It's not valid to claim that "propaganda can be good if the causes it promotes are good". Propaganda is manipulating people's emotions by using entertainment to spread cultural values and political messages. Genuine liberals rely on rational arguments and facts when discussing politics, see the discourse ethics of Habermas.

Supporters of "good propaganda" are defenders of "noble lies" (noble manipulation). They use top-down power to socially engineer your emotions, "for your own good". They are arrogant paternalists, be they rightwing or woke leftwing.

Who decides what is a good cause? Everyone, from anarchists to fascists, will claim that they are fighting for a good cause, which logically justifies propaganda, from their point of view. If you accept the premise that good propaganda exists, there will be no principled way to reject propaganda since the word "good" is fundamentally not a scientific concept, not referring to anything that is verifiably objective on the deepest epistemic and ontological level.

Human beings who have normal empathy can use simple logic and refer to facts in order to determine scientifically what is good, according to the premises of empathy, if cases are not too complicated, like for example the rules which say that murder is evil, causing physical pain is evil, and putting someone in prison is evil, though many will disagree about what constitutes a "necessary evil" if a case is complicated.

Empathy however is not a fundamental ontological feature, not a universal trait of existence, unless you believe in a benevolent god, but that is faith, not science. As long as psychopathy exists it will be possible to deny that universal ethics is real on the deepest ontological level.

Propaganda requires centralized power. You need Big Entertainment, Big Media or Big Government to spread propaganda or else it will not be effective when populations consist of millions of people. But power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Consequently, reject all centralized power and live in communities based on a decentralized democracy, a Jeffersonian democracy for example. Emotional manipulation in the political sphere, for the sake of an alleged good cause, is not necessary when common people live a simple life that makes it possible for average individuals to understand political, economic and technological processes in their own society.

There is only one thing that every citizen needs to know from birth: reject all centralized power. Demagoguery, flawed ideologies and oppressive religions will then automatically have no effect on them, because they already reject the basic structure that facilitates spread of disinformation: centralized power.

Accept only expertise in narrow domains like surgery and medicine, as long as Big Pharma doesn't exist. This means that progress in medicine will grow slower, but we already know enough about medicine and surgery to live good lives. Better to spread the medical knowledge we already have to developing countries instead of aiming for medical perfection in rich nations.

A decentralized society can easily avoid accumulation of power. If a municipality of farmers, shop keepers and small factory workers live independently of a centralized authority it's possible that they'll one day get visited by high-functioning psychopaths who claim they must pay taxes in order to get protection against "internal and external enemies". The villagers must shoot and kill the leader of this sociopathic gang, and then go back to working and living the good life, without anybody ruling over them.

The danger is that only a tiny group of villagers may dare to rebel and kill the psychopathic intruders. After this small group has defeated the intruding gang of thugs it's possible that they too get high on power, since they possess bravery and weapons, so they may tell other villagers: "You have to work and pay taxes to us, because we can then be your guardians". The other villagers should kill these new "guardians" and then go back to working and living the good life, without anybody ruling over them.

Some critics may now ask why it seems like I support Russia and not the US and EU empires. Obviously, I don't really support Russia. But when imperial leaders in the West use the oldest trick in the book to convince common people that they must accept centralized power; when these leaders, in other words, use the old tricky argument that centralized power is needed to stop "internal and external enemies", then I'm now so tired of this argument that I reply: okay, if the only choice is between different types of centralized power, then I "support" these alleged "internal and external enemies", just to prove that this old tricky argument backfires. For example, if I had been a Russian citizen I would have "supported" NATO, in a protest against the centralized power of Kremlin. I live in Norway however, a state which has occupied Sami territory, by the way, so out of spite and in protest I "support" Russia, an enemy of the centralized power in Norway today. If Donald Duck had been an enemy of the Norwegian state I would have said in public that I support him, simply to annoy and irritate those who have centralized power.

Dismantle NATO, deconstruct EU, give power back from Washington DC to each US state, and then I will stop "supporting" Russia. It's guaranteed however that Kremlin doesn't support an outcast like me. Had I've been born in Russia it wouldn't have taken long before I ended up in jail there. All authoritarian leaders will instinctively know that I'm not one of them, and never will be, just like a pack of lions know that a leopard is never part of their group.

My own subjective aesthetic preference is anti-woke however, so culturally it's natural that I have purely aesthetic symphaties with conservative aspects of Russia and Confucian aspects of China. But ethics is always above aesthetics. Will never hide human rights violations perpetrated by these highly centralized powers in the East. Being an ethno-nationalist, an anti-imperialist, I will in principle always support the liberation of Tibet, Xinjiang and Siberia. I also support the liberation of Native Americans and Aboriginals in Australia. This standpoint, based on principles, will basically make me an enemy of all empires.

Scale down. Separate. Break away. Live freely. This logically applies to people in Taiwan if they remain truly unaligned and reject the influence and power of both Eastern and Western empires, if they say no to both China/Russia and the US/EU.

The above are my idealistic principles. I'm a 70% realist however, and 30% idealist, so I have no illusion regarding the fact that human beings are "herd animals" who often sacrifice freedom and autonomy because most of them are sheep who prefer safety and material comforts in a society based on hierarchy. This fact is why I'm basically an outcast, a solitary leopard who doesn't interfere in how packs of lions choose to live their lives, as long as no group dictates how I should live.

Earthly life is sometimes messy, chaotic, contradictory. We have no other choice than to endure it. A realist expects plenty of crookedness in this fallen place. We are all sinners and hypocrites. Aiming for perfection here can make things much worse, both the left and right should remember this, especially now that AI robot technologies will give "godlike" powers to elites. Power corrupts...