People are losing trust in mainstream media because of perceived biased coverage of the Gaza genocide. If that erosion of trust is real, why isn’t it prompting wider public re-examination of historical cover-ups and contested narratives — Watergate, Iran–Contra, Iraq, even shifting beliefs about who “beat” the Nazis? If we don’t question how past information was shaped, what’s the point of preserving evidence (e.g., Gaza genocide evidence recently removed from YouTube by Google)? Won’t this all be forgotten in a few years, the same way all those previous events are no longer discussed?
What’s stopping a sustained, constructive public inquiry into these parallels between past cover-ups and current information control? Where are good, constructive places to discuss these issues without falling into unproductive conspiracy spirals?
no one is immune to propaganda and both goebbels and bernays have demonstrated to the world how effectively critical thinking can be shaped through controlled narratives.
china exhibits draconian measures to issues like tiananmen because it was a genuine protest and DEEPLY inconvenient for the chinese government. it was only one of many protests that caused civil unrest throughout the entire country (ie it was much bigger than just tiananmen square) and they really don’t want a repeat of that violence.
in typical western fashion, the legacy media latched onto a kernel of truth and shaped the narrative of that a fledgling neoliberal democracy movement when the truth was that the protesters that pushed for such a thing were an overwhelmingly small minority when you consider the huge number of protestors taking to the streets during that time throughout the entire country.
china doesn’t have oligarchic ruling class solidarity like the united states or the rest of west does so it’s silencing of dissent is much more blunt and direct through government apparatuses where the western oligarchies prefers to employ significantly more subtle and easier to hide dissent silencing like deplatforming and sanctions against individuals like francesca albanese or 9 of the icc judges.