Grado de dificultad: 3 (Por el idioma).

Columnista: Roberto

How to manipulate simple minds

The taking of Capitol Hill

Yesterday, January 6th, was supposed to be a very normal day. I was reviewing relevant contents for TMN articles.

Then, this news came popping up from the twilight zone. It looked like some warlock had opened a portal on Capitol Hill (Washington DC, USA), just like in fantasy movies…

… Except that the beings jumping out of it were real. I was so astonished that I changed my reading and watched this weird show.

There is a political level (the obvious one) to it, and I won’t deny that I am concerned by it.

But that is not what first came to my mind.

Looking at a that mess, I remembered images of Flat-Earthers, of NIXVM, and of so many other lunacies.

An old method of manipulation

The method (it is a method) to achieve such dominion on people is well known. An (already) old TMN post was describing it:

“The Push” and former Asch/Milgram experiments

The key is in how to select the target population: despair, loneliness, fear are the buttons to be pushed.

No close contact is necessary: this technique is known and practiced since the beginning of civilization.

The only difficult point is to avoid the truth to be an option. In the postmodern era, this has become easy.

Humans build themselves around customs. Pick one information media, and you will have your target secured.

Call it Fox News, Facebook or Twitter (or all of them), and you already won your public. The rest is only a matter of time to build your cult…

… Four years is more than enough to get a death cult.

A terrible and appalling result

The result is always terrible (or appalling). What is even more terrifying is knowing that, for too many members, there is no turning back.

Were the lunatics that swarmed the Capitol fully conscious of how they were manipulated? Overwhelmingly not.

Now, a lot of photographic and video infos will report “who”, “when” and “where”. For instance:

Photos: Scenes from U.S. Capitol as rioters storm building

Tomorrow, they will wake up with a file opened at the FBI … And will become expandable meat on the altar of an ideology (or a fundraising campaign).

The political dimension of Capitol event

On the very notion of “Nation”

A viral photo (among many others) was backed by an article in the Washington Post:

Man who posed at Pelosi desk said in Facebook post that he is prepared for violent death

The name of the pathetic b**ard doesn’t matter. What he says is the point:

“I am white. There is no denying that. I am a nationalist. I put my nation first. So that makes me a white nationalist,” Barnett wrote on page he maintained under a pseudonym, before adding that people who were not nationalists should “get the f— out of our nation.”

The important word in it is “Nation”. But It seems that he is not talking of the same nation that chose a path in November.

Questions

To be clear, I am no american citizen. I would, however, dare to raise a political and societal question.

The events showed a relevant current toward a different path. That it was the result of a manipulation is not the point: it occured.

No one can deny it, and certainly not its promoters.

But is has reach a dramatic point, now. Which leads to my question:

Is United States of America still a single nation? How can the insurgents be part of it?

Sorry, these were two questions.

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