[hackuser]

As I said, it's tough to deal with propaganda, and I think the immediate parent comment supports that point.

First, people often spread propaganda without repeating it. There was interesting research a little while ago showing how propaganda stories spread across the Internet; most of the propagation is done unknowingly. Also, others simply use the techniques without realizing it. If they don't intend it to be propaganda, is it? I think it doesn't matter, unless we want to shift focus from the comment to the speaker - a falsehood is just as false independently of the speaker, no matter what the speaker's intent. Ah, uncertainty, a primary tool of the trade.

How do you point out propaganda, politely? One defensive tactic, both of the propagandist and of a normal person (again, it's never certain), is to frame it as a personal attack. Also, it's one thing to point it out with the personal distance of a online message board; what do you say to someone you are talking to - 'those are propaganda talking points'? That's rude, but otherwise you empower it. Again, it's a parasite on good faith and politeness.

This discussion is a tangent, but a very important one: What to do? Doing nothing, politely ignoring it, is to empower it. We've seen disastrous consequences from that, both historically and we seem to be heading in that direction now.

[jwtadvice]

I would agree with most of this, but add that the comment could very well be talking about US domestic propaganda and the falsehood narrative that "Russia is behind it."

Essentially it's this: there are many narratives for explaining what's going on provided by different sources of authority and different avenues of information dispersal. Much of it is consistent with a propaganda narrative by the United States, Israel, Russia, Britain, China or another active "strategic communication"/"public messaging" campaigner.

Thinking that any one of these narratives is wholeistic truth (for example the US domestic propaganda) and then charging forward critical of any true facts that inconvenience that propaganda or are consistent with a competing one is not the solution to the problem.

And thus the track that this thread has gone down: inconvenient truths about the gaps, assumptions and conspiracies that support a broader US propaganda position are being called into question not as facts but because merely contributing these facts into the discussion could be conceivably be supportive of a competing narrative.

That's ultimately how these propaganda programs function: they overwhelm your instinctual capability to reason about facts in a manner that is divorced from reaffirmation of the propaganda bubble.

I don't know how to help you get out of it other than to call it out to you.

[hackuser]

> Thinking that any one of these narratives is wholeistic truth (for example the US domestic propaganda) and then charging forward critical of any true facts that inconvenience that propaganda or are consistent with a competing one is not the solution to the problem.

Absolutely, but ...

> there are many narratives for explaining what's going on provided by different sources of authority and different avenues of information dispersal. Much of it is consistent with a propaganda narrative by the United States, Israel, Russia, Britain, China or another active "strategic communication"/"public messaging" campaigner.

To make it all equivalent is to make just as much of a mistake on the other end of the continuum, and it is selling the propaganda: It's a talking point of propaganda campaigns, creating uncertainty and paralyzing action. As I said elsewhere, it's the liar who says 'you lie a little, I lie a little, it's all the same'. It's not at all the same; there is truth and it is worth everything. It's like the murderer saying 'you're a little violent, I'm a little violent, it's all the same' - no, I didn't kill anyone. It's not binary - 100% honest or a liar. Not all sources are equally trustworthy, just like not all people are. There are large differences between the Russian government and the NY Times, for example.

> inconvenient truths about the gaps, assumptions and conspiracies that support a broader US propaganda position are being called into question

They aren't truths; that's my point; calling them truths or making claims has nothing to do with truth or seeking it. They are unsubstantiated claims, including that it's US propaganda in the first place. That is the difference.

[jwtadvice]

> To make it all equivalent is...

Is your point that you think American propaganda is the truth and non-American propaganda are lies?

I stand by our earlier sophisticated conversation about propaganda as influence and perception management/creation, and how seeking truth in a world filled with propaganda needs to be dispassionately uninvolved in instinctual defense of propaganda, including that of national origin.