"If you tell a lie big enough and tell it frequently enough, people will eventually come to believe it". What is an example of this happening today?

Anyone that says J6 was a "peaceful protest" that "got out of hand"
We all saw the footage of that day. There were gallows and calls to hang a sitting vice president.
It was an insurrection, fomented and encouraged by Donald Trump's speech and actions leading up to that day. Plain and simple.
The right-wingers who say it wasn't as serious as it was are gaslighting their base.
Edit: Victims of gaslighting in my replies
- Sounds exactly like CNN's headline "fiery but mostly peaceful protests after police shooting" after the George Floyd protests where like, 30 people died.
  
  Do you not think it’s relevant to point out that:
  Only 3.7% of the protests involved vandalism or property damage
  Only 2.3% of the protests involved any sort of violence (excluding vandalism or property damage)
  Much of the violence was directed against the BLM protesters
  Much of the violence was begun or escalated by police (who are supposed to be trained to de-escalate)
  Much of the property damage and property damage was not linked to protesters
  If 5% of the people involved at violent BLM protests were violent and if the numbers above reflected only protester initiated violence, then that would mean roughly 0.12% of BLM protesters (or 1 in a thousand) were violent. But since, as we know, most of the violence was directed against them, that number is probably more like 0.05%, or 5 in 10,000. Obviously that number would be much worse for the actual instigators of most of the violence (police and far-right Trump supporters).
  Main source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/10/16/this-summers-black-lives-matter-protesters-were-overwhelming-peaceful-our-research-finds/
  Also weird that you say “like 30 people” died when it was more like 10:
  8 BLM protesters
  1 far-right, pro-Trump protester, who was shot by a self-identified anti-fascist protester who said he had been acting in self-defense
  the above anti-fascist protester, who was shot by police
  Yes, there were like 25 deaths related to political unrest in 2020, but most of those were not at BLM protests. Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/31/americans-killed-protests-political-unrest-acled
  But hey, keep telling yourself that an active, intentionally orchestrated attempt by Trump and his supporters to violently overturn the results of our Presidential election was “basically the same thing lol” as a bunch of people who were protesting police violence and racism.
  
  Across the country? Damn that’s like less than a person per major city and I saw how brutally the police attacked protestors. If it hadn’t been mostly peaceful it’d’ve been in the hundreds dead.
  
  One side lying doesn't make the other side's lie true, or justified, or anything else but a lie
  
  You know what the word 'mostly' means, right?
  
  How's that exactly alike?
- Conversely, anyone who says January 6th was a coup or anything approaching more then a wet fart. We should be so lucky that a fascist police state could be overthrown by 200 disorganized unarmed people walking into the capitol.
  
  Whether it was a successful coup is a separate matter.
  
  The problem wasn't them getting anywhere near literally overthrowing the entire state, but the fact that they were trying/hoping to kill people.
  
  200? What planet do you live on? Watch a video of it. Read the January 6th Commission report.
  
  We should be so lucky that a fascist police state could be overthrown by 200 disorganized unarmed people walking into the capitol.
  It wasn't just 200 disorganised unarmed people, it was 200 partially-organised partially-armed people with explicit support from the sitting president trying to disturb the proceedings, so the president could carry out his plan to use "alternate electors".
  Why do people like you always act like the republicans weren't hoping to capitalise on what happened?
  
  Are you trying to illustrate the point?
  It wasn't 200, it was 2000.
  And while most did not carry guns, they brought other weapons and armor, and used improvised devices as weapons. And some did bring guns. Source: https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/07/28/politics/armed-insurrection-january-6-guns-fact-check/index.html
  Thank God they were poorly organized and that the capitol police resisted...but it's a complete lie to say it was 200 unarmed people.
  This is all on video! This isn't a matter of opinion!

A KGB spy and a CIA agent meet up in a bar for a friendly drink.
“I have to admit, I'm always so impressed by Soviet propaganda. You really know how to get people worked up,” the CIA agent says.
“Thank you,” the KGB says. “We do our best but truly, it's nothing compared to American propaganda. Your people believe everything your state media tells them.”
The CIA agent drops his drink in shock and disgust. “Thank you friend, but you must be confused... There's no propaganda in America.”
- …in Ba Sing Se
- There’s no propaganda in America.
  promptly fires everyone who criticizes Israel

“Democrats are liberal/progressive”
In reality, they’re pretty conservative.
- The Overton Window
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
  A concept where political discourse is slowly shifted to one side or another over time. For example conservatism.
  Politics are talked about the right who move even further right, the centralists are moved to old right and the leftists are moved to the center .... the old leftists are now seen as extreme and unacceptable while the far right are also unacceptable but gain some ground ... everyone shifts one step to the right and now everything is more conservative.
  The right shift is what is happening now ... but it can happen and shift towards the left as well.
- They are still liberal though but not progressives. Liberalism isn’t necessarily a left wing ideology.
  
  A lot of leftists (and I hardly ever saw it before coming on Lemmy) use 'Liberal' to mean Classic or Neo Liberal - basically a synonym of capitalist.. That's not at all what it means in American politics, where it means the opposite of Conservative. If we used that definition, Conservatives would be called Liberals as well as Liberals being Liberals, which obviously makes no sense for US lingo. However, they both are Liberals in the neo/classic sense as most US Liberals aren't calling for communism.
  
  Liberalism isn’t necessarily a left wing ideology.
  It's an inherently right wing ideology lol. They're just conservatives that want/like to think they're progressive.
  
  Liberal economic theories beleive the free market is the best solution generally, but allow the free market to be intervened in or even entirely supplanted in cases of market failure or where significant social problems arise from private ownership. There is a lot of debate inside liberalism as to when a market has failed, or when a social issue requires intervention, which is why sometimes you will see centrist liberals and left liberals arguing. Just look at Canada with our Liberal Party, its a big tent party with a small social democrat rump(since most social Dems are NDP), a larger social liberal / left liberal group, as well as some centrist and "blue liberals" (these would be right liberals, who are harder to convince about market failures).
  Liberalism can be progressive, especially when the main thrust of a liberal party is left liberal or social liberal. Some Liberal parties are progressive sometimes, then more centrist at others as members and the membership changes over the years (or often on the strength and leanings of their leader). All still liberalism.
- The real lie is the notion that "liberalism" was ever anything other than right-wing to begin with, let alone adjacent to progressivism.
- Democrats are liberals. Republicans are too. Both of them are reactionary.
  
  That’s only true if you use the international definition of “liberal”. In America, “liberal” means “left wing”. And we’re talking about American politics.
- Socially left, but not communist

“brexit will bring in more trade! brexit will provide 350 million to the NHS!”
- On a related note the whole notion extremely prevalent in the UK that all they have to do is decide they want to rejoin and it will happen. No matter which side of that a commentator is on, they almost never mention that they need to present something the EU27 actually want and convince them that the UK is not the 'break international agreements' kind of country any more. Overall the British still all seem to think that they are something better than everyone else and others have to do what they want and have no real agency.
  
  You could call it a colonial mindset. Wonder where that way have come from.
- The thing I loved about that lie is even as a 20 something who’d never been to that hemisphere I knew it was a lie because weren’t these the people trying to kill the NHS
- The idea that they could leave and somehow get better trade deals, especially with European countries. The EU is the deal! It's a trade agreement that favors the participants, how could they ever get a better deal?? What's baffling is that a lot of older people voted for it and they can actually remember when the UK joined the EU. That means they realize that the UK joined for the deal but somehow that's worth nothing.
  
  A lot of those older people are racist and blame foreigners for literally every problem, and continuously vote against themselves

Vaccines will give you autism, microchips, actual diseases etc. It's one of the best medical breakthroughs in history and we have idiots ruining it.
- I got the vaccine and currently have autism, microchips and an actual disease! Checkmate!
  Though I'm pretty sure they're all not connected to each other.
  
  You have a microchip in you? Curious about how/why, tell me more.

The concept of trickle down economics. Anyone with a functioning brain can tell you that it would never work. But somehow people as a whole in the US still think giving corporations and rich cunts extra money, and tax breaks somehow lead to the 99% reaping a benefit.
It has never been true because the basic function of capitalism is to get as much money as possible, while spending the least amount of money to do it. There’s no room for passing on the extra profits to your employees, clients, or vendors.
- Supply-side Jesus (short animation) is a brilliant take on trickle-down economics and circular arguments about why the successful are successful and the poor are poor.
  "Tax cuts will double our revenues and ensure that the empire never declines or falls!"
  "Should you feed the lepers, Supply side Jesus?"
  "No Thomas, that would just make them lazy."
  "Then shouldn't you at least heal them Supply Side Jesus?"
  "No James, leprosy is a matter of personal responsibility. If people knew I was healing the lepers there would be no incentive to avoid leprosy"
- Lol yep, any child who has played monopoly a few times can see how capitalism works. It always ends in one person having literally all the property and money... and generally with players quite upset at one another. And once all players have optimized the game, it simply becomes a game of luck.
- Trickle down economics does work though.
  It’s just that the thing that trickles down isn’t money.

Republican talking points. All of them. Pick literally anything they say about guns or economics. Literally anything.
- It's wild how unburdened they are by having to conform to observable reality, they can just go nuts and say whatever. Jewish space lasers? Fuck it, why not, throw some alien clones in there too
- Raising wages just causes prices to go up faster.
  Unfortunately, they're right about this one because democrats are in on it too.

America is the greatest country in the world. Only those who haven't travelled much would believe that.
- It is a libertarian's dream country though. No where else is it so easy to get others to invest in your idea.
  
  Really? What kind of barriers to investment exist in other democracies?

My parents still think the 2020 election was stolen...
- I'm sorry
- Which election?
  
  Merkuh

That you catch a cold because you're cold
- While being cold isn't the cause of a cold there are some links between being cold and transmission of the flu even beyond people huddling together inside.
  The lipids the viruses attach to become more durable hence resilient, and multiple studies have shown that cold temperatures have a suppressive effect on the immune system.
  https://uscvhh.org/news-and-stories/the-real-reasons-you-get-sick-when-its-cold-outside.html
- IIRC there's some evidence that cold temperatures weaken the immune system. Assuming it's valid, that does mean that cold could be the deciding factor between contracting a cold or fighting if off.
  Now obviously germ theory is correct and it takes external infection to catch a cold, but it's a pretty safe bet you're being more or less constantly exposed to COVID and the flu whenever you're in an indoor public space.
- It's weird seeing a regular colloquialism in a sea of politically charged comments. This one really seemed to get people riled up.

Americans with their 'greatest nation on earth' charade.
- It has a name: American exceptionalism. It's used both by people who know it's a lie and by people who believe it.
  
  So it worked!
- Most of what people believe about America's history is post WWII mythmaking and revision. It's a shame because the labor movement in America has a fascinating history, and we're about to relive it.
  
  The shoot-outs are going to be 100x better this time
  
  Not even that. Politicians in even just the generation after Washington deified the framers of the Constitution, even when the remaining alive ones protested against it.

Communism=Authoritarianism
I was taught in school the characteristics of authoritarianism and a couple weeks later, when i was being taught about communism, the same characteristics were said
- Going a step further, the idea of authoritarian. Every ideology with a state relies on some type of authority to function, as a term it is an attempt at equating fascism and communism and serves as holocaust trivialization.
- They usually come packaged together. You'll have a hard time naming democratic liberal communist countries/leaders.
  
  But a very easy time naming democratic communists. Even Stalin wasn't a dictator, according to liberal historians such as Conquest who are experts on the soviet union. Socialism is more democratic than capitalism.
- You're right that they're absolutely not the same, however at a nation state level, I'd be very surprised if you could point to any communist regime at any point in history that wasn't also authoritarian or didn't end up that way

Israel is defending itself against an antisemitic terrorist group which attacked it for no reason

gestures broadly at US politics
- gestures broadly at US politics

"Your socioeconomic status is a measure of work ethic, sacrifice, and ability to make good decisions. Poor people deserve to be poor, and suffer, for making bad decisions."
Birth lottery which includes not just wealth but family connections is the biggest metric. We are way down the list of developed nations in terms of upward mobility. Only the outliers that prove to be of the greatest service to entrenched capital are granted entry. Most Americans, religious or not, have internalized the dogma of the prosperity gospel, itself an absolute parody of the dogma of Christianity it claims to be part of.
Go to any local fast food restaurant at rush hour, hell, go to any produce field at harvest, and tell me how much that studious hard work pays off. conversely, please regail me with tales of how hard it is to be a capital landlord, ~~making investments~~ gambling with insider information with capital gained from previous exploitations, and then merely expecting an endless steam of capital for NO labor into what generated it. It's like we were conquered by the traveling snake oil salesmen of old.
It's called the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it.
- Also known as "prosperity gospel." The religious justification for obscene wealth. The basic idea is that if you are rich, it's because God has chosen you to BE rich because you are morally superior to everyone else. It's an absolute perversion of Jesus' teaching in the New Testament.
- A while ago I read Bezos was posed a question about why he isn’t using his money and power to help impoverished people. IIRC he replied with something along the lines of “oh, we did a study and poverty is a moral failing, it can’t be solved, now if you’ll excuse me I have to go buy a dick-shaped rocket”
  Ok, I made the rocket part up but you get the idea, Jeff Bezos is a pos
  
  Hey, he is supporting the massive FL mansion and mega yacht industries.
- Is that last sentence a quote from George Carlin? I've heard that one before.
  
  Yes.
  https://youtu.be/H-PSCqhkWhg?si=WfSvAWVkEVr42ySr
  George Carlin - Your Owners

That Israel is not a colonial state. All it's founders defined it as a European colonial project. It was and is allied with all the colonial powers and projects like Britain, the US, apartheid south Africa, and Rhodesia. Its funding association was called the Palestine Jewish colonization association. It's bank was called the Jewish colonial trust. The Jewish national fund and the Zionist project at large was from the beginning concerned with building segregated colonies.
First, lands were bought with foreign funding from feudal land lords, and their inhabitants were entirely dispossessed, kicked out. Then when awareness of the ultimate goals of the Zionist project crystalized and resistance against Palestinian dispossession mounted, the lands were ethnically cleansed by force and the people massacred. 700 to 800 thousand Palestinians were ethnically cleansed in one continuous military operation that spanned two years from 1947 to 1948.
Zionist leaders fully acknowledged that Palestinian demographics were a core issue to the Zionist project, that the Palestinian population had to be removed at any cost, which is exactly what Israel did. What lead to the Palestinians being defenseless in this situation? Colonial Britain abetted the formation of heavily armed Zionist militias with soldiers numbering in the tens of thousands. The arms of Britain's colonial military presence were inherited by the Zionist forces that it supported. All this while Britain summarily excecuted any Palestinian found in possession of a firearm.
This is not to mention the enthusiastic support of european antisemites for the Zionist project, or its strict early opposition by antifascist jews.
The idea that Israel has any right to exist on Palestinian land is a lie that has been so heavily proliferated, it has to be debunked when it should be paid no consideration at all.

If you cut taxes on the rich it will benefit everyone.
- But if you don't agree to cut taxes on the rich they're going to fly the plane straight into the ground just out of spite.
- Except for the rich
- I’ve never met anyone who believed that. Is that one of the odd things about America you can’t learn simply by watching superhero movies?
  
  About half of USA believes that. See the Republican party.

"Owning a car = freedom"
"You need a big truck/SUV to haul things" (it's just a coincidence that people drove much smaller cars before a multibillion dollar deluge of advertising)
"It's consumers' responsibility to reduce plastic pollution by recycling, and recycling is effective" (whoever came up with this one belongs in the PR scumfuck hall of fame)
- "Owning a car = freedom"
  Unfortunately in a country where the infrastructure is so hostile to public transit or even pedestrian/biking amenities that it's nearly impossible to live, work or function without a car unless you're lucky enough to live in a dense urban community, I can see how people might believe this.
- https://futurism.com/the-byte/scientists-recycling-backfired It's not that it is useless, it' just not the solution
- "You need a big truck/SUV to haul things" (it's just a coincidence that people drove much smaller cars before a multibillion dollar deluge of advertising)
  What are you even talking about here lmao

Rising early and going to bed early is more virtuous than rising late and going to bed late.
- Yeah we really gave morning people too much power. Awake at 5AM? You’re a go-getter. Doesn’t matter that you had to be in bed by 8pm to accomplish that. Awake until 4AM? You’re lazy and immoral, and should feel bad for being productive when there are fewer distractions. All because you don’t like being awake before the sun is up. Even if you sleep fewer hours than a morning person, (because morning people will start demanding your attention at 8AM on the dot,) you’re still considered lazy when compared to the morning person.
  
  Yeah, I just get a burst of energy and motivation in the evening. I'd often do my shopping at or after 9pm (when the shops close at 10-11pm) and I'd feel a lot more productive and, as I already said, motivated, to do the work I have to do, especially with less distractions.
- And people who don't naturally wake up early are just lazy.
- Hard to swallow pill, right here

Too many famous people are hailed as something they are not, and everyone believes it. For example Elon Musk is hailed as a genius when he seems to be showing lately that he is the dumbest person alive.
- He's not dumb. He is a troll who likes to control people, since he's used to a level of comfort and prestige that has allowed him to do that his entire life.
  
  Nah he's pretty dumb actually.
  
  He is dumb, he bought Twitter for how much more than it's value, again?
  His desire to troll and control is directly what enables his being s fucking idiot

Jesus birthday is 25 December

The wage price spiral.
- I didn't know this concept was criticized. I just found a paper from the IMF which says the following:
  ... Perhaps surprisingly, only asmall minority of such episodes were followed by sustained acceleration in wages and prices. Instead, inflationand nominal wage growth tended to stabilize, leaving real wage growth broadly unchanged. A decomposition ofwage dynamics using a wage Phillips curve suggests that nominal wage growth normally stabilizes at levelsthat are consistent with observed inflation and labor market tightness. When focusing on episodes that mimicthe recent pattern of falling real wages and tightening labor markets, declining inflation and nominal wage growth increases tended to follow – thus allowing real wages to catch up. We conclude that an acceleration of nominal wages should not necessarily be seen as a sign that a wage-price spiral is taking hold.
  Sollaci, J. a. a. C. B. H. H. H. P. (2022, November 11). Wage-Price Spirals: What is the Historical Evidence? IMF. https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2022/11/11/Wage-Price-Spirals-What-is-the-Historical-Evidence-525073

The belief that colour blind glasses work
See megalag's videos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ppobi8VhWwo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QQtOv2PlOE
- The videos I've seen on YouTube saying they don't work have all been by people who have normal vision.
  I have mild red-green colorblindness, and for someone like me the glasses absolutely do work.
  I don't have enough cones for red and green to see certain shades properly. The glasses turn down the other colors in order to bring my perception of red and green back into balance. I then see the right shades but darker like wearing sun glasses.
  The first time I wore them in the fall it blew my mind to see all the different colored trees that are just green or brown without the glasses.
  There would have to be thousands of people lying their entire lives saying we see brown where other people see color in order for the colorblind glasses to be a hoax.
  It's such a ridiculous assertion, yet YouTube is full of videos saying they don't work.
- Disclaimer: Let me be clear, I'm definitely NOT defending the color blind glasses, and especially not the ridiculously expensive and over-priced, scam brand(s). Also, not going to watch videos on YouTube so my comment doesn't take any context from those links. All that being said ...
  Sometimes people don't realize that color blindness is a spectrum and that there are different types. For example, a lot of people like me might more accurately be described as color vision deficient. To me, I can clearly and easily differentiate between red and green in most practical circumstances, particularly in close range. Things can get dicey from a distance, as well as with very subtle tints or with very dark colors.
  A number of years ago, I purchased a cheap (like less than $20USD) pair of fishing sunglasses (mirrored, polarized sunglasses that typically use bright red, orange, or green tinting of the lenses) right before taking a trip in the fall. When I put those sunglasses on, it was really surprising. All of a sudden I could differentiate between the trees that were dead or which had already dropped their leaves, versus those that were actually bright red. Normally, unless I'm looking at a specific tree from a close distance, the browns, reds, and grays all sort of look the same and blend in. From a distance, like from the top of a mountain looking down into a valley, the fall color change of the leaves is a bit underwhelming normally. With the glasses on, I could actually see individual trees or clusters of trees that were red.
  To be clear, the cheap sunglasses didn't restore my color vision. I assume it just shifts the spectrum a bit so that colors, which are normally very muted for me, actually stand out in the same way that bright yellows and blues do. And I know that the colors I'm seeing are tinted, so not 100% accurate to what a person with full color vision would see.
  And when I've tested the fishing glasses with Ishihara tests (numbers in the colored dots), they do not improve my ability to make those out. So, that's further evidence that they aren't actually restoring my color vision. Granted, the fishing sunglasses never marketed themselves that way, where as the expensive scam color vision correcting glasses heavy imply that they are miraculous even if they don't outright state that they restore color vision.
- Wow, I actually believed in this one. Is there a short text version of what the videos are explaining?
  
  Main idea: They can't restore any color by filtering or let you perceive any new colors as their marketing likes to claim. At best they might be able to improve contrast of certain colors while reducing contrast for others - which is not at all what they say it does
  The video goes much more into depth about their deceptive marketing and such
  
  The simple version is that color blindness is caused by a physical problem with your eyes. If you don't have the parts required to detect certain colors then no glasses are going to fix that. They're just tinted glasses, the guy in the video tries three different pairs from different companies and all they do is tint the world a hideous shade of pink/magenta.
  As someone else said above, what they can do is change your ability to differentiate between objects of slightly different colors. You might have a really hard time telling the difference between red and green, but find it easier to tell the difference between hideous vaguely reddish magenta and hideous vaguely greenish magenta. They don't grant you a greater range of color vision, but they do change what color is actually hitting your eyes. Mostly into hideous magenta.
  FWIW the guy in the video points out that in his experience it generally made colors harder, not easier, to differentiate.
- That never made any sense to me. If the problem is with the cones in your eyes, then filtering the light going into them isn't going to magically do anything. At best, you might be able to do stuff with contrast to make colors more distinct, but someone that's red-green color blind could only have that actually fixed with new eyes.
  
  Turns out that some people have overlap in color perception that muddies things, and when you use these glasses to filter out the "in between" wavelengths, everything becomes easier to distinguish.
  
  Whereas I believed it with the analogy of hearing aids. There are a lot of people with hearing issues who can benefit from a simple amplification, or a more complex amplification of specific frequency ranges or filtered sound. By analogy, it seems perfectly reasonable that color-blindness may not be a binary condition so many people could benefit from more clearly distinguishing or amplifying certain frequencies. If I have a hard time distinguishing red from green, why wouldn’t glasses that filter red and green differently potentially work?
- As a colorblind person, I'm constantly baffled that I have to explain that an external device isn't going to modify how my eyes work. My eyes can't see the colors. Glasses aren't going to change that. The best I can hope for is that the glasses help me distinguish two colors I struggle with by forcing them to appear further away on the spectrum but never more than that.

Donald Trump claiming executive privilege for his various crimes. It seemed like everyone was laughing about it even a couple months ago, like how can it be executive privilege when this is about things he was doing before and after his presidency? Then there was a narrative shift and now the media is back to hand-wringing over whether or not you can prosecute a former president. I don't think anyone is expecting any of it to stick anymore.

"Owning a car gives you freedom" is a big one considering how expensive they are and that most people just use them to sit in traffic jams on their commute 90%+ of the time they are using them.
- It is context dependent.
  Owning a car does give you freedom in rural settings where mass transit never existed before it was bought out and run into the ground by automotive companies. They were even fairly cheap for decades if you bought them used!
  But yes, if you live and work somewhere with traffic jams then owning one instead of using and pushing for more mass transit is the opposite of freedom.
  
  Yeah my car gives me the freedom that people in some states and countries have without cars. I keep advocating for that freedom to be universal without cars because I hate having to have one to go out.
  
  I'm not even in a rural setting and the only way to get my dogs to the vet is via car. Getting a taxi to drive there is difficult when one of your dogs starts vomiting after the second turn.
  That and getting to by family in a rural setting. 2 hours by car vs up to 8 by train. With two dogs. That won't happen 😐
  Besides that I don't really need a car.
- And depending on your car make, model, and year, there is constant surveillance/data collecting negating the owners "freedom".
- As part of a couple that just got knocked down to one vehicle instead of two, due to a wreck, I wholly disagree with your statement. Take a kid to friends house? Lol. Nope. Pick up a loaf of bread or grocery store? Negative. Park for a walk? Sorry. Get to work? Better start walking down the highway.
  
  In this case the lie has been repeated so much and so loud that entire cities have been designed according to it.
  
  Your whole environment is designed that way because cars need so much space. If you lived in a walkable European city all of that wouldn't be a problem.
  
  Park for a walk
  Can't you...just walk?
  
  That's all anecdotal. Everything in your list I can do without a car. Especially take a walk. I literally just walk out the front door.

People believe insane shit about North Korea because they heard other insane shit about North Korea.

communism means no freedom / no food / whatever. anti-communist propaganda was a massive and very successful effort in the west

"Trickle down economics lead to more wealth for all."
- "Trickle-down economics." They're literally saying, "we're pissing on you."
  They also love to say, "a rising tide lifts all boats." Unless, of course, you don't have a boat and we know what happens to them. How well the stock market is doing means literally fark-all to most of us.
- "Of course it's true! Supply side economics is the cornerstone doctrine of colleges of economics the world over!"
  And the entrenched, generational capital that fund/endow the most prestigious colleges of economics, that the rest want to be like, clearly stand to gain nothing ensuring global economic theory revolves around give the owner class all the money and pray for rain.
  
  Supply side Jesus will save us all

Off the top of my head:
That little triangle embossed on your plastic container says it has been / can be recycled.
https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-the-public-into-believing-plastic-would-be-recycled
https://www.earthday.org/plastic-recycling-is-a-lie/
Anything involving babies and incubators is immediately suspect. (Or babies and bayonets, for that matter).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirahtestimony
And this one is pure conspiracy, and I know it's not what you asked for... but it's ridiculous and 'tis the season. My mother in law is convinced that the lyrics to "Oh Christmas Tree" (O Tannenbaum) were changed by people who wanted to erase the true and original lyrics. By who? Big Tree financiers? Communists who are stealing Christmas and replacing it with trees?
Anyway...
The original lyrics, according to this conspiracy, praise God and never mention trees at all. It's completely ridiculous and always ends with the whole family singing along with the "true lyrics" from a badly photocopied paper that she hands out. I hope this doesn't come up again this year because it really makes me want to fight. Which would make me the bad person, because who initiates fights on Christmas? The next couple of days are going to be tough.
- Now I'm really curious. Can you post those supposedly original lyrics?
  
  Sorry for the late response - I just got back from travelling to meet that side of the family. But unfortunately, I don't remember the lyrics. She introduced it a long time ago and she stopped being MC of Christmas a few years back. We didn't get to enjoy it this year.
  I just made this up on the spot, but it was in this spirit
  Oh God above, sweet lord of mine
  How much you love your children.
  Oh God above, sweet lord of mine
  How much you love your children.
  You sacrificed, your one true son
  to save us earthbound sinners here...
  -and so on --
  Rejoice, repent! We praise your name...
- Wait, the lyrics of a song with a title that literally translates to "Oh, Christmas tree" originally had absolutely nothing to do with trees?? I'd ask how she wraps her mind around that dichotomy, but I know people who believe in conspiracies do not need proof nor logic to believe.
  Good luck. I'll be entertaining my Trumpster QMIL, so I'll be fighting along with you to control myself.
  
  "Q" MIL?
- That's hilarious, since the sources on Wikipedia say that the original lyrics were about a tree, with no relation to Christmas.
  
  and many translated version never mention Christmas, like the Dutch and French versions.
- I imagine either the "Oh God-mass God!" Version of the song either is the first version she learned whilst very young or she was taught this "fact" by someone who she trusts unquestioningly. It's very hard to convince people to reasses beliefs they've taken on in that way. Maybe you could give up that dream and work on gently leading her to a compromise of doing a verse of each?

The entire conservative party

Capitalism lmao

"Once all the boomers are dead everything will be better!" Yeah, corporations will still rule your life, inflation will still outstrip income, you won't be able to afford a house, and your politicians will represent whichever special interest pays them the most. Also you won't ever be able to vote in progressive candidates because every year there's going to be some vile ghoul like Donald Trump, but somehow worse, and the Democrats just need you to close ranks and vote in whatever corporate liberal whose turn it is to sit in the Big House this time so a literal fascist doesn't get his finger on the button and attempts to dismantle what little democracy our republic has over night.
Grandma and grandpa being six feet under doesn't change these things. And, guess what...you probably won't change them either because you're too lazy and apathetic to do anything other than shitpost on the internet about how badly your life sucks.
- Future generations will blame you for everything also.
  
  If you're a millennial, some already are.
- The boomers being dead means the largest, wealthiest support of old ass laws is gonna, and nearly every single member of the population at that point would have been directly harmed by capitalism.
  Trying to stop people from improving things will by far be much harder, and betting on peoples apathy is a gamble that can only last so long
  (Unless we get some full my mind control shit in the best future, but we can pray not)
  
  nearly every single member of the population at that point would have been directly harmed by capitalism.
  As opposed to the boomers, who weren't harmed by capitalism. Not like that's the generation that was sent to Vietnam or anything...
- And at least here in Finland, the under 25s are actually more conservative than millennials or even Gen X, which is highly alarming. They voted for an extremist right wing party in droves in our latest parliamentary election, something like 30% I think
  
  In America, it's starting to shift that way as well. Gen Z is the first nominally sex-negative generation in, well...generations. They're very inclusive and will say things like "sex work is real work." But then they also seem to hate nudity in film and television. So it seems they're fine with sex as long as it just...doesn't involve them in any capacity. I think I heard a streamer one time say they were "puritan-pilled."
  
  Our far right is great at TikTok, and their algorithm seems to favor far right talking points greatly.
- Also, we'll have plenty of formerly-young people who age into being similar to what the boomers are now

- And stress, damn stress 24/7 ever since mobile phones appeared. Some company tequires you to answer even if it's your off day.
  
  There's a solution for that, BUT the only way you can fairly negotiate is during a job interview - pretty much any other time the company has an imbalance of power
- This is a common confusion though when people say serfs worked only half the year that is working for their owner and doesn't include all the other work they need to do to live - to actually eat and have a basic life involved a lot of toil.
  Of course not for rich people but that's never changed.
- This isn't really true. Subsistence farming and hunter gatherer society sucked. It was continuous work to not starve, and a lot of people did starve.

Colonialism was a civilising mission.
Neoliberalism has also broken people’s brains to believe that nothing better is possible and anyone promising something other than managed decline or being vindictive against an outgroup is a charlatan.
- This is a thread of big lies that people believe.

That a guy has to spend three months salary on a diamond wedding ring. It was a very good marketing campaign from a jewlery company.
- That's an opinion, not a lie. Still a stupid opinion, though.

Free market is the most effective way of allocating resources
- It's a great way of allocating resources between Cheetos and Doritos. Not so great at choosing between healthcare for the masses and yachts for oligarchs.
- …in an upward direction”
  Now it’s true.

"You're too much into politics"
Said by people who are unwilling to admit they're on the wrong side. Or in a more extreme setting (like say, South Africa during apartheid), they'd most likely report you to authorities or outright even kill you.

communism has killed 100 million people

the entire history of past socialism

The Toungue map.
The idea that different parts of the tongue are responsible for feeling different tastes. This blatantly false idea was made up in 1901 out of thin air and then made its way into biology classrooms somehow. It was taught to schoolchildren (including me) for about 100 years as a biological fact, even though every human being in that time proved it false by experiment thousands of times by eating things and tasting them with the "wrong" parts of the tongue. It doesn't quite count as an example of this happening today, because we finally realized that it simply wasn't true and have stopped teaching it, but still: 100 years is a long time to realize that something is false when every human being in the world is confronted with physical evidence several times every day.
- Its still being taught at least in Romania
  
  It's what I was taught in American public school ~15 years ago
- I don't think this is actually a myth. I think there's an extreme version of the statement, but it nevertheless is true that there are specialized taste buds and that they aggregate on sections on the tongue.
  And I think there's a whole rabbit hole here, of overeager "corrections", that are not in fact corrections but just someone engaging in bad faith with a statement that's close enough to the actual truth. It's actually more wrong to categorically dismiss it, then it would be to note the difference between it and the truth, which is to say while they are not strictly regions, they're nevertheless as attested to be the NIH:
  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8956797/
  There is undoubtedly a spatial component to our experience of gustatory stimulus qualities such as sweet, bitter, salty, sour, and umami, however its importance is currently unknown. Taste thresholds have been shown to differ at different locations within the oral cavity where gustatory receptors are found. However, the relationship between the stimulation of particular taste receptors and the subjective spatially-localized experience of taste qualities is uncertain. Although the existence of the so-called ‘tongue map’ has long been discredited, the psychophysical evidence clearly demonstrates significant (albeit small) differences in taste sensitivity across the tongue, soft palate, and pharynx (all sites where taste buds have been documented).
  In my opinion, the more interesting phenomenon is understanding how these facts, and the temptation to correct, challenges our ability to sustain nuance and to carefully differentiate between degrees of truth, instead of just making blanket denials.
  
  Getting in to the fine details of it is important for researchers or doctors who specifically work with the tongue, but the issue that we're talking about here is how this was commonly taught as absolute fact to young children with no nuance and seemingly for no reason other than it being widely believed.
  If anyone is specifically claiming that the tongue is completely uniform in taste reception then they're it taking too far, sure. But generally when I see this brought up, the focus is on questioning the process of how some facts make it in to what schools teach as "common knowledge" even when they are both wrong and unimportant to daily life and general education.
  When a teacher tells a 6-7 year old that flavors can only be tasted on certain parts of your tongue, the problem isn't that they failed to call it a "spatial component to our experience of gustatory stimulus". At that age, teachers have to strip out most nuance from any lesson, and the goal is to find a way to explain things that is true enough while still being understandable to young children.
  So why, if stripping out the nuance makes it basically wrong, did teachers keep teaching it for a century? Even if it were true, it's not really important information for most people. Necessarily even, because if it were important to daily life, it would be a lot easier to notice it's mostly wrong.
  I don't know, and I don't think there's an exact reason. I had teachers tell us about this, then seem to realize they needed a reason for it to matter and try to turn it in to a lesson about scientific inquiry. They told us to go home and try putting flavors on the 'wrong' parts of the tongue and notice how we couldn't taste anything. I tried it once, and it didn't work, and it was never brought up again.
  Feel free to educate people about the mechanics of our sense of taste, but I think this is a fine example of myths making it in to what's taught in schools.
- I lost points in third grade for being wrong about this. My map was all over the place and reflected where I could taste each flavor

That coconuts falling on people's heads kills more people than shark attacks. It's was literally an experiment to see how far a lie could spread, and now it's used by many as an actual fact.
- Source?
  From what I understand, it's unknown if coconuts kill more people per year than sharks as death by coconut are not well tracked. But the specific number quoted of 150 isn't legitimate. However, I can't find anything about it being related at all to an experiment to see how far a lie could go though. Did someone tell you this? Definitely a possibility of some irony here...
- I don't know if you're mixing up stats or I was told a falsehood, but I was told that the lie to see how far and fast they spread was about eating X spiders in your sleep throughout your life.
  
  That was actually a result of a statistical blunder. The people who ran the study forgot to exclude Spider-Eating Greg as an outlier.

People, no matter the inteligence or schooling, are more likely to believe what they hear more often. (If 10 people you know swear that eating mint will keep you from going bald it might just be true)
This makes sense and is normal, at least until the modern world.
Now add social media and an algorithm that its only purpose is to increase clicks/likes/interactions. Suddenly everything everyone is talking about is whatever you clicked on last time. A positive feedback loop occurs. The more videos you look at on the same topic, the more those get served, the more you view them, the more you believe them.
Experiment : Try creating a brand new Google account and watching 3 videos on YouTube on a single topic. Refresh YouTube page, or check back tomorrow.

Switching to electric cars will save the planet. Not when they increase tire pollutants at higher rates and still rely on fossil fuels and fracking to charge their batteries.
Also for the US specifically that we can't afford universal healthcare.

America might be flawed but it’s still overall a force for good in the world.
Biden might suck but we should still vote for Democrats on the state or local levels and participate in the [nonexistent] primary to put pressure on Democrats because they are clearly better than Republicans and progressives would never lie to us (cough bernie cough fetterman cough AOC).
Communism is impossible because it goes against human nature.
China is capitalist.
Organizing for revolution in the USA is hopeless.
It’s impossible to scientifically understand human societies, even though humans are part of nature and nature can be scientifically understood.
We can solve all our problems with technology alone. There’s no need to change anything else.
Things will be better in the future even if I don’t actually do anything to make them better. (This one has been an issue for me. “The future” for a Marxist like myself isn’t terribly different from religious visions of paradise.)
- America might be flawed but it’s still overall a force for good in the world.
  I wish i would never here that load of shit ever again
- but we should still vote for Democrats on the state or local levels
  To be fair, there might be cases in local elections where it really would be for the best to vote for Dems, as well as (possibly) for like State Senate or whatever. For gubernatorial, congressional, etc. elections though, absolutely not.
  
  I (usually unsuccessfully)
  blue in local/state elections because the alternative in my district is candidates handpicked by an evangelical megachurch that is actively importing like-minded people from the rest of the country so they can achieve an even tighter stranglehold on state politics.

Literally anything regarding China, especially Xinjiang if you talk to anyone from

I was talking to a mate about Palestine and he immediately went for the "bUt TiAnAm3n SqU@r3 k1LLeD oVeR tEn Th0uSaNd" and the "Ch1n@ cEnOcIde iN UygHuRs Th0" with the swiftness of a 737 flying into the 2nd tower. They will disregard who originally makes these claims and are 100% unfazed by say, World Uyghur Congress being totally in support of the genocide in Gaza, the response being either dismissal or "you're too much into politics and also ableism".
- Hexbears sucking up to dictators while claiming to be pro lgbtq will never not be funny
  
  China's bottom-up system of power starting at the mass line via committees and polling does mean a slower progress on social change than a top-down approach like you see in the west, but it also means a more consistent gradual improvement as younger generations age up. Whereas it's always a constant battle in the west, with a large (quite often successful) push for reversal.
  Trans rights got a boost in China just last week for example with a court ruling.
  
  Since 2020 China literally has more workplace protections for trans people than the US
  https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.scmp.com/news/people-culture/gender-diversity/article/3243608/blessing-china-court-lauds-rule-law-backs-transgender-staffer-fired-being-absent-while-leave
  Don't pinkwash your redscare.
  Also Xi isn't a dictator. He was literally elected by a democratic assembly. Also he historically pushes for more democracy in China, more than the US. Literally look into the idea of whole process people's democracy
  “The most basic criterion for democracy is whether people have the right to participate extensively in national governance, whether people’s demands can be responded to and satisfied. In China, the people participate in the management of state affairs, social affairs, and economic and cultural affairs; they provide opinions and suggestions for the design of national development plans at the highest level and also contribute to the governance of local public affairs; they take part in democratic elections, consultations, decision-making, management, and oversight...."
  https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/whole-process-peoples-democracy-in-china-what-does-it-mean/
  
  My instance defederated from them... but here we are. Can't wait for lemmy to catch up and let us block instances on an individual level.
  edit: Awww Hexbear didn't like that. Sadly my instance won't let me block you assholes yet. Gonna have to deal longer than any of us likes.

I have not seen this mentioned before, but the Teslas people buy in the US isn't helping the environment. You just are saving on fuel!

"we are free"

The US military is there to protect their country's "Freedom"

Ukraine is winning and Russia is collapsing.
- Also Russia is winning and Ukraine is collapsing.
  
  Also Russia is collapsing and on the verge of invading the rest of Europe.
  
  cope
  cry into your bandera burger
  
  "Russia is winning" is premature, but Ukraine absolutely is collapsing, as evidenced by the press-ganging.
  
  Also the usa is collapsing because the robots to replace you all are ALMOST good enough.
  
  These are objective facts that even mainstream western media now openly acknowledges, here are a few examples for you from just the past month
  https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/when-how-will-ukraine-war-russia-end-2024-3bh9bvswr
  https://asiatimes.com/2023/12/exclusive-150000-ukraine-soldiers-killed-in-action-through-october/
  https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/zelenskyy-putin-year-end-conference-rcna130656
  https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/22/world/europe/russia-ukraine-war.html
  https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/12/22/ukraine-ammunition-shortage-russia-war/
  https://www.economist.com/europe/2023/12/17/ukraines-army-is-struggling-to-find-good-recruits
  https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/15/politics/ukraine-us-aid-western-officials-warning/index.html
  https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/16/world/europe/ukraine-kherson-river-russia.html
  https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67714719
  https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/15/world/europe/ukraine-military-recruitment.html

USA Civil War: It was only the Southern states that were racist.
USA Civil War: The Confederacy was "only fighting for its way of life". With the hope that most USA'ians will assume that "its way of life" was anything but slavery.
- “We fought for state’s rights!”
  “State’s rights to do what?”
  “……”
- Not every "way of life" needs to exist.

Iran has convinced a large portion of their population that the holocaust never happened.
- What is the purpose of that lie? Anti-semitism?
  
  Iran is politically opposed to the US and the US is closely aligned with Isreal. My understanding is that it's mostly just political but with the Ayatollahs it's never clear.
  
  It could factor in to stuff relating to Israel in the Middle East. Although, like other commenters here, I don't know much about this and I'd like to see some more substantiation.

News ownership has consolidated over the last 40 years from around 40 companies in the 1980s to 6 today. This is that "liberal news media" conservatives keep yammering on about. The one that's owned by 6 corporations.
- "conservatives" are just a subtype of liberal. The "Liberal" in "Liberal Media" simply means that it is private property run for profit of individuals and not State owned media run in the interests of the nation.
  
  That's absolutely not what most people mean when they refer to the "liberal media." This is an objective fact.
- What does Murdoch own?
  
  He's currently the Chairman and owner of Fox News. He's been the chairman and CEO of 20th Century Fox and News Corp going all the way back to 1980.

"This war is different, this war is nessasary" "This is the most important election of our time" "Invasive surveillance is done for your protection" "We only censor misinformation"

the vast majority of americans believe the obvious lie that buying things can make you happy
Death to America

I came into the comment section hoping for interesting things, but knowing it would be almost all political. Why do I keep doing this to myself, I know better.
- Most lies of that nature are political.
- I feel you, but when the topic is propaganda, politics is inevitable
  A bird for your troubles
- Everything is political lmao
- Grow up lmao
- Colloquially spread lies at a large social level are political by nature as they have their intent set by an antagonist intent to be history revisionist.
- I came into the comment section hoping for interesting things, but knowing it would be almost all important. Why do I keep doing this to myself, I know better.
- You do know that the question is phrased in reference to Nazi propaganda in general and a famous quote from Goebbels in particular, right?