths of people who disagree with you is profoundly against everything liberalism (the freedom-based guiding principle of what we’d call “the west”) stands for.
To the contrary, as a pretty standard liberal American I fully support their rights to advocate for whatever they wish. Since there is no realistic way to accurately and objectively determine what is or is not propaganda, I support their right to create that as well.
Regarding the utility of recognizing where propaganda comes from, it can occasionally be useful to know, as it tends to follow certain patterns based on the goals of whoever created it.
Can you realistically accurately and objectively determine that the source of the claim was a tankie?
So it makes more sense to make wild claims about the person behind the message than it does to classify a piece of information based off of its linguistic characteristics?
Also, identifying propaganda isn’t difficult, I had to do it for classes in school several times. Here’s a helpful reminder on how to do so.
You very well might be able to, actually, though I’m not going to guarantee it. Regardless though, if the line is commonly parroted by a certain group, then the claims are not particularly wild, are they?
And yes, there are lots of very useful tips that can identify most propaganda based off of common traits. This is not foolproof though. Still very good to know, though.
how you recognize propaganda is that everything is propaganda. your comment, this comment, the original article, the concept that russia remains communist, it’s all propaganda. the key isn’t learning to recognize propaganda, it’s learning to analyze the biases of who’s presenting the propaganda.
here, i’ll tell you my biases. i’m an anarcho communist located in the united states. there. now that you have that intel, you can start to assess what kinds of propaganda you’d expect to see from me. more, when i don’t put out the kinds of propaganda you expect, you can question the following:
the kinds of classes we receive on how propaganda works in elementary and high school are meant to get us to rigidly stick to the status quo that benefits the authoritarian rulers of society. they are, themselves, propaganda. in fact, this notion you have that we can talk about propaganda without context i actually find a little bit dangerous. by stripping context and discussion of origins of propaganda, we actually create the exact form of non critical environment that benefits the misinformation peddlar.
then again, you don’t have to find my perspective compelling. that’s why i told you up front what it was, as well as what my propaganda is.
I don’t believe that you can speak about propaganda without context, and I didn’t claim that either. The “efficient phrases” thing is part of a puzzle, not the whole puzzle. What I do believe is that terms like “tankie” fill the same role “Jew” or “Gay” fill for the right. It’s a term used to change the perception of the speaker from “person/human being” to “undesirable with a bad opinion”