Thursday, April 23, 2015

[nxtkenva] Avoiding being manipulated by victim politics

"You are victim.  You are being oppressed." is a common and often very effective technique for political propaganda.  How can you recognize and avoid being manipulated by such propaganda?

One possible way is to reason about the better world being advocated by "joining us".  Is it self-consistent?  Who will do the tasks, hold the roles, currently forced upon the "victims", assuming society will still demand that someone do those tasks or be those roles?  Or, how will society function without anyone in those positions anymore?

Often the propaganda will encourage a deliberate ignorance about such questions: "As victims, it is not our responsibility to deal with such questions. Let the oppressors deal with them." Scientifically, manipulation that encourages people to embrace ignorance is psychologically interesting given we are naturally a thinking, curious species.

Another curious feature of political movements based on inducing a victim mindset is that they are often decentralized, e.g., no charismatic leader.  People join the victim mentality and spread it peer-to-peer to their friends, making it very difficult to resist: you face ostracism from your social group for resisting the propaganda.

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