Propaganda ScannerInvented by treasonous R&D scientists, this black-market item allows one to know whether someone has been exposed to secret society propaganda. The reason this item is treasonous is that secret societies use this to determine whether someone can be trusted, under the assumption that "if they believe our propaganda, they're probably sympathetic to us and we can trust them with our own treasonous dealings". Of course, loyal Internal Security agents might use this tool to ferret out traitorous secret society sympathizers, and unaffiliated traitors might use this tool to collect blackmail material.
In Alpha Complex, you don't
willingly believe in propaganda. You get exposed to it, probably because you read the wrong pamphlet or you went into the wrong lecture room...and once you get exposed to it, you involuntarily understand and sympathize with it. So just because you understand [SECRET_SOCIETY]'s propaganda doesn't mean that you have to
like [SECRET_SOCIETY] (in fact, it may mean you may want to destroy them even more, considering how they just tried to brainwash you). The Propaganda Scanner only tells you if someone is exposed to propaganda, not whether they genuinely agree with it or not.
Furthermore, it doesn't tell you how recently they've been exposed to propaganda. Traitors constantly revise their ideology at the same rate that The Computer rewrite history books. So you might, for example, see a citizen who was exposed to [SECRET_SOCIETY] propaganda 30 years ago, and even might sympathize with it, but may inadvertently act against the
current beliefs of [SECRET_SOCIETY]. Rather than being a loyal trustworthy sympathizer, the citizen may actually be a dangerous splitter that ought to be terminated for the good of your ideology.
And of course, it may be that the citizen may have an "eccentric" understanding of the propaganda, or even worse, might not understand it at all (consider a Free Enterpriser who periodically chant Communist slogans "because they sound cool and awesome" and proudly wear the hammer and sickle, but is otherwise acting like any other Free Enterpriser).
Still, it's a fair assumption to make that if someone is exposed to the propaganda, they are more likely to genuinely support it, and genuinely support it in the manner that you want them to...and really, the rare instance of you making a colossal mistake based on false or misleading information is not worth thinking about.
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