I've also found this to be true, but also only in relatively modern times. For instance during the Cold War there was an obscene amount of propaganda, but it was mostly true. For instance the wide array of cheap affordable goods in American shelves was constantly flaunted, but not in the least bit misleading.

I don't understand the modern effort to engage in 'information warfare' as a thing in and of itself. Each time it collapses and people sees what was 'really' happening, it just makes them that much less likely to believe you next time. And you also create a significant number of perpetually jaded people who will basically never believe you again, even when you're telling the truth. Countless politicians have proudly paraded around their pristine, seemingly untouched, copies of Meditations, but perhaps they should go for more foundational works, like The Boy Who Cried Wolf.

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xg15 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> And you also create a significant number of perpetually jaded people who will basically never believe you again, even when you're telling the truth.

Yes, but they will also not believe my enemies. Making people not believe anything anymore is a classic strategy of propaganda.

	▲	somenameforme 7 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Maybe that is the rationale. It's the only thing that'd make sense, but for problem that it doesn't. When somebody, or some entity, lies to you - that entity becomes the liar. People may not want to believe 'the enemy', but that's going to be because of their own ideological reasons, and not because they now refuse to believe anybody. On the contrary non-ideologues may even be ever more swayed towards your enemy as a result of this. Personally I think the issue is that after WW2 we were left with a large scale and ever growing intelligence apparatus, but with ever fewer appropriate tasks for them. That led directly to the era of recklessly overthrowing nations, often to our detriment, and gradually transitioned to the modern era of aimless 'information warfare' which I think will ultimately be shown to be very much to our detriment, once again.

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N_Lens 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The difference between American and Russian propaganda is that Russians know it's propaganda.

	▲	wiseowise 18 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		This was a great, old anecdote. Until they’ve started the biggest European war of the century.