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Comment by alsetmusic | Hacker News Reader

> I like how western people label propaganda anything that was made outside of the US

I grew up during the days of GI Joe cartoons. A while back, we watched the GI Joe tv movie for a laugh. My gf and I couldn't finish it because it was essentially Cold War propaganda for kids. A lot of the primary villains were foreign, the heroes were as stereotypical American as they could get, and the plot revolved around an energy crisis or something along those lines. It was offensive, considering that it was targeting children. It was political indoctrination.

Also, I remember an episode of Alvin and the Chipmunks that was anchored around the Berlin Wall. Again, the cartoon was instructing young viewers about the dangers of a foreign government. Not what I would consider appropriate for a seven year old kid's entertainment.

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There are still many, many propaganda films being made in the US, and not just for kids but for adults as well. There are so many movies and shows glorifying the US military and spies, and making evil caricatures of foreign enemies. Some films are essentially recruitment films for the US military, and they even play overt military recruitment ads before feature films in theaters.

Political campaigns are also essentially propaganda, as are what's put out by the PR departments of the military, Department of State, White House, think tanks, and even corporations.

I almost never see any of this pointed out, much less questioned in the US media. It's like they're either not even aware of it or don't care.

They freak out over Russian, Chinese, or North Korean propaganda, though.

> I almost never see any of this pointed out, much less questioned in the US media. It's like they're either not even aware of it or don't care.

It should be pointed out by people first. I'm from Argentina but I was in US earlier this year. Someone was complaining about how the Russians influenced the election. I asked if he considered that in the last 50 years USA is well known for interfering in other countries politics. That his complaint was like a bully crying of having been bullied. He told me that it was a good point and didn't considered before. He is an smart and informed person but for some reason didn't saw earlier how his country affects other countries. Just the other way around.

i have heard this countless times in the last 6 months and I don't understand the point: because the us helped to overthrow peron it's okay that Russia interfered in the us elections? yes people are ignorant of the us' history but what does that have to with anything?

Moral maxims and questions of international law and sovereignty should be applied equally regardless of subject. The US, by it actions, says that intervening in foreign elections is okay, and therefore it is, according to the US, okay for foreign entities to interfere in US elections.

It is only by universally applying principles of law and moral that we can change them, because you never understand why breaching another nation's sovereignty is wrong (even though this is in the UN charter) unless it is done to you.

>because the us helped to overthrow peron it's okay that Russia interfered in the us elections?

It's never OK, because of the US past actions it's hypocritical to get overly upset when it happens to the US unless also accompanied by an effort to stop in the future. If the US deserves untampered elections, the rest of the world does too. Even if it means the new government isn't fond of the US

A huge number of Hollywood films about the military are overtly critical of the military. Even the films that valorize military service tend to have a strain of resentment about the military institutions themselves.

I don't think any of the premise of this thread is that there's no western propaganda. There obviously is.

And then there was Captain Planet, which was pro-environmentalism propaganda. In that show the American boy was a devil-may-care idiot while the Soviet girl (his crush) was smart and conscientious. It stayed on the air longer than it probably should have given its quality, mainly because of Ted Turner's enormous pull in the industry.

That's the difference between the USA and the USSR: in the USSR such counterpropaganda would have been quashed and its creators sent to the gulag.

> the plot revolved around an energy crisis or something along those lines.

I'm not going to defend the GI Joe cartoon at all, but as I recall, the plot of the movie mainly revolved around mutant snake-people trying to take over the world.

And let's not even get started on Roger Ramjet...

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