• Spagetisprettygood@lemmygrad.ml
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      2 years ago

      Theyll claim to not be racist then immediately say that these envoys dont count because muslims in these countries are all paid off or brainwashed.

    • spaphy
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      2 years ago

      Yeesh. I’m willing to listen lol.

      I think there’s a lot of “white people” in America or the EU that don’t feel mainstream media should be consumed in whole or taken at face value. I’d say the same for anywhere is true.

      I just wish I could see first hand what is happening in China sometimes and make my own bias. I know that if I see something on the news in the US I can usually guess if it’s exaggerated or not. For example racist cops right

      • redtea@lemmygrad.ml
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        2 years ago

        There is a problem with all media in the West, though. We are constantly told that there is a ‘marketplace of ideas’ as if this is sufficient to counter the overbearing presence of a single viewpoint. It is not.

        Alternative media, of the ‘left’ and right, still relies on the mainstream (curated) news cycle for it’s stories and rarely if ever escapes the paradigms set up by that mainstream news cycle. (This largely includes social media, whether classed as mainstream or alternative media.)

        If one person does manage to avoid these stories from ‘news’ sources, they see the same stories, anyway, in entertainment media (movies, series, books, music, theatre, games, etc), or hear the same in everyday conversation. So it is not enough to be wary of mainstream (news) media.

        In all these realms, Michael Parenti argues, the ‘anti-communist impulse’ kicks in. A negative spin is put on every event. If there are churches or mosques, the citizens must be forced to attend and be religious. If there are no churches or mosques, it’s evidence of religious oppression. This impulse is wired in over a lifetime of living in the West, and regularly topped up even (especially, maybe) by voices that are sold as ‘critical’ or ‘alternative’.

        What seems to be required is a critical framework that allows people to challenge the very premises of any given story or idea. Unfortunately most people are uninterested in developing this framework or do not know that they need to.

        If you are willing to listen, you may want to watch some Michael Parenti lectures on YouTube. In particular, search for ‘inventing reality’, ‘wagon trains’, ‘swarthy hordes’, or ‘media’ with his name.

        If you’ve heard of Chomsky and Herman’s idea of manufacturing consent, some of Parenti will be familiar. Parenti wrote about a similar idea but in a much more rigorous and entertaining way at least a year before Manufacturing Consent was published. Chomsky and Herman did not cite Parenti and have never since acknowledged his work (to my knowledge). The fact that most people have heard of manufacturing consent but not inventing reality is just another example of the problem with news production and distribution.

      • Lenins2ndCat@lemmygrad.ml
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        2 years ago

        You can see, there’s literally hundreds of videos from visitors to the region on youtube. The problem is that nobody seeks them out, and the other problem is the rampant mindset of anglos that it’s all some big pretend show because everyone’s secretly super scared of being disappeared by the CPC that solely exists inside the incredibly propagandised anglo mind.

        If you want to see first hand proper then pay to go see. Nothing is stopping you other than the cost of going there. It’s not a magically sealed of place that nobody can visit.