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sneak 7 hours ago

Propaganda can be entirely factual. In fact, the best propaganda is.

brabel 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

In Portuguese we use the same word for ad and propaganda! In fact that word is just propaganda!

tintor 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

In Serbian too: EPP - Ekonomske Propagandne Poruke | Economic Propaganda Messages

direwolf20 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

PR departments used to be called propaganda departments

parthdesai 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I think you're being sarcastic, but just in case you're not

> Propaganda is the deliberate, systematic manipulation of information—including facts, half-truths, or lies—to influence public opinion, attitudes, and behaviors toward a specific cause, ideology, or agenda.

WarmWash 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

A large percentage of Americans are convinced that police will just shoot them if they happen to feel like it.

Even including ICE in this statistic, you will never even meet someone who knows someone who was murdered by a cop. Police encounters that turn deadly, not even blatant murder, are on the order of 1 in 50,000.

However, that stream of police murder videos are definitely real.

Propaganda is often stoking tiny sparks into large raging forest fires.

southerntofu 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> police will just shoot them if they happen to feel like it.

Well that's exactly the problem. There's nothing stopping them: no accountability, no justice. Many cops just don't feel like randomly shooting people, and that's good. The problem is if they do, and even if they brag about it, little will be done.

Take for example the latest Sainte-Soline repression scandal revealed a few months back by Mediapart [1] where videos show dozens of riot cops making a contest about maiming the most people, encouraging one another to break engagement rules, and advocating for outright murder. Everybody knew before the bodycam videos, but now that we have official proof, we're still waiting for any kind of accountability.

If i go around and shoot people, there is no way i will avoid prison. If a cop goes around and shoots people, or strangles people to death, prison is a very unlikely outcome.

> you will never even meet someone who knows someone who was murdered by a cop

That's not how statistics work. Police abuse tends to happen in the same low-income social groups (and ethnic minorities). As an example, living in France, i've met several people who had a family member killed by police. Statistically unlikely if i only hung around in "startup nation" or "intellectual bourgeoisie" circles, which is not my case.

[1] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifestation_du_25_mars_2023_...

WarmWash 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Being killed by police is different than being murdered by police.

Police in the US kill somewhere around 1000 people a year. But of those, it's something like 5-10 that are murders. There is maybe 1 every few years where the cop is itching to shoot someone who is clearly compliant and not a threat.

The 990 police killing videos that become available every year now are not particularly compelling, because its bad actors trying to kill police and getting themselves killed.

Sorry, I don't know anything about France and police though. The US has a different dynamic because guns are everywhere, especially where crime is. Every cop knows about the ~50 cops who are killed by guns every year.

southerntofu 2 hours ago | parent [-]

The dynamic doesn't look very different here, at least from reading the news. I don't know about the US (though i suspect <1% murder out of all police killings is a gross under-estimation), just for anyone's curiosity, in France police killing of a threatening person is the outlier. [1]

We don't have guns circulating freely around here (though some people have them such as for hunting). Many police murders take place in police custody (such as El Hacen Diarra just this month). According to the most comprehensive stats i could find [2], out of 489 deaths by police shootings (1977-2022), 275 victims were entirely unarmed.

[1] Not very scientific method: any case of police being assaulted and using "self-defense" is widely spread in the media, and those few cases per year don't account for the dozens of deaths every year.

[2] https://bastamag.net/webdocs/police/

johnnyanmac 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

>Even including ICE in this statistic, you will never even meet someone who knows someone who was murdered by a cop. Police encounters that turn deadly, not even blatant murder, are on the order of 1 in 50,000.

That just shows that people's social circles aren't that wide. 1 in 50,000 is rare in your personal bubble. For a town of 1 million people, thats 20 people.

Sounds tiny, but if we were to line up 20 people and have them murdered by law enforcement, it'd pretty much end the careers of anyone in that chain of command. Because that's not a behavior you want to let spread and expand.

muwtyhg 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Sometimes what you choose to show, even if true, can impact how people see a situation or fact. That is what the OP is referring to. Your quote even mentions that propaganda can be made of "facts" and "half-truths" (a half-truth is usually a fact with a portion omitted to change the interpretation of the fact).

cheeseomlit 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>including facts

parthdesai 7 hours ago | parent [-]

> deliberate, systematic manipulation of information

And, what are we doing with those facts? We're manipulating them lol

fc417fc802 7 hours ago | parent [-]

It's using information to influence public opinion in a calculated manner. Said information can include facts. It can even be entirely factual.

Manipulating the feed of a social media website for the purpose of swaying the viewer's opinion is a cut and dry example of propaganda. Doesn't matter who does it or whether the information displayed is factual or not. Those things make zero difference.

johnnyanmac 2 hours ago | parent [-]

This really doesn't pass the sniff test. It reminds me of a recent post I saw: "what are movies people like only becsuse it is good?", calling it "quality slop". It's contradictory.

If people are given a wide perspective of a situation and adjusts bias for the Overton window (aka, we don't let Nazis have an equal platform to a more progressive group), then we just call that good reporting. The act of convincing people isn't inherently a bad thing. How you do it matters a lot.

sneak 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I am not being sarcastic at all. It is a common misconception that propaganda means lies. Propaganda is information designed to get you to believe a certain thing or feel a certain way. The best propaganda uses entirely truthful statements to manipulate your beliefs and emotions.

somenameforme 7 hours ago | parent [-]

One of the best examples of this were the endless photos and information about stocked store shelves, filled with fresh goods at dirt cheap prices, during the Cold War. In general truth is the best propaganda, because when you lie there's always a rubber-band effect when somebody realizes, sooner or later, that they've been had.

carlosjobim 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Propaganda is information which supports a specific cause, whether true or false.

If you think "propaganda" is defined as something being lies, then you have misunderstood the word.

Product advertising is the most widespread form of propaganda. And in some non-english countries it is called "propaganda" and not "marketing".

mvdtnz 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

So literally what he just said. Propaganda can be factual.