Be Aware and Prepare - Part 3

In part 1 of this mini-series, I talked about military war and the huge toll it would take. Please read the full article at https://steemit.com/war/@ajain/be-aware-and-prepare-part-1 before proceeding to this article as it provides a context to the whole series.

In part 2 of this series, I talked about the economic war. Please read the full article at https://steemit.com/economy/@ajain/be-aware-and-prepare-part-2

In the third part, I am going to be talking about psychological war. Psychological war is all about making you believe something without having you to invoke your own critical thinking. This is to promote the agenda of people who are engaged in this type of warfare and the most common tool for this is to use propaganda. Given below are the techniques used for propaganda. Let me know if you see those in your daily lives.

Technique 1: Name calling or Stereotyping

Just how often people are called "conspiracy theorist" when they have a viewpoint which is in diametrical opposition to the popular view. More often than not, these turn out to be fact and not conspiracies. This technique is used to dismiss someone's credibility.

Technique 2: Generalities and use of Virtue words

This technique is used by invoking a "supportive" emotion such as doing the right thing and then introducing the agenda thus forcing a mental connection that the agenda is supporting the virtues and moral values. Critical thinking reveals that many times agenda has no correlation to the generalities of the context that was made as a pre-amble. A classic case is when pictures of starving children are shown with the message that these innocent people are suffering due to their government and we must allow them to come to our country.

Technique 3: Testimonials

This technique is used when you are influenced to make a decision based on the person presenting the information rather than the information itself. A classic example was Tiger Wood advertising about Buick automobile. Hmm, why would you buy a car based on Tiger Wood's recommendation? Maybe a golf club but certainly not a car.

Technique 4: Transfer and Association

This technique draws upon the negative emotions (or guilt by association) and either directly or indirectly influences the thinking to reject an idea. For example, making a statement that millions die because of hunger and then introduce the agenda that GMO food solves the problem thus indirectly seeking your acceptance on GMO food.

Technique 5: Bandwagon or inevitable victory

This technique is used to make sure a crowd behavior is the main behavior. Hey, everyone else (often associating with smart people) is doing this and if you are not then something is wrong with you. During elections, we have seen this play out effectively where you are forced to think that a certain candidate will win (based on poll surveys) so if you don't vote for the same candidate then you are wrong. The net effect is that either you don't go for voting or end up voting with crowd thinking.

Technique 6: Plain folks/Common people

This technique is used where they draw the analogy of socio-economic spectrum influencing your mental support that yeah "I am a common and simple person" and then introducing the agenda. They will introduce things like "It's common sense"

Technique 7: Using clothing to convey credibility

In this technique, someone is put in front of the camera by putting on clothes suitable for agenda item making you believe that the person is credible whereas, in reality, the person may not have any clue at all. For example, they will put a person in white doctor's coat claiming that Fluoride is good for your health! The actual person might actually just be an actor.

Propaganda at the simplest level can make you believe that holding silver, gold and Cryptos are bad as they are useless and have no value while at the same time influencing you to buy into stocks which are already at an all-time high. So when masses get into this thinking they jump on to bandwagon in fear of missing out (FOMO) while the party creating the propaganda are dumping the stock. Propaganda around Russia is all about making a case for war - well who really benefits from war?

So whenever you hear something, news item or commercial think - who is telling me this and why? Evaluate the data critically, and if the correlation is not there then dismiss the propaganda.

I am sure there are very many more techniques. Do leave them behind via comments.