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By Their Fears Be Known
Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt, often acronymized as FUD, is a marketing strategy used to mold, twist and control people’s perceptions through the use of strongly negative messages and doomsaying.
Use of FUD is a very common and successful tactic among activists and politicians.
They all, irrespective of agenda or ideology, use it because it works. It works because fear, uncertainty, and doubt are proven methods of pushing people to move in a certain direction or act in a certain manner, at least for a short time.
The very ubiquitousness of this means of social engineering makes it a solid metric for judging politicians and activists. What and/or whom do they wish us to fear? Who’s their chosen scapegoat? By the fears, uncertainties, and doubts that they sow we can know them.
Are the fears, uncertainties, and doubts they promulgate designed to brings us a people together to eradicate, combat, or defend against some foreign or outside threat, or are they designed to divide us by naming ourselves, our nation, and/or our very culture as the threat to be eradicated, combated, or defended against?
What is boils down to is are they peddling fear of others or fear of ourselves – “Us” or “Them?”
Tags: Activism | Doubt | Fear | FUD | Marketing | Oikophobia | Politics | Social Engineering | Society | Uncertainty | Xenophobia
