From my upcoming book

In my first book I described my personal experience being educated by the radical left. In my second, I tied the popular “world communist government” conspiracy theory to the sciences of human behavior. In my upcoming book, I am diving deeper in these behavioral sciences in an attempt to show that the global elite are indeed applying what they know about human behavior to governing in an attempt to influence and control our thoughts and behaviors. The following is a small excerpt from this upcoming book.

There is reason to speculate that the sciences of human behavior are being used to persuade or push the attitudes of the masses in certain directions. In the book The Dynamics of Persuasion: Communication and attitudes in the 21st century, Richard Perloff discusses the technique of fear then relief. [1] This is described as the persuader intentionally placing the persuade into a state of fear, then removing that fear and replacing it with a less frightening alternative. According to Perloff, this technique is effective because the sense of relief experienced when the fear is replaced is overwhelming and reinforcing. The sensation is associated with the following request for compliance. A good example would be the acceptance of Donald Trump’s bump stock ban. There was so much fear and anticipation of what types of gun bans might be implemented after the Parkland Florida shooting, that people were relieved the only action taken was the ban on bump stocks. According to Perloff, the association between relief and the following request for compliance can be so powerful, that people are often in a state of mindlessness and less attentive than normal. When it came to this seemingly useless piece of plastic, for instance, people completely ignored that the ATF illegally redefined the term machine gun in the existing gun control laws to include devices like bump stocks.

This technique could, in theory, be applied to elections in general. In America, the term the lesser of two evils is a commonly accepted theme used to explain the acceptance of a candidate that may not live up to our expectations. This is the fear then relief principle put into action. The election of Barrack Obama for example, was a sure win because people had become so weary and hopeless during the Bush years, that they were, like Alinsky said, willing to accept change they did not fully understand. The same could be applied in the 2016 election of Donald Trump as well. People were so overwhelmingly relieved that Hillary Clinton did not win that they have, as Perloff noted, become more susceptible to persuasive techniques and less attentive to what Donald Trump is doing, opposed to what he says. To avoid the impression of singling out Donald Trump, the technique worked the same with Obama. Liberal Democrats were so elated with the sensation of relief that they questioned nothing the man did because in their minds, they averted the disaster of another Republican winning the presidency. 

The effectiveness of the fear then relief strategy depends on how well the initial fear appeal is crafted. A message designed to invoke fear is done to scare people into changing their positions by showing the negative consequences for failing to do so.[2] Political campaigns are without a doubt structured around the idea that voting for the other guy will have negative consequences. Republicans and Democrats alike, effectively play on the fears of their voters, targeting the known values of their demographic. Democrats for example, know their voters are afraid of Republicans cutting welfare programs for the poor, so they craft their message to specifically invoke that fear by characterizing Republicans as selfish corporatists who only care about profit. Republicans do the same, capitalizing on Democrats attempts to pass gun control. Republicans talk a big game but do little of anything with substance when it comes to defending liberty.

Fear messages can be effective, but unfortunately for the people crafting them, they are not always. If for example, the issue does not resonate with the target audience the message will fall on deaf ears. People who are not into politics for example, are not generally persuaded by political campaigns and the messages revolving around them have little effect in swaying opinion. People who are rooted in their convictions are also less likely to be affected by fear messages. Interestingly, there is some evidence suggesting that persuaders are intentionally targeting what they refer to as, mindless people. For example, in an article entitled Fear-then-Relief: Mindlessness and cognitive deficits[3] the authors make the claim that people, when experiencing the relief of realizing the fear stimulus was unfounded, fall into a mindless, reactionary mode for a brief time where the arousal of the relief sensation makes them more susceptible to persuasive communications. Studies have shown, according to this article, that people, when experiencing the relief sensation are less likely to ask any questions pertaining to the following suggestions or requests for compliance. According to the authors, this suggests that a state of mindlessness is produced with the relief, making one more likely to simply go along with whatever requests may follow.

[1] Perloff, R, M. The dynamics of persuasion: Communications and attitudes in the 21st century (2017) New York. Routledge

[2]Perloff, R, M. The dynamics of persuasion: Communications and attitudes in the 21st century (2017) New York. Routledge

[3]Dolinski, D., Ciszek, M., Godlewski, K. & Zawadski, M. (2002) Fear-then-relief: Mindlessness and cognitive deficits. European journal of social psychology, 32(4) pp. 435-447