Most people have access to Internet, thus they have access to information. Believing one thing and not another is everyone’s personal choice.
There is a saying that propaganda does not make people stupid, but propaganda is made for stupid. We can assume that lack of critical thinking is crucial in situations when people are get lied to and sometimes roots of problems are much deeper than we can imagine.
In current reality, it is hard not to mention russians, because they are the greatest example of how people want to be deceived. For years, for decades and even for centuries, russian people are drowning in their own illusions. Their historical memory is absolutely slandered, so is their cultural memory. Accents on “the greatest minds” and “the greatest victories”, especially if we’re talking about the military theme, blur all the horrible stuff their ancestors did. Important note: this blur is not accidental, but absolutely purposeful. Idealization of the past makes people think that they are omnipotent gods, so they are allowed to do whatever they want.
Defeating the Nazi’s once (with the help of Ukrainians), russians now think that this is their biggest affair in life, so they somehow found, or it is better to say, created Nazi’s in Ukraine. And so they came. An interesting note in this situation is that most russians, who currently stay in their hometowns, do not understand that they do something evil. They probably even think that they do everything to free Ukraine, so it will stop suffering. Hannah Arendt’s The Banality of Evil will definitely find a new life in this war.
Coming back to the main topic, it is perfectly clear that not only the official propaganda is guilty in russians’ ignorance. People let fool themselves, because now they don’t want to lose that image of them being the greatest. In history, they’ve never seen an ancestor who apologized; moreover, they have never seen an ancestor who is ashamed.
It is a choice of russians to be deceived, because now they need it. Now, being in the most foolish state of their history, they need those sweet lies to calm down. They can check the western media, read all the horrible things they’ve done and apologize, feeling ashamed and crushed. But they will never do it, because they can’t accept defeat.
