Retrospring is shutting down on 1st March, 2025 Read more
What's your opinion on all the people calling Paw Patrol "copaganda?"
My answer here might surprise some people, but I think it makes perfect logical sense.
If you believe in the concept of "copaganda", then PAW Patrol fits. It's positive propaganda for the idea of a benevolent police force. It introduces the idea that police officers are helpful and caring public servants to the youngest audience.
So if your belief system is that ACAB, everything about the police system is rotten to the core, things were better when mob rule dictated justice in our communities, and that getting rid of the police altogether would be a net positive because that would totally stop our governments keeping us in our place through the threat of violence, it makes sense to characterize PAW Patrol as copaganda. And being sapient and capable of objecting to their stations, they shouldn't get passes just because they're service dogs. Though perhaps they should get some concessions for clearly being around 8-13 years old in how they're written and voice-acted.
Equally, it makes sense that if you actually believe ACAB is true, ACAB should include the PAW Patrol, because all means all. Never mind that PAW Patrol seemingly portrays a utopian or at least extreme neoliberal society where private citizens trusted by their community have taken control of law enforcement at a local level so are if anything in a paradigm the defund the police crowd idealize (including understanding that fascists have weirdly appealing sartorial tastes). The trappings of law enforcement and authoritarianism are still there even if they appear to be in some post-scarcity commune and the bad guy is a moustache-twirling embodiment of capitalism.
Of course, plenty of people who say PAW Patrol is copaganda and that ACAB includes the PAW Patrol are just being facetious. It's just funny and absurdist. But it's also quite obvious that many of them aren't aiming to be funny and genuinely hate all police conceptually, so are rationally upset that a cartoon is teaching kids that the police are the good guys.
So yes. Probably unsurprising is that I don't subscribe to the idea that ACAB, a pithy and intentionally overgeneralized punk slogan currently being taken too seriously because in the US, AWLOCAB. (A whole lot of...) It isn't actually logical to say that because individuals are supporting a corrupt system, all of them are bad people, because we all support this system in our own ways, and the threat of government violence and incarceration simply becomes much more military without police. The number of armchair anarchists writing about ACAB on social media who will not rely on this system for protection or an attempt to get justice when in need is tiny. The default mode for the world SHOULD be that police officers are broadly a force for good, helping to prevent the threat of violence from petty criminals with the threat of government-approved violence. Believing there is an orderly society possible without the ever-present threat of violence is just youthful naivety, as is believing that local mob rule is better than a court system - as if mobs with twisted convictions of their own beliefs being just aren't the ones who do the lynching.
I live in several countries over the course of a year and none have a justice system nearly as broken as the US's. None have their rates of incarceration, nor their clear institutional problem with profiling and racially motivated brutality. I understand that police are an instrument of authoritarian government violence, but I also think that friendly local police officers are the best solution to the problem of crime and victimization that needs some sort of solution. Thus, circling back to our primary topic, I think PAW Patrol is just fine and there is no issue with kids' shows portraying the world as it should be, with benevolent and just police officers. I'm sure some people consider this the answer of a bootlicker, but you all have your own boots that you lick, your own threats of violence that keep you or those around you with criminal compulsions in check.
Copaganda is a concept that makes sense, and PAW Patrol fits the bill - but it's only logical if you genuinely believe that ACAB, which I'd say a tiny, tiny proportion of people who say it actually believe, or have critically questioned.
I wonder if whoever asked this expected such an answer, haha
Retrospring uses Markdown for formatting
*italic text*
for italic text
**bold text**
for bold text
[link](https://example.com)
for link