> Spreading factually correct information can also just as easily be used to push an agenda.

This is a good point.

Most propaganda doesn't tell many lies. It mostly tells the truth, but is selective about which truths it tells.

The best propaganda just repeats a huge lie. Reinforcing something is the very best way of getting it to lodge in people's heads and once it is lodged there it will become part of their worldview and hence will due to being 'theirs' be seen as true.

To quote a German of ill repute:

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

Those are theories of propaganda from 80 years ago, coming from a totalitarian state that could simply enforce an official truth that no one believed in but everybody would repeat even to friends for fear of being seen as a dissenter.

Modern propaganda has advanced considerably. Just look at the advertising industry if you want to see state-of-the-art propaganda. Lifestyle marketing, creating perceived social pressures, reinventing the past - these are all techniques which work much better than simply telling a lie, especially if you can't just point a gun at anyone who doesn't at least pretend to believe your lie.

If the big lie no longer works then explain QAnon going from a 4chan meme to a cult and political force strong enough to win seats in government and fuel an insurrection, and why half of the United States still believes Donald Trump really won a second term.

It seems to me like it works better than it ever has.

QAnon wasn't created an popularized by some institution repeating a lie. It isn't even propaganda per se, it's a grass roots conspiracy theory, fanned by propaganda on certain particular facts (such as election fraud). It's the result of decades of bigger and smaller lies and truths being spun by various forces until they coalesced into this mess. There isn't some central Big Lie that QAnon believers have been fed, except perhaps the oldest lie - it's Us vs Them, and We are righteous while They are evil.

"Q" wrote his initial lies once, and people ate it up and spun it around among themselves. This is folklore, not propaganda.

> half of the United States still believes Donald Trump really won a second term

The polls I've seen show between 67%-80% accepting the result as correct; none support anything like half believing Trump won.

Irrational overreaction? I've posted elsewhere that I vote R but I had never heard of Qanon until the left started freaking out about it and made it news.