I don’t know about y’all, but if I grew up in a country that never has the news criticizing its leaders, I’d be very skepical and deduce that there is censorshop going on and the offical news could be exaggerated or entirely falsified. Do people in authoritarian countries actually just eat the propaganda? To what extent do they believe the propaganda?
I think this USSR quote is a good answer:
(Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn)
In any authoritarian system where indoctrination starts young you’ll probably have a fifth of the population that’s high on the coolaid or never questioned anything due to ideology or intelligence (or both). The rest know they’re lying, etc. And keep their mouths shut because they don’t want to go to Siberia or El Salvador.
Also applies to modern day Russia. Everyone knows the elections are fake, for example, but they keep their heads down.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_the_Kool-Aid
it was a tool of mass suicide not a drug to get high on lol
That’s not the point of the phrase — the statement refers to the true believers drinking poison unquestioningly, without entertaining the thought that it will kill them.
Check the story! They knew they were going to die. That was the point. He told them. He told them exactly what was up and they consented. Their minds were so twisted by his lies that they couldn’t imagine any other life. That’s what drinking the koolaid means: you subscribe to a belief wholeheartedly, even a crazy one, to the point where youd rather die than question it.
That’s what I said too, which is to say that the point is not the killing but the unquestioning nature of it.
It’d be so much better if that authoritarian fifth would drink the flavor-aid in the sense of killing themselves.