Not gonna lie, being in good faith, the Chinese government having a 90% approval rate looks sus, at least to a Westerner. The West looks at this and shouts “That means they are brainwashed!” which I don’t buy into. Yet that idea that all these anti-imperialist people are just brainwashed really, well, brainwashes a lot of people. How can this be countered?
What about all the westerners who are fed anticommunist propaganda? They don’t believe they are being lied to. Not trying to say that the North Koreans are being fed lies, I’m trying to be in good faith.
Americans know they’re being lied to, they’re just not completely sure by whom. If you realize that the liberal media is lying to you you might look for more reactionary stuff as it seems like the only better option. Also, anti-communism is considered by many to be general knowledge similar to say “if you drop a penny from the Empire State Building it can kill someone.” Everyone thinks they know it but they don’t think about it too hard and (many) can be persuaded to the contrary with a certain amount of debunking.
This is a great way to put it. Americans political beliefs really boil down to who they believe is lying to them.
This
This essay digs into your question a bit more. I think it’s hard to say how many people see through the anti-communist propaganda, but whether they do or not doesn’t matter so much. What does matter is where they perceive their material interests to be. When people at least perceive themselves to be petit bourgeoisie if not higher, they are inclined to go along with whatever allows them to maintain or improve that class position the best.
The good news is you can estimate what portion of the population actually believes the anticommunist propaganda. In the US, I don’t personally know a single person who believes “communism is evil” and didn’t vote for Trump. In 2016, Trump only had 63 million votes - which puts the max number of people in the US who believe communism is evil at 20% (the actual number is probably less since other groups voted for Trump too).
So tl;dr most Westerners who are fed anticommunity propaganda don’t believe it either
They do belive it. They just know the presence of anti communist propaganda is cynical and oversaturated. They don’t want anti communism to get in the way of having a comfortable life, but to say they “don’t believe it” is a big stretch I think.