I would move away from the idea that we (whatever that means, hexbear) have something special about us that allows us to see past the propaganda. Why people think one thing over another isn’t solved, and is definitely influenced by the social context people are in. This is especially true for things that take place far away. It may be a hard sell if the nation-state says “The sky is green”, but it’s a much easier sell to say “If the DPRK says the sky is green, North Koreans believe it”.

I freely admit that if I had passed my initial degree (computer science and mathematics) and got a stable job 4 years after highschool, I’d be a vastly different person today (probably a technolibertarian logic-cultist). The poverty, homelessness, reliance on communities (and even the discovery of community) have all influenced me. This may just be one convoluted anecdote, but almost everyone is like this. And almost everyone is in a position where the people with the most power support the hegemonic narrative (e.g. bosses, managers, realtors, cops, landlords etc.), simply because it’s in their best interest to do so. And even if your beliefs go against that, how frequently are you going to raise that in “polite company”? Like, if you became a publicly known communist or whatever, what would your job prospects be like? What’s your rent situation going to be like if your landlords all know that your position is “kill all landlords”?

Perhaps if the libertarians in my life weren’t such unbelievable chunkheads, my politics would have wound up different. But even with myself I find it hard to point to specific events that pushed me one way or another, let alone analysing someone else’s politics, let alone trying to deliberately influence other people’s politics.

For a lot of people, they’re dimly aware that their country probably does “bad stuff”. Lots of people like chocolate, I’m told, and are vaguely aware that the cocoa harvesting industry is pretty shady. But they like chocolate enough that they don’t bother looking it up, and there’s enough people like that if someone points out that the chocolate industry is reliant on slave labour, the critical person is seen as the bad guy, not the chocolate eaters. This vague awareness is explains some of the rapturous glee when a national enemy is shown to do something “beyond the pale”. I may eat chocolate and be supporting slavers in Central America, but at least I’m not like the organ-harvesting inscrutable Chinese. Therefore I can continue to eat chocolate until the Chinese stop organ harvesting.

I would argue that propaganda is more about groups than individuals. Whether propaganda affects one individual or not is kinda pointless to analyse, there’s a thousand things going on around someone. What if there was the ideal propaganda shown to a person, but they happened to be grouchy that morning and it didn’t click? What it does do is establish a cultural narrative that can be considered the “default”. Something people are expected to believe and usually do. If you meet a random person in the street, are they more or less likely to believe in this thing? Unless they’ve done the research (and don’t believe their claims that they have, they often haven’t, and realistically its a bit much to expect everyone to fully research every topic), what will they think? The answer is often, well, the ideas and culture of the ruling class. Perhaps a piece of propaganda has failed if it does not become the dominant cultural narrative in its sphere, whether or not it has captured every individual. Not even a majority, just the majority of talking heads, thought leaders, and “powerful respectable” people in the community.

Then there’s also whether people are espousing their actual beliefs. A lot of people bullshit and come up with posthoc reasons why they believe something.

Lastly, would it be a “belief” in the injustice of rent if you still pay rent? A lot of subjects are like this, whether or not you believe in rent you know there’s a bunch of angry racists with guns itching to serve notice at your landlord’s beck and call.