this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2026
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This may counter propaganda, but is also clearly propaganda itself.
Literally anything that causes an idea to spread is propaganda. Advertising, calls for help, gossip, commentary, analysis, storytelling, hell public art or theater or even just public conflict. That's what the word means, the means of idea propagation.
Absolutely.
So calling anything propaganda is pointless, because everything is propaganda.
Exactly. And saying this meme is counter-propaganda is pointless, since it itself is propaganda.
Ok, sure. It's exactly as propaganda as anything else
Propaganda is just messaging, there's nothing inherently evil about it. The question is what message is being propagated.
Absolutely - I did not mean to imply that this is evil propaganda.
China executes pedophiles and America elects them and worships at their churches. It's really not a complicated comparison. There is no gotcha here
Fair, though I'm not sure it's as simple as that. I'm no fan of the US, but what do you think is the biggest issue plaguing China right now from a humanist perspective?
Maybe both countries should stop executing people given that a non-negligible number of them are entirely innocent. Maybe capital punishment should have been abandoned long before the 21st Century and any country that continues it be a pariah state.
Again, there is no cultural artifact that does not serve a propaganda purpose or espouse a worldview
Indeed - Riverside's claim that this is not propaganda is therefore false.
It's not propaganda as we've been made to understand it in the west, because that's a meaningless vibes based category
Hmm, maybe I misunderstood you.
If all cultural artifacts serve a propaganda purpose, but this post is not propaganda, does that mean that this post is not a cultural artifact?
I'm saying we've been taught that "propaganda" is just another word for "lies" when the reality is that it covers basically any piece of art, culture or commentary. It's just any art or information that advances a specific view of the world. As a category it's hopelessly broad, so it's better to understand it as a function rather than a thing.