Propaganda is a strong word, I wouldn't call it that way. But I wouldn't blame you as almost everyone thought it was a scam. However ETC was used as a form of revolting against the decision of bailing out investors resulting of rolling back the blockchain and devs being arrogant to assumed that EVERYONE will migrate to the new chain and that the old chain will just die off. Now, if you call that a propaganda, you obviously do not honor a social contract. Plus there's no way the old chain (ETC) can be founded through a technological base considering from that situation. It's not like forked happened and suddenly ETC became robust, scalable and self-sufficient. Innovation is a process, much so with the new chain (ETH). Imo, ETH projects just came through not because of the fancy word 'smart contracts' or something like that but because people knowing now that can they break social contract and just roll back the blockchain and fork off when they make a mess.