Slogans are how you control people.
Slogans are the easiest, cheapest, and most reliable way of translating policy into actual, concrete action.
Slogans are the real-world equivalent of a straight line uniting two points: the will of the government and the mind of the individual.
You reach out and touch enough individual points, you get a critical mass that moves in the direction your vector is aimed at.
Slogans have worked wonders when it comes to moving masses the ‘right way’, that is the government’s way, since times immemorial.
Think of it like this. You can catch more flies with honey that vinegar. Right, right?!
The recipe is simple. You take a discontented people. And when are the people ever happy with their condition? So you take them, and you start agitating them by promising a change in their condition. They may lack bread. That’s easy. You dangle the spectre of bread baskets in front of their noses. Just like a carrot.
Or you go deeper. They are hungry. So you promise them food, abundant food for all. But you condition their access to food on the completion of other stuff. You basically rig the game a bit, you know, in your favour. To recap: people are hungry, you promise food, but you say food is sure to come if so and so, who are bad corrupt people, develop a case of detached head, for instance.
Now, it matters little whether the corrupt people end up dead, or if the innocent buy the proverbial ticket, at least to the puppeteers, these are just details. As long as they harness that raw, brutal energy of hungry people, and use it to advance their own agenda, all is good.
Sometimes, the Government may even use a bit of positive reinforcing, if it must. So, in addition to bread, or peace, which works wonders after a long brutal war, or a change in government, or policy, they will also promise Freedom, or Liberty, or Political Rights for all. Something that sounds exotic and quixotic at the same time, but which perfectly rhymes with bread and peace.
And the more they promise, the more likely they will condition that good stuff on the people giving them something in return for it, but in advance. Be that their lives through sacrifice for the greater good, or tightening the belt or austerity now for an abundant tomorrow, the Government will always get their pound of flesh, no matter what.
The Government is in this game for real, and they are professionals. While, we, the People, are amateurs.
Their promises are always empty, for something given has no intrinsic value.
Their asks, however, are always charged with meaning and significance. They always want the same thing: our blood, our toil, our sweat, our money, our very lives. And it’s always our sacrifice that is required by the Altar of the Homeland. It’s never their sacrifice. Always us who pay the ultimate price.
The price of our Stupidity.
But slogans are the best example of maskirovka.
The Russian term маскировка (maskirovka) literally means masking. Primarily, it meant physical camouflage using smoke as well as all other methods of screening. From there, it came to have the broader meaning of military deception, widening to include denial and deception.
You see, folks, slogans serve as a smokescreen masking the real intentions of Government, of the official nomenclature of hierarchical government. “What for?” you may ask. That’s easy.
Government wants more power, more control, more agency than it deserves or receives under the Law.
Government abides by the same entropic rule of thumb that dictates the growth of all systems. Usually, governments or state actors want to become the rulers of more subjects, more territory, and in general they wish to extend their dominion and hegemony.
It is never, but never, the peoples themselves who have this unquenchable craving to dominate, subdue, and control other peoples. Because people only want to survive. And most of us do realize that our survival is interdependent on that of others. We know we do not exist in a vacuum, and we act accordingly, for the most part. But you bloody well know who doesn’t share this rational mindset. It’s the government.
To them, we are expendable pawns, on a monumental chessboard, where the Governments of the World harness the will of their peoples, using them, using all of us, until there’s no more vital essence left in our bodies. And what do they do next? They discard us like squashed lemons.
And so, the blasted governments, with their godforsaken hierarchies, use the whole lot of us, until we are empty, depleted, run down, and hollowed out batteries. Just like in the Matrix movie.
We are human batteries plugged in directly into their own devices and designs. We power, we empower them with our life essence. And slogans are the software they are running in all of us.
At the beginning of WW2, during the Phoney War from September ’39 to May ’40, the French came up with this mantra that was validated by the turn of events during the Battle of France:
Les Anglais donnent leurs machines, et les Francais leurs poitrines.
The English provide the guns and the French the arms. Or
The English risk their materiel, the French their personnel. Or
The English provide the cannon, the French the fodder.
You get it.
In this case, the humans provide the hardware and the slogans the software for the Government’s scheme of world domination.
Götterdämmerung 