Apologies, I assumed it would be obvious that each source should be evaluated for the facts and arguments on their own merits.
I was talking about the times when documentary evidence is conflicting or doesn’t exist, which is when gauging the reliability of the source and their material interests and motivations becomes the most useful way of parsing fact from fiction.
Everyone uses propaganda, so yes, always be critical of every source. But once you know what a sources biases are, there can still valuable information to be learned from them.
When sources contradict each other, as in the case of tankies vs. Lemmy, deciding which sources to trust can be complex and nuanced. Generally though, it comes down to sources who usually have a vested interest in the continuation of capitalism and often are outright fascists, versus sources who are communists and believe in equality and the betterment of all humanity.
No, I don't think they're trolling. I think that you mistake any comment that is vaguely supportive of China or Russia or that contradicts the mainstream western narrative about those countries as wholesale support for anything those countries do.
It used to mean a communist who supported the USSR’s decision to send in tanks to Hungary to protect the revolution from reactionary forces, but now it’s just a thought-terminating straw man for the modern red scare.
They’re not going to do that, because investigation of socialist positions would require them to confront the cognitive dissonance of their own beliefs. And once you go against mainstream liberal groupthink, you risk being ostracized by people calling you woke a tankie.
There’s nothing people like more than blind hate. Black and white thinking is way easier than nuance, and groupthink-based anger releases a shit-ton of dopamine.
Critical thoughts that go against the groupthink are dangerous, because the consequences are social ostracism or worse. At this point, Western liberalism is just one purity test after another, and if you fail once, that means you’re Evil.
Just enough to escape capitalism. 5 million invested in stocks means you would never have to work again. Any more than that and you are part of the problem that everyone is trying to escape.
Honestly though, really we should all be working for an escape for our entire species, not individual escape pods.
Uneducated and brainwashed, maybe, but you can’t fix stupid and I choose to have more hope than that.