Likely true by example, but not by definition.
Overthrowing power may be hopeless, but propaganda may still be used simply to prevent the masses from causing slight discomfort to the people in power.
Propaganda is a tool, not a last resort, of the powerful.
Great artistic vision with this pic. Totally dig it
I like the message but it’s simply not true. They’ll always have propaganda even if they have complete control. Take North Korea for example.
The intense amount of propaganda in NK is necessary in order to maintain that control - and it is always a struggle between the public’s perception of reality and the ability of those in power to distort it. If there was no hope of the state being overthrown, there would be no need to struggle against the public’s perceptions of reality.
Authoritarian regimes are often enduring but brittle, like glass. They can last decades of storms and tempests without a single crack, but the right stress will shatter them in an instant.
Control over Rupert Murdoch’s media empire will probably pass to four of his children, with equal voting rights for all of them. Only one of them (Lachlan) is as right-wing as he is. The other three are comparatively liberal, e.g. they consider man-made climate change a threat. Long-form story: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/04/rupert-murdoch-family-succession-james-murdoch/681675/
Do the Impossible
See the invisible
Row! Row!
Fight the powa!Touch the untouchable
Break the unbreakable
Row! Row!
Fight the powa!The bad news: The most evil people in the world spend billions every year on the largest propaganda machine in the history of man, and it enthralls a large minority of us.
The good news: That’s what it takes to maintain this! This many people living in a bubble of unreality is not natural! It is the product of a machine built by man, and all machines built by man are destined to eventually fail. Maybe the right person dies at the right time. Maybe the conflict between their narrative and reality eventually becomes too much. Maybe they lose control of the story and the movement splinters into hundreds of contradictory conspiracy theories that no longer move in lockstep. Maybe the magic just wears off one day.
Counterpoint is religion. 75% right now live in unreality. Minimum. Not a minority.
It’s been like this since the beginning of written history. It doesn’t seem we can break free so far.
Because it’s the vast majority, my mere pointing it out will risk ire.
You bring up a good point, but I don’t think religion necessarily involves the kind of unreality I have in mind.
A lot of religious claims deal with things that are unfalsifiable. Invisible forces, unreachable gods, consciousness after death, things like that. Not the most rational stuff in the world, but not obviously false on the face of it either.
Now, though, we’ve got folks believing things that are easily disproven. Climate change denial, anti-vaccine bullshit, the never-ending parade of moral panics churned out by the above mentioned propaganda machine, Jewish space lasers, pet eating immigrants, etc.
I won’t go so far as to say that religion never causes people to deny observable reality; it surely does. But I think the right wing media empire we have now does so intentionally and on a scale greater than any religious movement I can think of.
all machines built by man are destined to eventually fail
Every fascist regime in the world has fallen or is in the process of falling. It’s not a matter of “if,” but of “when.”
Obviously that doesn’t mean that the next 4+ years are going to be particularly pleasant for the people who live here, of course.
When it falls we need to figuratively topple their statues. Rename their libraries and airports and make their names on buildings and in laws illegal.
Move all of their actual statues into museums where they can live next to images of their injustices and retributions for all eternity. Rename their libraries and airports after those who died opposing them. Salt the ground from which their authoritarianism sprouted.
You’re right and that’s another reason why economic equality is important.
The louder authoritarian fascists shout … the more desperate they become because they know they’re losing control
