And, as a cherry on top, they’ll turn around and criticize other instances like .world or SJW as the ones who censor “wrong think” or censor criticism of the instance lol

I think one of the most powerful elements on any propaganda framework is redefining words and concepts, and then slotting them with so much emotional weight into a bigger framework that you can’t undefine the concepts anymore, because it’ll be painful and tear down something you’ve become attached to.

You have to unfocus your eyes a little bit. Don’t look at the facts. Looked at as a logical construct, it’s just pure nonsense. Everything changes all the time, evidence that gets presented is always flimsy and half-baked and somehow that overrides solid evidence or something that’s just pure logic or whatever. Just take a step back, look at the whole construct and worldview, and then how certain definitions fit within it and make it function.

lemmy.world is “censoring” when they disagree with the lemmy.ml groupthink, or they’re “dogpiling,” or “brigading.” There’s always some kind of framing where it’s an attack. Think with your emotions, how you would feel if everyone’s gathered around yelling at you, overtalking you, making you feel bad, making you feel wrong. Now, look at all your friends. You’re all comrades, you all see it the same way. You support each other, you can count on each other. Your instance is the one that makes sense. It makes it really hard to undo that definition that lemmy.world is “dogpiling” or just deluded robot-propaganda-thinking when they raise counterpoints, because you feel like you’re siding with the enemy if you ever start to question those definitions or look critically. If someone shows you evidence of Russian war crimes, it’s not them just talking, or presenting something that can either be credible or not, it’s an attack you have to raise a defense against. And they’re bad for doing it. They’re the worse. You engage with them with some hostility, and then retreat to friends, there’s not a lot of open exchange of ideas. That’s why “sealioning” is such a terrible thing to do in their definitions. That’s why they so often change the subject or do random hostility. They don’t care if it’s true. That’s not the function, that’s not the interaction they’re having.

There are words like “liberal” and “wrong think” that are used to categorize concepts, and because the concepts fit in in the right way into the bigger structure, the constructs they get made into can work in their functions even though factually it’s flimsy as hell. Actually, presenting things completely backwards (.world is the censorship instance, .ml is the only place “we” can think and speak freely, and we hope something we can break “them” out of the propaganda bubble) is for some reason very often a part of it. I don’t know what’s going on with that.

And then there’s the demonization of the other. You see all your allies make these wild attacks and insults all the time against people who think certain things. If you ever get a hint of thinking those things, then you’re definitely not going to say it. You’ll feel bad, like a traitor to these good friends who make perfect sense, if you even think it.

And so on.