[two characters are talking]
Vaccines have saved millions of lives you know
[a blue character points at them proudly]
Heh, look at those idiots over there, they believe in the most obvious propaganda
[the blue character is shown doing various faces]
Anyway, did you know communism killed 100 million people?
I’ve seen that 20% of the people commit 80% of the crime
Our military keeps the world a safer place
Everyone starts with opportunities, you have to earn your place in society, work harder
[sixteen variations of the blue character are shown on a multicolored grid]
Crime is out of control and keeps getting worse
Men are natural leaders, women’s nature is to nurture
Billionaires create jobs
Poor people just keep making bad decisions in life
Migrants are taking our jobs
Socialism is when we all share the same paycheck
If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear
If minimum wages go up, everyone will get fired, it’s math
We brought modernity to the countries we colonized
The wage gap is a myth you’re just looking at it wrong
Immigration mathematically causes crime
Developing countries are poor because of corruption
We are the good guys
If workers were worth more, they would be paid more
Universal healthcare is communism
Patriotism means supporting the troops
[a large drawing of a serious Garfield is surrounded by the infinitely repeating phrase]
YOU ARE NOT IMMUNE TO PROPAGANDA
Not exactly brave to question the propaganda your peer group already disagrees with.
Anyway, did you know communism killed 100 million people?
Yes it’s unlikely it’s as high as 100M, but it’s probably ~50M. About 10M died of famine in the Soviet Union and around 40M in China. 1.2M to 2.2M were killed by the Khmer Rouge, a lot of people died in various civil wars fomented by communist regimes, and of course many died in gulags and as forced labour.
So the image above is doing a strawman style argument claiming that there are people that say “communism killed 100M people”, and saying that this is “propaganda”. Saying communism killed 100M is technically false (but who said that?), the number isn’t likely to be 100M. But it’s leaving out the part about communism killing ~50M people worldwide, because the goal is to make the audience think that all claims about communism resulted in a lot of people are dying are false. The goal is not to have discussion on what the actual number is, it’s implying that communism didn’t kill people.
That’s the nature of propaganda, isn’t it? Give a filtered version of the world and provide people with half truths and assume they won’t bother to seek out the full truth.
A Russian and an American get on a plane in Moscow and get to talking.
The Russian says he works for the Kremlin and he’s on his way to go learn American propaganda techniques.
“What American propaganda techniques?” asks the American.
“Exactly,” the Russian replies.
rofl excellent one
You don’t see rofl nearly enough nowadays
And even more rarely the famed roflcopter.
But we are the good guys, aren’t we? :'(
Look, Hans had no way of knowing that skull was a Nazi symbol.
Someone needs to make a quiz out of these. I don’t see any I believe but I know people who are politically aligned with me who do and and I’m sure the list could be expanded many fold.
I see a few I believe, and cant be sure I’ve been suckered with propaganda or if I’m being gaslit here.
But they dont actually affect my day to day so whatever.
In an effort to educate, would you be willing to comment one you do believe that we can talk about?
I pretty much believe the wage gap is nonsense. Maybe at higher levels, or in freelance work or something, but I worked service jobs most of my life and the girls got bigger raises simply for being attractive girls, and most of my bosses have been women. The debate only ever seems to start up to rile people up against eachother. I always feel like pic related when it comes up.
Edit : maybe they account globally, including weird countries where women aren’t allowed to work and also including Elon Musk in that figure? The stats can be played with so much to paint whatever narrative you want.
Also the 20% of people committing 80% of crime. I’d never heard that until now but the 80/20 thing comes up so often that it immediately rings true. I’m not in any way invested in criminal activity though so I’m not sure what I would be expected to do with that belief.
I don’t think the wage gap exists as a blanket “women get paid $0.70 for the same job a man makes $1” While that definitely still exists in some sectors, I think the issue is much more deep seated systemically, and that’s why it can be hard to pin down. Women are more likely to be in lower paying positions. They are more likely to skip out on career growth due to having/raising children. Women’s performance is evaluated more harshly than men’s, so they end up working more hours to ensure they don’t lose their jobs. This isn’t an extensive list by any means, but that’s the type of issues that can result in women’s work to be considered less valuable than a man’s.
This is why it’s important for programs that combat these types of issues to exist. I know that anecdotally, especially in the service industry, it’s easy to say women can make more money, are more likely to be managers, etc. I’ve seen that as well, but the service industry isn’t exactly a high-playing sector. This is a demonstration of my first point that women are more likely to be in lower paying positions.
Also, I think it’s pretty lame that you’re getting downvoted for saying your stance in an effort to allow yourself to be educated. I think that it’s impressive to admit blind spots if your goal is to improve.
Oh, and for the 20% of people committing 80% of the crime, that one is probably close to accurate just numerically, the problem is that people say this is true because the 20% committing crimes aren’t white, which is empirically untrue.
Setting aside that historically male dominated fields make more money than felmale dominated fields do…
In the states, I have noticed, the wage gap isnt so much woman/man as it is parents/non parents. the default parent is getting called out of work for the sick child, for said childs dr appointments, for said childs half days and vacations. The default parent is usually, still today, a woman. So while the starting wage for a guy and a lady may be the same, overtime, a mother (or yes some fathers) with a child she is the default for, is going to miss work time, she may be passed up for promotion or other projects, a manager may overlook her because she has parental responsiblities. That last part, men in the same role will often be promoted if he has a family, and its the opposite for mothers.
Also
girls got bigger raises simply for being attractive girls
imagine not being a conventional attractive woman. There are tons of capable, confident young women who old pervy managers just dont find hot. There is a coffee shop near me, known to only hire “attractive” young women. I didnt even bother to apply knowing this, when I have hella exp. working in coffee shops. I got fired from planet fitness, the only job ive ever been fired from, excuse me, “let go”, and it was because of how I looked. (mind you I was fit, but I have boxy shoulders, had short hair, and didnt fit this dudes republican barbie aethstetic.)
So that swings a lotta ways man.
Well, it really depends where you are located and what field of work you are in. Where I am from in Europe, wages are different per employee. When you account for women working more often in part time, work in lesser paid care jobs (which is BTW also sexist that jobs mostly done by women get paid less) and that they tend to stay at home more often for the kids and all the other stuff, you still end up with something like 6% of wage difference for the same work that you can not account to anything. Wherever you are from, I think you can look that easily up in some academic literature what and how they adjust these things. What this actually boils down to is that talking about your wages with your coworkers helps and that unions and collective wage agreements are the hot shit.
Imma give you some flack for copy-pasting the same face 16x in the bottom, I imagine that part looking really neat with just slightly different faces.
Also the ones about immigration really bother me. Like, I couldn’t tell you how anyone would have a direct financial interest in fewer immigrants coming into a country. So why would anyone propagandise that? I think just because xenophobia is effective for getting a party into power that can help your actual interest. I’m positive that the all rich people supporting anti-immigration campaigns don’t care about immigration at all and are willing to trample over those people just to get some purchasable asshole into power.
Okay so sit down…
Xenophobia is a tool to divide the working class and buy complacency of certain groups in exchange for being told they are special or more worthy than others.
It is also used to create scapegoats for the harms caused by the capitalists.
Once you understand that you can see why people having solidarity with marginalized groups they don’t belong to isn’t virtue signaling, it’s the only path forward.
Okay so stand up
Yeah that’s what I was trying to say, the propagandists use xenophobia as a pretext to get power in order to get policies through that have nothing to do with immigration. Xenophobia is a means to an end for them and they don’t mind ruining some people’s lives if that allows them to get power for other goals.
It bothers me so much because this is not hateful people being assholes because they’re hateful. This is privileged, powerful people being assholes because it happens to be convenient to them.
I feel you
is this some moron trying to pretend that communism didn’t kill people en mass? while it’s good to be cautious of propaganda, replacing it with the tankie one is probably not the goal.
i see no reason why pareto principle should not apply to crime ( edit: indeed it does - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12171674/ ).
and that is just line one of the “argument” and we are already into stupid territory…
is this some moron trying to pretend that communism didn’t kill people en mass?
No, but the idiots who spout bullshit about communism killing millions of people never talk about all of the people capitalism killed, and it’s at least a magnitude more when you consider the people who are murdered for profit or left to die because there was no profit to be had.
communism did kill millions of people. people aware of that fact are not idiots, they are the people who paid attention in school. capitalism also does have problems, but these problems does not change the fact that communism did kill millions of people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
thank you for playing, better luck next time 😂
It’s only whataboutism if I’m using one to defend the other, instead of just challenging D students to understand that their main mode of arguing against communism is a double edged sword that cuts harder against capitalism than it does against communism.
The problem is you are holding communism to a standard you’re refusing to hold capitalism to. And until you do that, the 100 MilLiOn people claim is meaningless and worthy of mockery, given it’s an attack on a political ideology that only exists to strawman the ideology.
100 MilLiOn people claim is meaningless and worthy of mockery
if course, such a thing as millions of dead can’t stand in the way of building communist heaven.
What bothers me is that your source literally says “pareto in prison” and that “20% of inmates were responsible for approximately 90% of all rule violations”. So these are already people who did a crime and are in prison. This is not the same as" 20% of the general population commit 80% of all crimes". I don’t even think the pareto ratio thingy sounds implausible, its just that “crime” is a broad word where also a lot of bullshit must be included for this like driving without a ticket on the train or parking your car in a no-no zone or speeding. Otherwise we would have 20% of the population who are thieves, murderers and rapist which we obviously don’t have.
This is not the same as" 20% of the general population commit 80% of all crimes"
of course it is not, i am not (and no one sane is) saying it is and if that is someone’s interpretation, that is just misunderstanding of what pareto principle is. it just speaks about distribution inside of the subset.
so inside of the subset of criminals, there will be 20% of them responsible for majority of all the individual crimes.
or i believe it is quite likely (although i don’t have data for that on hand), that you could find that 20% of criminals are responsible for 80% of monetary damage caused by the crime. these are the white collar criminals, who will often escape the punishment, because it is easier to lock up the bottom 80% who can’t afford expensive layers. but the fact that someone sees this as injustice (and i do agree it is) is not a reason to reject some mathematical principal, who just describes it without passing any judgement.
its just that “crime” is a broad word where also a lot of bullshit must be included for this like driving without a ticket on the train
lot of bullshit does not have to be included for this. the rule just makes a prediction about distribution in the specific set, no matter how you define it. it will be true on the set of murderers, it will be true on the set of people with speeding tickets and it will be true on set of people riding a train without a ticket.
the pareto rule doesn’t say how many people in the population have ever ridden without a ticket.
but if you take a set of people who ever did, they will follow roughly the same pattern.
there will be group who does that on a daily basis and these will have many individual transgressions on their account and there will be these who has done that occasionally, every once in a while.
and the rule isn’t specifically about crime.
example from another field: for the isp (internet service provider), 20% of their customers will be responsible for 80% of the total traffic in the network. you don’t have to wonder whether it seems plausible, this is empirically proven fact.
it doesn’t say everyone (or 20% of all people) in their area of operation is their customer. it doesn’t even say 20% of people in that area uses internet at all.
but their customers will follow that pattern. the isp could even decide (if the law permits) to just let these customers go and make their life easier. the profit vs expenses ratio will increase. of course, the rest of the customers they keep will still follow the same pattern, so they can repeat this process until they are left with no customers at all.
The 100 million figure is anti-communist propaganda, which includes death from ww2 Russian front as well as other crappy takes.
The Pareto principle does not apply to crime, it’s pretty obvious or you would have more than 20% criminals in the general population.
and that is just line one of the “argument” and we are already into stupid territory…
The 100 million figure is anti-communist propaganda
right, it is a filthy lie, communists never murdered anyone, the world is actually full of happy communist states, where people are trying to immigrate to in order to achieve the ultimate happiness, we just don’t know it, because of the evil propaganda… do i get that correctly? 😂
it’s pretty obvious or you would have more than 20% criminals in the general population.
that is… not how math works. this you?
spoiler
communists never murdered anyone
Not what I said.
that is… not how math works. this you?
Literally, 80% of crimes are committed by 20% of the people. Like, literally, you can neither read nor do math.
Not what I said.
oh sorry. i sort of implied from your propaganda accusation. so i assume there is some middle ground in between, some number of people that you consider acceptable to murder in order to build your communist heaven? what number is that? it wasn’t hundred million, it was just fifty, and that is totally fine?
Literally, 80% of crimes are committed by 20% of the people.
it’s pretty obvious or you would have more than 20% criminals in the general population.
and now, as a homework, you can think about:
- what is the difference between these two statements?
- what condition would have to be met in order for both of them to be true at the same time?
- is such condition met?
sort of implied from your propaganda accusation.
You are the one making propaganda accusations.
what number is that? it wasn’t hundred million, it was just fifty,
~60.
and that is totally fine?
No. I never said anything like that either.
But blatantly promoting or defending lies which seems to be your pastime is not fine either.
And now, as a homework, you can learn to read and count. Start easy, like
- 20% of criminals
- 20% of people
See the letters, they are different. Means they are different words with different meanings.
No. I never said anything like that either.
you are trying hard to fight against a number, when it is clear to anyone with two brain cells that the number will never be accurate and will always be open to disputes. but the point is it is a big fucking number and whether it is 100 and 60m dead is not really different for establishing that communism is fucking criminal ideology.
20% of criminals
20% of people
See the letters, they are different. Means they are different words with different meanings.the letters are indeed different, good job! i’ll skip over that part where you finally understood and are trying to pretend like you are lecturing me. whatever you need to keep your face.
so now, since you finally understand that these two statements (20% of criminals vs 20% of people) are not the same, you are getting closer to understanding why this original statement of yours makes no sense:
next step in your education, if you are willing, is to go read what pareto principle is, and think about how it relates to question at hand. if you get stuck anywhere, feel free to ask!
Nest step in your education, learn to use a dictionary.
people /pē′pəl/ noun
The mass of ordinary persons; the populace. Used with the. A body of persons living in the same country under one national government; a nationality. The citizens of a political unit, such as a nation or state; the electorate. Used with the.
Media literacy award
do i understand correctly you have no rebuttal, so you are trying some childish non-answer?
You’re not “owed” a reply. Nobody is ever “owed” a reply. Sometimes people don’t want to engage with a comment and that’s fine. In my case, the reason is not “having no rebuttal”, but rather finding your method of communication repulsive to engage with.
I have two minutes to waste while my food cooks so I’ll engage briefly.
First off, the only “childish” interaction here is you calling me a tankie, stupid, childish, instead of just asking questions like a regular adult capable of human to human communications.
Regarding the 100 million figure: it comes from The Black Book of Communism, a slop book that was written for Maurice Papon’s trial (a nazi war criminal responsible for deporting my family to death camps), who used it as defense to say “sure we killed people but communism was worse”. This book uses ridiculous figures such as nazis killed by the USSR during WW2, soviet soldiers who died fighting nazis, an estimate of children not born due to the one child policy, among many other absurdities, to reach its 100 million tally. It’s still to this day being quoted by politicians and media personalities in my country to support the rapidly rising far right against the regular social democratic left. You don’t have to be a “tankie” (which I’m not despite your assumption) to realize red scares are propaganda and have consequences.
As for the pareto crime figure… you live in a society in which loitering in the wrong place, jaywalking, stealing 3€ of goods from a supermarket can constitute a crime, but regular white collar crime gets solved in private and doesn’t even go to trial, while most rapes aren’t even reported to the police out of fear. We don’t have accurate crime stats, and drawing conclusions from current crime stats is akin to drawing conclusions about “here’s who the state considers to be undesirables” (poor people end up being over represented for a reason). 80/20, 13/90, and other similar “crime rate figures” have become racist / white supremacist dogwhistles.
You’re not “owed” a reply. Nobody is ever “owed” a reply
yeah, if you try to smuggle pro-communist propaganda into neutral comic forum, i am. and the fact you tried to downplay it means you are well aware of that.
This book uses ridiculous figures such as nazis killed by the USSR during WW2, soviet soldiers who died fighting nazis, an estimate of children not born due to the one child policy, among many other absurdities, to reach its 100 million tally.
i am not expert on this specific book and i am sure it is not easy task to come up with final figure, as any regime murdering people en mass is usually not keeping very good evidence. i am also sure that some numbers may be disputed, which is still not reason to try to dismiss it as you do. you know why?
because it is not about specific number. i don’t care whether the “real number” (if there could be such thing) is 50 or 150 million. the fact is, that communists MURDERED people, and a lot of them. the fact that nazis also murdered people is irrelevant to that point. the fact that some politician somewhere is supporting modern-day nazis is irrelevant to that point.
(a nazi war criminal responsible for deporting my family to death camps)
other people do have families escorted to similar camps by communist criminals
who used it as defense to say “sure we killed people but communism was worse”.
you are using the same excuse, just in the reverse direction.
You don’t have to be a “tankie” (which I’m not despite your assumption) to realize red scares are propaganda and have consequences.
let me be clear here, while propaganda does indeed have consequences, YOU DO HAVE TO BE EITHER TANKIE, OR AN IDIOT, to try to downplay the fact that communists murdered people en mass by calling it “red scare”.
you live in a society in which loitering in the wrong place, jaywalking, stealing 3€ of goods from a supermarket can constitute a crime, but regular white collar crime gets solved in private and doesn’t even go to trial, while most rapes aren’t even reported to the police out of fear.
yes, that is a problem worth solving, but it doesn’t in any way explain why pareto principle should not apply so some specific subsets of criminals.
it applies to a subset of criminals who are incarcerated and it is documented and i am pretty sure it applies to subset of white collar criminals as well.
i am not sure about rape, since it is a specific crime in that it doesn’t scale very well - you can, fortunately, only rape one person at a time, so it is probably not possible for 20% of perpetrators to be responsible for 80% of rapes, but i am really guessing here.
and most importantly, i am not really sure why this bothers you or the author of the comic. the pareto principle used in this way doesn’t specifically accuse poor people, or people of color, which are over represented in the prison population, of anything. it is a general mathematical principle describing distribution of data in a set.
if anything, i am quite sure that it would hold (if we had a chance to test it on real data) and say that 20% of the thieves are responsible for 80% of the total damage caused.
and the fact that these 20% will be white collar criminals and are unfortunately far more likely to get away without punishment, while we only locked the bottom 80%, is completely different societal problem (worth solving), but i am not sure where author of the comic sees the social or inequality issue in the simple and well tested mathematical principal that he feels to label it as “propaganda”
The problem is not that authoritarian regimes that mark themselves as communist cause a lot of deaths trough Missmanagement and suppression (great famine was mostly Missmanagement). Its how and by whom these numbers are used. When far right politicians call general health programs communism (which its not) and then cite that number (which had already been explained to be much lower), that is weaponizing it in a harmful way to suppress some potentially useful policy. This is what the other commentor was saying with “red scare”.
I also think they communism killed x number of people is also bullshit because what do you even call communism? States like Russia under stalin or Mao China were closer to authoritarian regimes than communism as defined by Marx.
Further I think that this number doesn’t make much sense at all since it also lacks any context to make it useful.
The problem is not that authoritarian regimes that mark themselves as communist cause a lot of deaths trough Missmanagement and suppression (great famine was mostly Missmanagement). Its how and by whom these numbers are used.
no, i am pretty sure that the problem is that communism kills people en mass. it is important to understand it when some uneducated moron dreams about communism and tries to explain that 100m of dead is propaganda, it was aKsHhuuuALly juSt 60…
the fact that somewhere else is some nazi moron is also a problem, but it is not a defense for a communism.
States like Russia under stalin or Mao China were closer to authoritarian regimes than communism as defined by Marx.
well of course we are talking about every attempt at practical realization of communism in human history. no one cares about a fictional dream in a book. fictional dream in a book does not kill people, all the practical attempts at bringing it to life does.
Nah you’re just as insufferable as I thought, I’m good.
Many more interesting things to do in life that argue with this brainrotten aggro take.
The comic was about you I guess.
what a surprise that you, once again, can’t formulate an answer, that was totally unexpected 😂
👍
I’m not the kind of person that gets ragebaited that easily.
Have fun, bye.
i am not expert on this specific book
Then stop arguing like you know shit
that is the only thing from the whole post you are able to argue with? well congratulations… 😂
guess what, people can be aware of immoral foundation and crimes of communism without having read every single existing book on the subject.
wtf is happening here, is jlai.lu new hexbear, or what?
Your attitude is as shitty as your reasoning.
I think I am kinda immune. If I can’t form an opinion about something based on facts, I don’t have an opinion on that.
And kudos for the text-version. People rarely think of disabilities.
You won’t know if you’re being influenced by propaganda. You’ll feel you’re immune if it’s working well.
Propaganda usually works at a deeper level. It can nudge your attention towards some things and away from others, so that you don’t even realize you could have attended to other things. It can frame what you consider important or unimportant. It can subtly influence what facts you’re exposed to, or what you consider a fact from a trustworthy source. It can nudge your emotions and perceptions of trustworthiness, shape your unquestioned narratives and unconscious assumptions, influence how you form associations, mold your incentives, and determine what you’ll never see or hear and never know you’re missing. There are many voices in this world that, by design, you haven’t heard, and others that, by design, you don’t consider worth listening to.
Forming an opinion involves prior beliefs, definitions, and judgements about credibility and what counts as evidence. Propaganda steers these steps, not just the conscious opinion-forming you are aware of. By the time you’re aware that you’re forming an opinion based on facts, propaganda has often already done its work, and if you wind up undecided that might be exactly the intended result.
Not to mention that propaganda is often rooted in facts…just cherry-picked, misleading facts. And don’t get me started on green washing.
Hard to be influenced if one does not consume any (social)media. Sure, nowadays it’s not trivial to distinguish facts from manipulation, but that’s the best I can do without going to whatever the topic is, live there, observe and then form an opinion. If even possible.
If I even want that. E.g. In another comment I’ve been asked on my stance towards taiwan. If I’m neither Chinese nor Taiwanese nor living in one or the other, why would I need an opinion on that? To sound smart when others bring it up? To discuss a matter I have no influence in and will never decide anything. I may tend more towards Taiwan, but I also know the level of my information to form an opinion is maybe 1% of it all? So hence I keep that to myself.
Same applies to all general topics people have opinions about, formed by propaganda in whichever way and form.
I would die on a hill to discuss google being the murder of the internet, just because I was there from day1 to form a stance by observation.
This one right here
What are your thoughts on Taiwan?
I like Taiwan, I like China, I know about the conflict and the points both have and that’s about it. I’m neither Taiwanese nor Chinese and I don’t even live near. My opinion is not only non existent, it would be totally useless. Noone would care and I would never voice it. Unless a friend asks me and knows even less.
Why?
I’m curious about your beliefs (and meta beliefs, like this one) regarding commonly propagandized topics. What are your thoughts on the Russian invasion of Ukraine?
I don’t like it, obviously, but I also don’t know enough to say “Russia bad!” To which the world mostly lean towards. Both sides drown the world in shitty propaganda I totally ignore. And I don’t know places that offer truth. The only truth available is war footage. And that is naked truth. Ugly, dark and sad. And also not revealing anything else beyond both sides doing horrible things.
I have good friends which are Russian and Ukrainian. And we all don’t care. Wouldn’t matter even if we did. Neither Putin nor zelensky will ever ask for our opinion on the war.
We can talk about it, but it would serve no purpose. You might know more, you might know less, and what you know is most likely also false (even if you were Putins/zels right hand). So you either convince me of your false opinion or I convince you of my false opinion. I’d rather discuss ideas, theories or general opinions than those futile topics.
I will note, that I comment this, to tell it to other people possibly reading these comments. You do not have to care, if you do not want to, I understand.
It should not really be “Russia bad!”, more like “Putin’s dictatorship bad”, or something like that. The fact is, Russia attacked another nation under Putin’s leadership (they say it themselves), and started the war without provocation, to conquer a sovereign nation (they have also said that themselves). Knowing this, makes quite many people not like Russia under this leadership, especially if you are their neighbor, and they have attacked your lands before as well, to conquer them (that is, where my angle is coming from, for the context).
Some random russian from the street did not do it - but you cannot blame ukrainians for defending themselves either. So, in short it is “war bad”, “starting war really bad”, but “defending yourself ok”. Now, what is happening in the actual meat grinder… War bad.Well met
I’m sorry, I can’t answer that.
no one asked you, so… 😂
