Pretend you have one hour to convince a random normie that the mainstream media is propaganda rather than a collection of well-meaning, objective journalists who sometimes get it wrong but overall try to deliver fair and accurate reporting.
If you fail, you die.
What's your approach?
It's a stupid hypothetical for several reasons but I'm very interested in this topic and I'm curious to hear your thoughts, so I'll ask for a pass on the overly dramatic scenario.
I'm guessing the most common response will be, "It won't work no matter what you do", and fwiw I think that's correct. But for the small group who can be reasoned with, what do you think is the optimal approach?
You can't convince people of anything. Your goal is to feign neutrality while as subtly as possible calling attention to facts and concepts that contradict the regime narrative. This will induce cognitive dissonance in the target that he will resolve by either breaking his conditioning, or by reinforcing it and dismissing you as a bad actor like he was programmed to.
A good one I found for men with daughters. Ask him what he would do if a man tried to follow his daughter into the ladies room. A father's natural response is to say he would intervene. Then ask him "what if the man was wearing a dress?"
Once someone starts questioning the narrative you can lead him down the path toward seeing he was lied to his whole life, and everything is fake and gay.
This is nearly impossible for women because for fertile women questioning the narrative requires them to let go over their unearned egos.
Exactly, people can only change their own minds. So at best you can help them identify you as an ally or an enemy based on their preexisting beliefs. If somebody is on the fence, you can try to make them think you mean well and have good intentions, but that's about it. You can't forcefeed people the truth if they don't want it.
Hey, you are pretty smart.
I don't endorse feigning neutrality, particularly as you probably will be caught if things develop, but most importantly: you should not appear as a fanatic, or someone dead-set in his ways.
You can voice quite strong opinions in ways that make you appear like you are not an ideologue. And you can get a lot of buy-in by just being likeable and funny.
This is why the left rages when anyone makes jokes about them or their sacred cows. They know humor can be an effective way of pointing out the absurdity of their bullshit.
It's not even just that, but also that (successful) humor lowers people's defenses. I've used the joke that Joe Biden said that "who does Vladimir Putin think he is, invading other countries? That's our job!" to great effect.