cucumovirus

that propaganda has zero effect on people exposed to it

That is not the claim, no one has ever claimed this. Propaganda definitely has an effect, but the way it works is different and specific, and it's possible to fight against it. Have you read the article I linked?

Again, I didn’t talk about brainwashing nor do I believe in the brainwashing theory you keep attributing to me

But you did explicitly mention, in your second comment, this:

My point is that propaganda can influence us in subtle ways that don’t have to be complete “brainwashing,” and the belief that because you are (presumably) not “brainwashed” that you have completely escaped propaganda’s influence is dangerously presumptive.

implying that "brainwashing" can exist at least in some limited fashion. You framed your critique only in regard to brainwashing and not the actual theory I'm a proponent of (the article explicitly deals with such points and proposes how to fight them). The point is that the way propaganda works is not by some invisible ever-present influence, but by socially licensing us to go along with certain things. In the same manner marketing and advertising work as well (the ads that don't simply reveal to us use-value of a necessary products, but those that attempt to create a specific brand image).

I said that the things we expose ourselves to have some influence over what we think and believe, and by extension our actions

This claim no one disagrees with, but that is not the same claim you made before. The point is that we rationally choose what we interact with and what we believe, and both of those things are underpinned by our material conditions, but it is possible to rationally make a choice against the prevailing default narrative in society.

You didn't mention the term, but if your notion of propaganda is something that can just infect you without warning, then it's not really in line with the scientific views of propaganda and it's much closer to the brainwashing theory. If you just scrolled reddit or listened to a Jordan Peterson lecture every day, would you really be in danger of becoming an anti-communist because of it?

The point is to reject completely any "brainwashing" theories, even if in quotes, because they are unscientific and don't really explain anything. It's about recognizing that people buy into propaganda for specific reasons, exploring those reasons, and about formulating effective strategies to get them to "buy out" if possible. It's about actively rejecting said propaganda and getting people to do the same.

I have thought about this and I think it's beside the point. I think we need to take another step back because we've gotten lost in random hypothetical examples which don't really matter here.

Dialectical materialism is not compatible with free will, but it's also not compatible with a mechanical determinism where only outside forces act to direct us. We are parts of the dialectic of history and it makes us just as we make it. We take action against those who stand opposed to communism. We condemn and fight them, while trying to get as many people over to our cause as possible. The point here is that we are not subjects external to history and only directed by it, nor do we freely choose our path without the effect of our material conditions.

I agree that it's not of our free will, but we are still parts of the whole, and it is through us that our history happens. We (social humans) live in our societies, we labour and produce, we interpret those relations of production into ideology, we struggle and fight for liberation. We organize and produce the propaganda and counter-propaganda - all shaped by our material conditions. In doing so we try to influence other people one way or the other. The theories that explain most accurately the actual laws that direct society and history, the ones that push forward the progress of history, these being class struggles and Marxism (dialectical materialism), we recognize as correct.

When our scientific understanding of propaganda informs our tactics which then most effectively get people over to our side, that is the correct theory of propaganda. The people choosing racist propaganda when plenty of the opposite is available are of course doing so due to their class position (and race, etc. and material conditions in general). It's not a free choice, but it's one they're making rationally, they aren't being brainwashed. That is the point of the article, and that is the point I interpreted from the original post. That people are not being manipulated insidiously by a propaganda machine that infects them as a virus infects a host, but that their ideology is influenced by their material conditions, and their beliefs are accordingly formulated rationally. This simply means that many westerners in particular are racist, but it's a rational choice (not a free one) they made based on their conditions, it wasn't imposed into them by brainwashing. Both their racism and the racist propaganda exist due to the same material conditions and social relations. For these same reasons, they are against us and everything we stand for, and we are against them in our political activity. For a variety of reasons, certain people make the opposite choice or even become communists, for whatever reason, people do choose not to buy into the propaganda.

The point of pointing this out is that we can rationally influence people if we approach them correctly, that the fight against propaganda is very winnable, and not a hopeless battle we are destined to lose because of some magical mode of operation of propaganda. This part is where the willing acceptance of propaganda comes into it. There are plenty of contradictions in the interests of each person - these are generalized to the level of classes (or other social groups in particular situations) - which in sum determine what that person is susceptible to buy into. The ones that most fervently cheer for genocide, we will never be able to convert because they will never make the choice, but there are plenty of others we can - those that are not buying into the racist propaganda, or are doing so only lightly, passively. Most of these people currently don't really care one way or the other, but the point is that we can make a lot of them care if we approach them correctly - we can get them to choose our side. Many of these people are already making the choice to educate themselves more and are discovering communism and similar theories.

This article directly opposes your position.

It doesn't. The passage you quoted here nicely explains. The point of the passage is why the average worker in the west rejects communism. It doesn't provide cover for those actively spreading and positively engaging with racist propaganda. It illuminates the problem with our counter-propaganda and gives us a way forward.

From the same article:

1. Stop accusing the masses of being “brainwashed.” Stop treating them as cattle, stop attempting to rouse them into action by scolding them with exposure to “unpleasant truths.”
2. Accept instead that they have been avoiding those truths for a reason. You were able to break through the propaganda barrier, and so could they if they really wanted to. Many of these people see you as the fool, and in many cases not without reason.
3. Understanding people as intelligent beings, craft a political strategy that convincingly makes the case for why they and their lot are very likely to benefit from joining your political project. Not in some utopian infinite timescale, but soon.
4. If you cannot make this case, then forget about convincing the person in question. Focus instead on finding other people to whom such a case can be made. This will lead you directly to class analysis.

The key point for this discussion being number 4. The ones that are choosing to be racist will not be convinced by us, and a lot of the people in the west today simply live comfortable lives (especially relative to the Third World) that they don't want to change. In part, the racism gives them justification for this. An example.

You cannot argue that people buy into propaganda willingly and list “Avoidance of state repression and social acceptance” as benefits.

Why not? Do we not "buy out" of propaganda willingly even though we risk state repression by being communists? It's a choice we make. Not all of the ways apply to all the people, these relationships are complex for each individual, but they fall into clear patterns when looking at classes. But people do still make the choice to go counter to this. Plenty of people even in the west are not currently cheering on the genocide of Palestinians and making excuses for SS members. Plenty of people make sacrifices and help others even if it runs counter to their personal interests or societal expectations. They do this for a variety of reasons, but the point is that they do make the choice. People develop class consciousness and realize they have interests apart from the immediate ones.

You also go on to say that there is no positive alternative

I don't say this. The positive alternatives do exists. I said a key point of our communist propaganda should be centered around the positive alternatives, and that is true. If we want any hope of achieving socialism out of anything but the worst desperation and the worst living standards, we have to have a vision that will entice people to join us and not stay with the status quo.

As for alternatives when it comes to the racist propaganda, people are aware they can be not racist, and many aren't racist, but the people that you see cheering for genocide and making excuses for SS members have made the choice to do so. They aren't the victims in this scenario. On every social media now you see both pro-Palestine and pro-Israel posts. You also see plenty of posts debunking the Israeli propaganda, but the racists just ignore or even attack this and continue to post their cheers for genocide.

Propaganda implicitly threatens state repression and social shunning for deviating from the imposed narrative, that is absolutely coercive.

Yes it does, but that doesn't stop everyone from deviating. Plenty of people deviate and even go directly counter to it. Again, in your model of propaganda, why and how are any of us communists then? Being a communist runs directly counter to nearly all incentives and falls directly under state repression. I think you give too much credit to the propaganda machine of the west and too little to the actual people, whether they buy into it or not.

Nobody mentioned “brainwashing”.

If you don't agree that people can willingly stop consuming racist propaganda, and consequently that they are currently willingly consuming racist propaganda, what alternative is there? Cheering on for genocide and colonialism is absolutely a personal failing on the part of the people doing it. They have no excuse with the amount of correct information available to them.

When a doctor gets a patient addicted to opioids because he was paid by the Sackler family, is it the patient’s fault when he eventually turns to heroin? When an woman moves back in with her abusive boyfriend after he half-assed an apology for hitting her for the 4th time in one week, is the woman not a victim?

These are not equivalent examples. Addiction is not the same as being abused. Addicts obviously need help and shouldn't be punished for their addictions, but they do cause material harm to others. If a drunk driver kills someone, he is very much still at fault, despite the societal pressures that push him toward addiction. A certain level of individual responsibility does exist. Similarly, westerners that fund and cheer for genocide because they are racists are very much responsible for their own behavior. This doesn't mean we shouldn't work to build a society where we stop things like this.

The reason people buy into propaganda is not only as a coping mechanism (although that can be a factor). Many buy into it to justify their privileged lives that are only possible due to the oppression of the Third World and the internal colonies in the settler colonial states. Even with the declining standards of living, most people in the west live a lot better than the majority in the rest of the world. They want to believe all the racist propaganda about the rest of the world to justify their own ways of living.

Look at what Che said with regard to the liberation of Latin America in 1954 (source):

Given this background, with American reality being what it is, it’s not difficult to suppose what will be the attitude of the working class of the North American country when the problem of the abrupt loss of markets and sources of cheap raw materials is definitively posed.

This is, in my opinion, the stark reality facing Latin Americans. In the final analysis, the economic development of the United States and the need of its workers to maintain their standard of living means that our struggle for national liberation is not waged against a given social regime, but rather against the whole nation, bound as a bloc by the iron-clad supreme law of common interest, over their domination of the economic life of Latin America.

Graph comparison:

I am not trying to frame westerners as “innocents” here

Comparing this to victim-blaming, and comparing their situation, as you have above, with abuse victims would suggest otherwise. If they're not innocent, but also aren't guilty by your standards, what are they? If you say they cannot make the choice, wouldn't that imply that they are innocent?

But how is each individual supposed to find out the truth?

How did any of us? How was the theory of Marxism developed in the first place? We all started researching due to a variety of reasons. We rejected the propaganda narratives and put in the time and effort to educate ourselves, we made a choice. No one did this for me, I did it by myself and for myself because I knew things had to change and went to search for answers. Coming to someone, asking questions, and learning from the answers in a choice we make. Communist propaganda and organizing also plays a big role here, of course, but there are already plenty of resources out there which any person in the west can access. We aren't asking them all to be Marxists on their own, we are just asking them not to be actively racist.

The racist westerners in question are constantly exposed to many narratives that run counter to western propaganda and they actively ignore them or try to "debunk" them. How many people do you see every day on social media writing off any story that goes counter to their set position? They actively reject the truth because their interests run counter to it - look at the graph above. They don't want these things to change, similar to this. There are still plenty of regular people in the west that do not cheer for genocide and do not make excuses for SS members, there are still plenty of people in the west that do support Palestinian liberation that aren't communists. There are plenty of people that just aren't informed who would listen to and accept the true facts when presented with them, but these are not the same people that cheer for and spread racist propaganda.

Of course, in the longer term, everyone would benefit from socialism, and we know that, but the average person doesn't - that's something for us to work on. Our methods cannot only be debunking propaganda, we have to offer a better alternative to the current system. But we cannot force people to listen to us. We have to entice them to join us, and not just through rhetoric, but also through action. Still, we cannot remove the responsibility from individuals that willingly go along with genocidal propaganda when there is so much counter-propaganda available (like the current situation with Gaza where a section of the west is cheering for genocide). We will most probably never be able to radicalize the ones cheering for genocide today.

It’s the same kind of self-deceiving smugness that eventually lead so many of Reddit’s self-styled New Atheists down a reactionary path, where feeling superior to the masses made them believe they were immune to being manipulated

It's exactly the opposite. The "brainwashing" model of propaganda places us, who have seen the truth through it, as an enlightened elite above the brainwashed masses, but this is simply not the case and it's not how propaganda actually works. Check out the sources in my other comment. The Red Sails article 'Masses, Elites, and Rebels' deals directly with your critiques of elitism here.

This is not "victim-blaming", racist westerners are not the victims in this scenario. People aren't brainwashed, they buy into the propaganda willingly. This is just the Marxist scientific understanding of how propaganda works. If you want to learn more you can read this excellent article. Red Sails has a whole series of articles on the topic, and you can even find the same conclusions from some liberal research.

This is no different from “you have agency, you can just not commit crimes” personal responsibility rhetoric we see from the right.

This is the rhetoric on the surface and in form, but in essence it serves to recognize the poor and the racialized as less than fully human, it's an attempt to paint them as not deserving of the full rights enjoyed mostly only by white cishet men. It infantilizes, pathologizes, or paints the others as barbaric savages, etc.

Either we believe people’s material conditions influence their behavior in a way that at least lessens their responsibility or we don’t.

We (Marxists) don't. Material conditions influence behavior and ideology, of course, but we don't justify crime because of that. If we just broadly removed responsibility of individuals because material conditions influence their behavior, we would end up removing responsibility from even the most heinous colonizers and genociders, which we do not do. We do understand how the capitalist system leads to these crimes, but we don't justify them because of it. There is a lot of difference between a poor person doing crime to help feed their family and a well-off westerner being a racist.

We don't justify any and all crimes committed by the poor, even if we recognize the role of material conditions. If a poor person steals to feed their family, we justify it because we hold human life above private property, and we support the class struggles that lead to liberation.

From Hegel's Philosophy of Right quoted in Losurdo:

A man who is starving to death has the absolute right to violate the property of another; he is violating the property of another only in a limited fashion. The right of extreme need (Notrecht) does not imply violating the right of another as such: the interest is directed exclusively to a little piece of bread; one does not treat another as a person without rights.

Us speaking about crime being driven primarily by material conditions is not a justification of it, it's an explanation, a step towards actually dealing with crime in society by addressing its root causes instead of trying to avenge it (like the current capitalist states do).

People in the west are racist and consume racist propaganda willingly, out of rational self-interest. They benefit from it in several different ways (justification of the global order with the west on top, avoidance of state repression, social acceptance, etc.). Part of the reason why they do so is because they aren't actually aware how they can benefit from denouncing the propaganda and becoming socialists, they aren't aware of their class interests and some more long-term, universal ones. This is the point where our counter-propaganda and organizing needs to come in, we cannot just debunk the propaganda, we have to offer a positive alternative that promises people (relatively) immediate material benefits. This article goes into more details.

The ignorance is willful.

Yes, this is just the Marxist understanding of how propaganda actually works. Material conditions influence ideology. These people willingly take in the propaganda because it justifies their dominant position as privileged on a global scale and it allows them to keep profiting off the oppression of the Third world.

A quote from this excellent article:

Westerners aren’t helpless innocents whose minds are injected with atrocity propaganda, science fiction-style; they’re generally smug bourgeois proletarians who intelligently seek out as much racist propaganda as they can get their hands on. This is because it fundamentally makes them feel better about who they are and how they live. The psychic and material costs are rationally worth the benefits.

Also check out this one for another angle into the same phenomenon.

I've never seen her engage with these critiques in good faith. She seems to mostly just get really defensive and refuses to rethink her strategy or the theory in general. A big point here, I think, is the fact that her business model where her readers pay her, reinforces that kind of non-Marxist analysis of propaganda, because it lets the readers feel as an educated and truth-knowing elite above the majority of the masses that are 'brainwashed'.

I want to try to fight those as best I can before worrying about being a perfect Marxist.

The problem with this is that it's very hard to actually fight propaganda without a Marxist understanding of how it works. Just telling people the truth doesn't really do a lot in most cases. To be effective at counter-propaganda, we have to understand how it actually works in the first place, and theories like 'brainwashing' don't enable us to do that. To effectively fight propaganda, we have to first understand its material origins, relations to different classes, and modes of operation (licensing and bullying rather than brainwashing). These parts are missing from Johnstone's analysis and that makes her counter-propaganda less effective. This article goes into it in more details, and Red Sails has a whole bunch of articles on the topic.