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Comment by lyu07282 | Hacker News Reader

The problem is that propaganda today just means "propaganda of the enemy". Of course we can't admit that, only Russia/et al does propaganda. Fine, but that also then means that we can never meaningfully educate people to recognize propaganda. It ends up being just "trust us, not them" and it doesn't work.

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It is actually useful, though, when one group labels another as propaganda: it's a big flashing sign that says, "we can't debunk them via open dialogue, so we will just prevent you from listening to them." If the supposed propaganda were absurd and false on its face, there would be no need to engage with it at all.

It's very naive to think that "debunking" propaganda, or anything really, disarms its effectiveness.

Calling something naive isn't an argument. Do you have one?

Ya try reading the rest of the sentence I guess.

the modern propaganda departments like the one in Russia pushes dozen of competing and contradictory stories, debunking it doesn't matter, they print BS faster than what you can analyze to get a few to stick and will point to a different one as you try anyways.

It does work. People are tribal. Keep them in the dark and it is easier to rule them.

«Сила правительства держится на невежестве народа, и оно знает это и потому всегда будет бороться против просвещения.» Лев Толстой (1896)

The problem with Tolstoi is that he seemed to take adversarial propaganda at the face value. The truth is, not only your government is doing the fishing.

Excuse me I don't understand where is "the problem with Tolstoi" in this sentence. He wrote about every government and every people on the Earth - "every government tries to keep people uneducated"

It's not about tzarism in Russia and not about XIX century

That's very culture-dependent. The PRC has a literal Propaganda Department of the CCP called so in Chinese and until recently in English (It is now called the "Publicity Department" probably because they've figured out how negative "propaganda" sounds in English). It is just accepted that the CCP will provide support for their positions ("propaganda") without providing the "other side". And Vietnam still calls their version a "propaganda department".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publicity_Department_of_the_Ch...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Propaganda_Department_...

Just like fake news is always 'the news the others read'.

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