[zrn900]

> Russia and China are doing it on a much worse level

They arent. The two things that crippled the Eastern Bloc's propaganda efforts was 1) Fear of getting caught lying and losing credibility and therefore not lying 2) Doing propaganda by stating facts in dry, formal language.

The US has perfected the lying, smearing emotional manipulation propaganda early in the Cold War and it still keeps doing it. There isn't one single country that does it like that. So, no, Russia and China arent doing it 'on a much worse level' - they are incompetent. The very fact that you have this 'perception' that its not the country that lied about nonexistent WMDs for almost a decade but 'others' who are doing 'worse propaganda' is a demonstration of how far worse the US propaganda is.

[stevenwoo]

There’s an argument to be made that Hollywood is the best propaganda machine in the world at fostering putative or aspirational American ideals if not the reality on the ground. Recently the adaptation of The Sympathizer, this explores from the POV that the guys on the other side are human, too, differently from the book but similar territory concerning depictions of Vietnam War in particular.

[zrn900]

> There’s an argument to be made that Hollywood is the best propaganda machine in the world at fostering putative or aspirational American ideals if not the reality on the ground

Indeed. The circulation of video tapes in the early to late 80s USSR, US movies et al, seem to have created a major false perception: People thought that Americans lived like how the rich in Manhattan live. Even in the late 2000s, there were Russian journalists (local) who did not believe that there were homeless in New York, for example.