I don’t normally watch TV, so it’s easy to forget, but it’s frankly horrifying just how heavily propagandized the average American is.
I don’t normally watch TV, so it’s easy to forget, but it’s frankly horrifying just how heavily propagandized the average American is.
My liberal parents are like “television news is all propaganda” but also “so I was listening to NPR and…”
“Our local paper takes the side of big business” but also “the NYT and WaPo are the last bastions of democracy in this age of division”
I’m just going to share a chat convo I had with a lib friend about NPR:
<Me> Just because [NPR] isn’t outright stating what you should think doesn’t mean they’re not trying to sway your opinion. Propaganda is just as much (if not more) about emphasis as it is about fabrication.
<Me> Who are the “both sides”?
<Him> NPR gives equal time to all views
<Me> How often do they feature Marxist-Leninists? Anarchists? Maoists?
<Him> NPR does a pretty good job of presenting enough info for me to form my own opinion
<Me> How often does it bring communists on to speak?
<Him> Don’t know
<Me> What do you mean, “you don’t know”? If you listen to NPR on a regular basis, you should be able to tell me roughly how often it includes communist voices.
<Him> I mean I haven’t really paid attention to the exact view points. only that I get multiple sides of the story.
<Me> How can you claim they represent “all sides” when you aren’t even paying attention to what people are saying?
<Him> I am paying attention to what they are saying.
<Me> But you just said that you “haven’t really paid attention to the exact view points.”
<Him> Bad wording on my part. I paid attention to the view points. But not to the political leanings of the person making the view
<Me> It shouldn’t be hard to infer someone’s political leanings from their viewpoints. They’re going to make points that are in line with their views.
<Him> I dunno. I don’t fit cleanly into any given political category.
“When was the last time they had a conservative/republican give a viewpoint”
“Today.”
“When was the last liberal/democrat?”
“Today.”
“When was the last anarchist/communist?”
“I don’t really know what viewpoints the speakers have.”
:centrist: and most likely right wing.
I cut contact with him after he argued at length in support of vaccine apartheid because “poor countries don’t contribute as much to medical research”