this post was submitted on 01 Mar 2025
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It is difficult to "brainwash" people against their perceived material interests. People are "apolitical" because they benefit from the status quo. There are plenty of Chinese liberals within the mainland who are allowed to benefit from the current system as they interact with it in a way that is overall beneficial to the dictatorship of the proleteriat but if there are narratives that they feel will benefit them further which they can act on that causes malevolence, then they will potentially be a greater cost to the system than a benefit; a burden the country could do without.
Western propaganda works because of perceived material benefits of going along with it and the costs of going against it exceed the benefits in a capitalist world; not because it injects ideas into human beings scifi/horror-movie-style like a poltergiest taking over them against their will.
I don't think censorship is the way. I feel it's a fear driven approach and paternalistic.
It's easy to see with your own eyes the decay of western society, because the supposed material gain is rooted in elitism and barely hidden exploitation.
The only way to convert the liberals is to show them what is really going on in the material world of western society. Keeping it censored will allow liberalism to fester and grow unchecked in china as these people will have their ideas reinforced by not being in contact with what liberalism really cause.
"Marketplace of ideas" means the idea with dominant capital will be dominant; it is not the "merit" of the argument that wins a person over. In a dictatorship of the proleteriat by seizing the means of production the socialist enterprise controls the capital and therefore "wins" the argument for the proleteriat. The perception whether an idea is good or not is always affected by bias; the point is for whom the bias should be in favor of.
That does not mean there is no objective reality or concrete solutions to real-world problems. Science is the method of figuring this out and marxism is a science. The problem is where and when people choose science in the day to day world. There are classes of people with sufficient privilege that perceive not to be affected by this ignorance, and therefore ignore the science when it suits them.
It is not a question of whether "censorship" is good or not; de facto censorship will always exist with every community and society - the question who gets to decide which censorship, what gets censored and which media it should take form in.
If one imagines a space with no formal censorship that does not mean it does not take place; a lack of a formal structure and hierarchy just means an informal one takes place instead, and in a capitalist world this means capital will dictate what those will end up being.
In early stages of socialism by definition it will have capital mechanisms such as markets; this is not maintained in a "neutral" environment, it will inevitably come with the culture of liberalism.
We should aim to have a scientific approach and understand of how things works and try to step away from the liberal frameworks we are brought up in which often conceptualises problems it does not really want to solve in absractions, rather than ground them in the concrete of the real.
My argument isn't for or against censorship; it is just a tool and to understand how and whether we use this tool we should understand the science of how ideas "win" people over.
One can think of a socialist country as where the standards enforced on an educator is enforced on every aspect of society and this includes what gets amplified and de-amplified for the progression of society. No individual has the correct answer, our collective knowledge and trials of how to apply this scientifically in a continually shifting landscape is the way forward.
Good answer, comrade 🫡
It is always important to remember to think current situations in a materialistic way, and not fall for the idealistic lie that propaganda alone is able to "brainwash" or "control" people.
Thank you - dialectical materialism really helps in understanding the science of the political economy and the articles on redsails.org really helps accelerate this understanding by breaking it down; I am still learning!