There is a reason why people warn us about speaking about politics in mixed company. Politics are often felt but not understood, and are indeed incendiary.
Overwriting your common sense
Depending on your personal circumstances at the time you’re gaining fascination towards a political figure – something inside your mind turns off your cognitive awareness and becomes a “reflection” of your own person. For better or worse. Not all politicians are bad, but many are indeed very toxic. These toxic personalities are wittingly or sometimes by chance able to ride on a person’s bias.
From there it gets a lot more insidious. Because if a person is indeed following a demagog, the unsuspecting new fan for this demagog actually becomes the frontline victim. Understand that a demagog is only in for himself or herself – and perhaps a very narrow group of insiders. But even those insiders will become disposable if they start becoming inconvenient. The adoring fans and followers were always disposable. They are really just means to an end. The demagogs’ adoring follower’s primary role is to do the dirty work that the demagog would not do directly. This is how.
They implant easy to repeat slogans, talking points, buzz words, and other oversimplified concepts to their political base, and the media they consume. They will portrait themselves as the only group capable of fixing this “problem” that perhaps was not a problem at all – but if it is labeled a “problem” the adoring fans will galvanize their collective strength to solve it, or at the very least sabotage whomever is carrying out that “problem” into fruition. Let’s define the “problem” under this article.
The ”problem” is whatever the demagog finds inconvenient. The actual substance or merits for this “problem” are irrelevant. The demagogs traffic in the court of public opinion, because often their arguments are so weak that they cannot hold its relevance under scrutiny if another systematic construct is utilized.
For example, common sense, or perhaps a court of law. That is why the demagogs will highjack both. Turn people’s common sense off in favor of an exploited bias. And if they get any legislative power, they will do all they can to corrupt the courts into ruling in their favor. This is happening around the world, and yes, the USA is also in the world.
AUTHORITARIANISM & PROPAGANDA The Puppet Master Tools
Available worldwide on eBook and Paperback worldwide
They are lying on your face
Let’s start with a simple fact. When something is true, it does not matter how intricate of complex all the data and information gets, or from what source it comes from – all the arguments, pieces, timelines, primary, derived, and follow-on sources will automatically synchronize effortlessly. You won’t have to “interpret” what was said from the mouth of a person. A fact is logical, measurable, and demonstrable. If it does not meet this trifecta its conjecture.
A demagog somehow understands this, even if not word for word as I described, but they do understand that they cannot tell the “entire story” to their adoring fans because there are some shady things that are inconvenient, and could very well destroy the demagog’s façade of being the better option. They know deep inside that the information in full context will expose them for what they are, a pedantic farse that is swindling their very adoring fans.
It is almost like a pyramid scheme, they do not really care about what the product is, so long those in the lower parts of the pyramid are buying it, and paying up to the higher echelons. In politics, when it comes to this pyramid scheme, the followers might not always pay with money, although that is also very likely. For example, merchandise, donations, time, effort, free advertising (as becoming a parroting fools), and their principles and credibility is also put on the balance – especially if a person is backing up a controversial figure.
What does that mean? That means that the first victims from a demagog are their adoring followers! If they can convince this group of people that they are anointed with the moral superiority of the equation, they will have a higher proclivity for disassociating and subsequently dehumanizing anybody who is not onboard with the “dear leader’s” will.
But when you’re supporting the wrong narrative, there is often a small sense where you instinctively know you’re on the wrong track. This is exploitable too! Because people hate being wrong, and if this is exposed, even by proxy, then a compromised person is likely to double down in favor of their mistake. Subsequently even talking about it becomes taboo, or they become irate if confronted, and at that point rationality be damned, it will be an emotional [and sadly natural] response to “cling to their mistake.”
To quickly illustrate how this works, it is much like been in a toxic relationship. Everyone who cares about you is telling you that the person you’re with is harming you, but you’ll tell all those who love you to kick rocks, and you cling to the toxic relationship regardless, after all you “invested so much” on this toxic person, you “can’t accept you were wrong” – even though you’re clearly unhappy.
Eventually, you cannot sustain this charade any longer, and you have to acknowledge what those who loved you pointed out from the start. This will be traumatizing and takes a lot of courage to overcome this bias. It is easy to fall into the trap, it is a lot harder to get out. This series of articles are meant to help you escape if you’re trapped, or to help others escape if you wish to help them. HLC