Not at all hard to believe that a significant proportion of Russian people believe this lie.
Are you actually claiming that the scale of absurdity between believing election fraud (something members of both parties claim, every losing election, going back decades[1]) and that Ukrainians are killing themselves, en masse, are remotely the same?
1. Here's Hilary Clinton continuing to make claims about 2016 in mainstream media: https://news.yahoo.com/hillary-clinton-maintains-2016-electi...
If people with a free press believe propaganda and lies, what do you expect of people who only have a state-run propaganda machine?
This is your error. They don't "only" have state-run propaganda, and these aren't a backwards, brainwashed, uneducated people.
"A significant proportion of Americans believe the 2020 election was fraudulently stolen. And that’s with free press in America. Not at all hard to believe that a significant proportion of Russian people believe this lie."
Believing in election fraud and believing that a population are coincidentally killing themselves during a military incursion are not remotely analogous.
I remember a very suspicious suicide in Argentina, and how some media were theorizing that he killed himself to make the government look bad.
You believe that the Russians believe this about the Ukrainians? A people with whom they share much culture?
>Propaganda could say they are killing themselves to make Russia look bad.
Yeah, it could say anything. How about demonstrating it does say?
Part of the issue is it isn’t free. So many people were banned. News stories banned. Companies banned and dropped.
When you get that level of censorship it creates a massive level of distrust. Further, what’s “truth” when the facts can’t be debated...
The internet press is more “free as in beer” than ever. It costs nothing. It is probably about as “free as in speech” as it ever was, the variety is a testament to that. But it is not free from influence. It is tied to a profit feedback motive more than it ever has been. Put words on a screen, optimize for profit yield. Until the “press” regains its freedom from this, it will not be free. It will be profit constrained.
In a similar vein, I think it is silly we have social media. It’s profit media more than it is social.
