Linguist and media critic Noam Chomsky has listed 10 strategies used by politicians to manipulate the people. Chomsky a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology might as well have been talking about the United States and how it manipulates the media. But could they also apply to Zimbabwe.
Here is the third strategy:
The gradual strategy
“Acceptance to an unacceptable degree, just apply it gradually, dropper, for consecutive years.
“That is how the radically new socioeconomic conditions (neoliberalism) were imposed during the 1980s and 1990s:
• the minimal state
• privatization
• precariousness
• flexibility
• massive unemployment
• wages
• do not guarantee a decent income,
…so many changes that have brought about a revolution if they had been applied once.”
How does Zimbabwe fair?
Continued next page
The 10 Strategies
1-The strategy of distraction:
“The primary element of social control is the strategy of distraction which is to divert public attention from important issues and changes determined by the political and economic elites, by the technique of flood or flooding continuous distractions and insignificant information.
“Distraction strategy is also essential to prevent the public interest in the essential knowledge in the area of the science, economics, psychology, neurobiology and cybernetics.
“Maintaining public attention diverted away from the real social problems, captivated by matters of no real importance. Keep the public busy, busy, busy, no time to think, back to farm and other animals”….
2-Create problems, then offer solutions
“This method is also called ‘problem -reaction- solution’.
“It creates a problem, a ‘situation’ referred to cause some reaction in the audience, so this is the principal of the steps that you want to accept.
“For example: let it unfold and intensify urban violence, or arrange for bloody attacks in order that the public is the applicant’s security laws and policies to the detriment of freedom.
“Or create an economic crisis to accept as a necessary evil retreat of social rights and the dismantling of public services.”
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