Memetic Warfare Archive

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DESIRES AND FEARS

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Most actions are motivated by desires and fears, and a skilled propagandist can use either against you. This technique stresses the emotional appeal of memetic warfare. We desire prosperity and control, and fear being powerless and lacking material wealth. We desire immortality and fear death.

The last technique is based on the most common feelings between humans: desires and fears. Relying on these two factors propagandist have based a lot of campaigns trying to persuade subjects offering utopic situations and fighting for what they fear.

This Kind of propaganda was extremely used also in politics and is still used nowadays in some extremist parties where, for example, immigration is something that has to be eradicated in order to live in prosperity. This tactic is widely used in advertisements where products like perfumes or cars instantly give you richness and leadership or ointments help you fight old age marks.

[IMG BELOW] In this case, the logical fallacy in the cover of a comic book (1947) and the meme “The world if” is clearly the same: they both describe a bad future caused by someone/something, using the lever of fear.

See other propaganda techniques:
ASSERTION ◊ BANDWAGON ◊ CARD STACKING ◊ GLITTERING GENERALITIES ◊ FALSE DILEMMA ◊ THE LESSER OF TWO EVILS ◊ NAME CALLING ◊ PINPOINTING THE ENEMY ◊ PLAIN FOLKS ◊ TESTIMONIALS ◊ TRANSFER ◊ DESIRES AND FEARS