I'm so frustrated with how propaganda is fueling the belief that (the majority of) people are fundamentally terrible and untrustworthy, but it's *so difficult* to explain why this is not the case and how it's a product of propaganda, and *so easy* to run up against people's trauma in trying to do so
And it's a self-reinforcing thing where that beliefs keeps oppression alive, and I fucking hate it, and ugh
@joepie91
To be clear, do you mean that the propaganda's message is to convince people of this, or that seeing propaganda in action knowing it's fake convinces them?
@Lakeomancy Well, that's part of the complexity; it's a bit of both, but also many other things. The propaganda convinces people of this, and this is then sometimes strengthened by people seeing other people *fall for* the propaganda, like "they should really know better than this", and a million other related factors too
@joepie91
Can you give an example of a propaganda narrative designed to make people think this? I'm unfortunately familiar with the normal "Whoever the other side are, they're literally the Devil" message.
@Lakeomancy Some examples would be the widely-believed but discredited psychological theories like the bystander effect, tragedy of the commons, the shit that Zimbardo fabricated, etc. - but that's far from the only example, it permeates society at every level, in political communications, reporting, culture, etc. and it interacts with a million other things like copaganda, neoliberalism, individualism... the whole thing is difficult to pin down
Another example would be how (at least here) in the early days of the pandemic, people were cautious and generally mindful of other people's safety, and then this got eroded by bad government guidance and unclear policy and communication, to the point where people gave up, and then this got retconned into "clearly nobody cares about other people's safety, humans are bad" even though it was a product of (plausibly deliberate) circumstances
@joepie91: I'm also inclined to argue that Lombroso's criminology is, at the very least, part of the same ecosystem. He had a retrospectively obvious(tm)(r)(c) headalump for every convict, and his work helped convince supposedly enlighted people that "criminals" are lurking everywhere.
@Lakeomancy