I don’t know about y’all, but if I grew up in a country that never has the news criticizing its leaders, I’d be very skepical and deduce that there is censorshop going on and the offical news could be exaggerated or entirely falsified. Do people in authoritarian countries actually just eat the propaganda? To what extent do they believe the propaganda?
I think this USSR quote is a good answer:
(Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn)
In any authoritarian system where indoctrination starts young you’ll probably have a fifth of the population that’s high on the coolaid or never questioned anything due to ideology or intelligence (or both). The rest know they’re lying, etc. And keep their mouths shut because they don’t want to go to Siberia or El Salvador.
Also applies to modern day Russia. Everyone knows the elections are fake, for example, but they keep their heads down.
Yeah, and just because you know they’re lying, doesn’t mean you know what the truth is, much less so how to prove it to someone else.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_the_Kool-Aid
it was a tool of mad suicide not a drug to get high on lol
That’s not the point of the phrase — the statement refers to the true believers drinking poison unquestioningly, without entertaining the thought that it will kill them.
I know. What you have hit upon here is my obviously unsuccessful attempt at making these people look more ridiculous than the OG death cult.
You learn that truth is a dangerous luxery you can do without, as power dictates, and can do so for generations.