[swayvil]

If we trust our leaders. And our leaders feed us a bunch of bullshit. And then, motivated by that bullshit, we nazi up. Does that make us bad people?

This stuff has been researched deeply. Something like 96% of the population. Nice people. Not idiots. Will swallow absolutely anything that the leader feeds them.

It may be unfixable. Or maybe the only way to fix it is to destroy all forms of mass media.

[nicoburns]

> If we trust our leaders. And our leaders feed us a bunch of bullshit. And then, motivated by that bullshit, we nazi up. Does that make us bad people?

Yes, absolutely. Deferring to authority is no excuse for morally abhorrent behaviour. Of course if you’re under threat that’s a different matter. But blind trust in leadership is a poor excuse. It’s not like the nazis had no detractors in Germany.

[swayvil]

Of course it isn't blind trust. Good arguments will be made. Extremely plausible lies uttered by trustworthy authorities and echoed by your friends and peers. Don't imagine that even you are immune.

Does believing it make you a bad person? Of course not. You're only doing what's right and sensible.

[amanaplanacanal]

Indeed. Large parts of the west went through this process less than 20 years ago in the run up to the invasion of Iraq. And something like half a million died. It’s not like this is just a theoretical exercise.

[djbebs]

They're going through it now.

Just go on reddit and you'll see several videos of Ukrainian drone dropping bombs on clearly wounded Russian soldiers and you'll see a whole comment section celebrating the war crime.

[nicoburns]

I feel like the Iraq war is not a good example if you want to claim that it was good people misled. Millions (including me) protested against that war. There was really no excuse for supporting it.

[sillystuff]

Perhaps you are being downmodded for the off-the-cuff sounding statistic? But, your general point stands. Control of messaging is extremely powerful. One could argue that Casey achieved success decades ago E.g., the majority of Americans believed ?still do? that Iraq had something to do with 9/11 and that the US war in Iraq wasn't just an opportunistic war of aggression to serve American oligarchs. And, the majority of those misled Americans are not horrible people.

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false."

- William Casey, CIA Director 1981

I think the media issue can be resolved by media that is not affiliated with corporations, rich benefactors or government. E.g., MI5 used to vet BBC employees to ensure no one on the left would have any editorial influence (MI5 had veto power over hires). And, the CIA had/has journalists on their payroll at major US publications to ensure "proper" messaging. Advertisers can strongly influence what is reported e.g., an oil company threatens to cancel ad campaign if media outlet reports on their suppression of climate research. A single rich man can set the direction of a media organization-- including having their organizations spread known falsehoods in support of their personal ideologies e.g., Murdoch or Hearst.

A model that mostly[1] works is that of listener support (not the PBS model with government and corporate funding and also begging listeners for money, but rather the Pacifica model which accepts no funds from anyone but listeners.

Pacifica has a few programs that are usually quite good, like "Letters and Politics" (also available as podcasts linked from kpfa.org). They do have their share of dreck, though. And, being a bunch of lefties (the network was founded by pacifists who met while in US prison for protesting a war) they are equally critical of lefties like themselves, the mainly center-right to right "liberals"/Democrats and the far-right to extreme far-right Republicans (left right spectrum here is based on where the policies, of these groups, fit within the spectrum of world politics).

[1]Pacifica's New York station self destructed after the board was taken over by a group of listeners into all manner of woo, so Pacifica's model still has some issues.

[SXX]

Sentient AI will fix it. We might not like the fix though.