Silly Logos01. Do you think you will get any of this done in a Constitutional Republic?
Well, I’d start out as god-emperor and dictator for life, but I’d try to keep myself from having an actual successor… (even if it didn’t really work, just introducing the notion would eventually cause it to stabilize to that effect.)
or people following anything but the forms of your proposed system of government. Social engineering is hard.
Indeed. Luckily these folks would not yet have been immunized to Nazi-style propaganda campaigns or other forms of indoctrination. This is one additional reason why I focused on propaganda and publication. I’d expect to face certain failure in achieving the total optimal result, but could at the very least implement a tendency towards these models.
If I treat myself as an aberration to the system, and create a power structure that could survive me—assuming I had a good fifty or so years to institutionalize it in the eyes and ears of mankind, I could spend the last ten or fifteen years gradually introducing the parliamentary rule; handing over more and more political power to the Senate in a graceful manner, until I’m seen as more of an advisory role than an actual power figure. That would be an end-state goal, though.
Luckily these folks would not yet have been immunized to Nazi-style propaganda campaigns or other forms of indoctrination.
I’m having a hard time thinking of any population that is. I mean sure we won’t see a rise in Nazism in our life times but that’s because the Nazi’s lost the war, not because people became immune to their propaganda techniques. If anything modern propaganda techniques are much better and we are even more helpless against them.
I’m having a hard time thinking of any population that is [...] immune to their propaganda techniques.
Immunized != Immune.
If anything modern propaganda techniques are much better and we are even more helpless against them.
It’s an arms-race. Nazi-style propagandizing included use of radio and television, and control over print media, as well as sponsored postings of visual posters and the like in public spaces. These things are what I was referring to; and people today are relatively immune to such “crass” techniques, which is why modern propaganda techniques are so much more sophisticated: the “old” ones stopped being sufficiently effective.
If we consider propaganda a form of virulent memeplex, then the immunological model describes quite well the history of and reactions to various forms of propaganda by the common populace over time: first there is exposure to a new “strain”, and then people become resistant to it in a very similar manner to how we become resistant to various viruses.
I wonder if anyone has ever studied Third World propaganda campaigns over time to demonstrate an ‘evolution’ which recapitulates Western evolution in propaganda?
(I mention this because I saw recently the old example of Liberia’s Charles Taylor who was elected when he ‘campaigned on the slogan “He killed my ma, he killed my pa, but I will vote for him.”’. Of course, his landslide was probably due to “the belief that he would resume the war if he lost.” which is why one would want multiple countries. Do they all show this sort of phenomenon where laughably crude propaganda and campaigning works initially and is slowly replaced by subtler psy-ops, or is there no evolution because crude propaganda works best on those of low IQ, say?)
I would imagine that any researcher who confirmed such an effect would refrain from publishing, and instead become the supreme dictator of some third world country.
Luckily these folks would not yet have been immunized to Nazi-style propaganda campaigns or other forms of indoctrination.
As GLaDOS points out, nobody’s really immune, as such, but it wasn’t a new tactic. ‘Demagogue’ is a Greek word, and the techniques involved had been known for centuries before 1AD. Take the brothers Grachii as your bar; if you can manipulate public opinion more smoothly than they did, you might have a shot.
Immunization does not provide perfect immunity. I was referring to the specific techniques and methods used by the Nazis for propagandizing; broadcasts, posters plastered everywhere, and so on, and so on. People today are relatively immunized against blithely trusting the validity of government-sponsored statements. This was not true before that time.
People today are relatively immunized against blithely trusting the validity of government-sponsored statements. This was not true before that time.
My model of humanity has them cynical enough that they stopped being blithely trusting of the validity of government-sponsored statements about ten minutes after the emergence in prehistory of something which could be loosely described as ‘government’.
The history of the efficacy of the propaganda used by both the “Axis Powers” in WWII and the Allies in WWII would tend to conflict with your model, insofar as I understand both sets of data.
“Rosie the Riveter” was a purely government-sponsored fabrication, and yet women signed up to work in factories by the thousands as a result of said campaign. German introduction of anti-semitism literally introduced the practice in Japan—beforehand the Japanese people had a view of Jews that was quite the opposite (i.e.; that they were a ‘superior people’) … which is why before the German/Japanese alliance got fully implemented, the Japanese had an active recruiting campaign for Jewish persons.
There are a vast swathe of such examples from that era. None of these techniques are effective today. See: “Tobacco is Whack-o”, “This is your brain on drugs”, etc., etc..
Well, I’d start out as god-emperor and dictator for life, but I’d try to keep myself from having an actual successor… (even if it didn’t really work, just introducing the notion would eventually cause it to stabilize to that effect.)
Indeed. Luckily these folks would not yet have been immunized to Nazi-style propaganda campaigns or other forms of indoctrination. This is one additional reason why I focused on propaganda and publication. I’d expect to face certain failure in achieving the total optimal result, but could at the very least implement a tendency towards these models.
If I treat myself as an aberration to the system, and create a power structure that could survive me—assuming I had a good fifty or so years to institutionalize it in the eyes and ears of mankind, I could spend the last ten or fifteen years gradually introducing the parliamentary rule; handing over more and more political power to the Senate in a graceful manner, until I’m seen as more of an advisory role than an actual power figure. That would be an end-state goal, though.
I’m having a hard time thinking of any population that is. I mean sure we won’t see a rise in Nazism in our life times but that’s because the Nazi’s lost the war, not because people became immune to their propaganda techniques. If anything modern propaganda techniques are much better and we are even more helpless against them.
Immunized != Immune.
It’s an arms-race. Nazi-style propagandizing included use of radio and television, and control over print media, as well as sponsored postings of visual posters and the like in public spaces. These things are what I was referring to; and people today are relatively immune to such “crass” techniques, which is why modern propaganda techniques are so much more sophisticated: the “old” ones stopped being sufficiently effective.
If we consider propaganda a form of virulent memeplex, then the immunological model describes quite well the history of and reactions to various forms of propaganda by the common populace over time: first there is exposure to a new “strain”, and then people become resistant to it in a very similar manner to how we become resistant to various viruses.
I wonder if anyone has ever studied Third World propaganda campaigns over time to demonstrate an ‘evolution’ which recapitulates Western evolution in propaganda?
(I mention this because I saw recently the old example of Liberia’s Charles Taylor who was elected when he ‘campaigned on the slogan “He killed my ma, he killed my pa, but I will vote for him.”’. Of course, his landslide was probably due to “the belief that he would resume the war if he lost.” which is why one would want multiple countries. Do they all show this sort of phenomenon where laughably crude propaganda and campaigning works initially and is slowly replaced by subtler psy-ops, or is there no evolution because crude propaganda works best on those of low IQ, say?)
I would imagine that any researcher who confirmed such an effect would refrain from publishing, and instead become the supreme dictator of some third world country.
Dictator? You mean campaign manager.
As GLaDOS points out, nobody’s really immune, as such, but it wasn’t a new tactic. ‘Demagogue’ is a Greek word, and the techniques involved had been known for centuries before 1AD. Take the brothers Grachii as your bar; if you can manipulate public opinion more smoothly than they did, you might have a shot.
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Immunization does not provide perfect immunity. I was referring to the specific techniques and methods used by the Nazis for propagandizing; broadcasts, posters plastered everywhere, and so on, and so on. People today are relatively immunized against blithely trusting the validity of government-sponsored statements. This was not true before that time.
My model of humanity has them cynical enough that they stopped being blithely trusting of the validity of government-sponsored statements about ten minutes after the emergence in prehistory of something which could be loosely described as ‘government’.
The history of the efficacy of the propaganda used by both the “Axis Powers” in WWII and the Allies in WWII would tend to conflict with your model, insofar as I understand both sets of data.
“Rosie the Riveter” was a purely government-sponsored fabrication, and yet women signed up to work in factories by the thousands as a result of said campaign. German introduction of anti-semitism literally introduced the practice in Japan—beforehand the Japanese people had a view of Jews that was quite the opposite (i.e.; that they were a ‘superior people’) … which is why before the German/Japanese alliance got fully implemented, the Japanese had an active recruiting campaign for Jewish persons.
There are a vast swathe of such examples from that era. None of these techniques are effective today. See: “Tobacco is Whack-o”, “This is your brain on drugs”, etc., etc..