I hope this belongs here, since it's not a news article.
I live in Europe and I've mostly been the guy people listened to when they admitted to not feeling well informed on international conflict situations like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and US/NATO's more secretive and subversive conflicts/coups and backroom deals with autoritarian regimes around the world, all in the name of democracy and freedom.
Can't help it, I'm curious, I like reading books and I think connecting the dots is rewarding for my ADHD. The NATO connections to post WWII-nazis, GLADIO and other stay-behind groups, the CIA ties - it was all thrilling and interesting, but unfortunately part of our reality. During the Wikileaks days even the people most critical of my assessments came and admitted that they were wrong and that they now understood they had been duped. And now, they said, "we know better". They all went back to reading the very news that consistently lied to them.
There still was a semi-reliable left/left-centrist press in Europe that you could point the few normies allergic to "not verified by authority" reporting to, mostly written by a few journalists who didn't bend as much to pressure of falling in line with drumming for the democracy exporting business.
What happened? Of course the big media companies always always bent to the will of the warmongering establishment but there were always some sane voices doing somewhat decent investigative journalism targetting the common narratives, even if just to be able to deflect criticism by pointing to their work. How did they get rid of almost every sane voice? Did the mostly senior editors just die off/retire?
Today I am surrounded by people telling me obvious lies with a blind conviction of almost religious zealotry that can often be debunked with 2 minutes of research in spite of the downfall of major SEO and "24/7 breaking news repitition" infested search engines.
I always knew that most people wouldn't spend the time on research to get an understanding of how this world functions and that Western democracy and liberty are basically strawmen that can be weaponized against anyone who stands in the way of Western interests. But I also always knew that I could rely on some people being receptive of well sourced information. My convincing of some people of course didn't put a dent anywhere but you at least felt like it was still possible to reach people and breakt through the programming.
Even the people calling themselves antifascists are now ignoring the obvious neo Nazi-ties of Ukrainian Banderites while chanting OUN slogans. People are openly calling for censorship of the Internet in the name of "safety" and if you equate "fact checks" by the very people opposed to investigative journalism with the obvious risks of centralized Ministries of Truth being erected in front of our eyes, they vehemently disagree and demand that "freezepeach" must come to an end.
I've never been this worried about the world I'm living in. The US and Western elites are hellbent on provoking a war with every nation that's no longer willing to bend to their unipolar world order, with Europeans taking the brute of it, whether it be economically or, should the war escalate, even on future frontlines.
Is there any serious opposition left? How do you cope with the reality we're headed for? I've never been an optimist but I managed to keep my pessimism in check, until now.
Not only have the indoctrination techniques become more sophisticated, but their pervasiveness is hard to resist for even normally sceptical people. Your average "lizard people are controlling us" conspiracy theorist will still believe everything they're told about China. It's all been scientifically honed to be as maximally effective as possible. They have it down to a fine art. Even intelligent, well-meaning liberals will believe previously credible outlets like the Guardian, ( who've published this today for example).
It's become difficult to not sound like you're a conspiracy nutter, rather than them, because they have the mainstream news on their side. Asking them to confront the possibility that there's a massive real conspiracy going on is asking a lot, we have to admit.
One way to cope is to just accept the worst. We are probably heading towards a nuclear war. The US will not accept a world where they are not the supremacists they believe themselves to be.
The only marginal success I've had in that area is to explicitly outline the difference between "conspiracy" and "conspiracy theories" and spend more time educating people on what makes conspiracy theories lack weight and evidence than I do on actually educating them about the socialist side of things. The only real way to do it is to basically give people a crash course in critical thinking and media literacy, both of which take a lot of time. That's the biggest hurdle. It takes no effort to believe this nonsense, and a ton of effort to educate people out of it. It's a massive uphill battle.