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Critical Thinking Batch 4
Awais Yaseen - Propaganda
The world we live in is an extraordinary marvel and hasn’t always been like this ever. Today is the first time in history that humans have been so connected with each other. With the press of a few buttons a message, image, video, and voice can be sent to and viewed by people over hundreds or thousands of miles away. Every single one of these forms of message have something in common; they can all be forms of propaganda. In the past the best way was to spread images sharing an ideology or spread it through voice. And that is still the case but with the existence of the internet these strategies have become much easier to use. The most dangerous thing about propaganda is even if you don’t necessarily believe it, if the people around you believe it you might start to believe it as well. And the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said, “Verily, the parable of good and bad company is that of a seller of musk and a blacksmith. The seller of musk will give you perfume, you will buy some, or you will notice a pleasant smell. As for the blacksmith, he will burn your clothes, or you will notice a bad smell.” (Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 5534).
Just being in the presence of bad company can cause you to be harmed and burn you. The scientific version of this argument is that humans have a survival instinct to try and fit into their surroundings so as to not be left behind because sticking together increases the chances of survival for us by a large margin. Because of this we slowly start to do as the people around us do and believe in what they believe there might be differences but those differences slowly go away or are hidden so that you can fit in with the others. And this concept still functions even through social media for instance many children watch tiktok and other short form content platforms and in these videos many of the creators do challenges or use certain language in their content. This language can be seen throughout our youth. Many use this language in their daily life because they see people on social media and others around them using it similarly with challenges they attempt to fit in with their peers. This shows how dangerous propaganda is for us and especially our youth who are much more easily swayed by these things.
