Kill-Fuck: Propaganda’s Neurophysiological Engine
The Monster/Victim Narrative “moves” audience away from a dehumanized “monster” and toward an idealized “victim.” That basic movement from one toward the other is driven by “fear” and “desire.” Fear leads to division (repulsion) and desire leads to merger. Fear and desire are two sides of the same emotional coin.
I tell you this because I want to get to the deepest level of story in order to explain that a story is an emotional construction. The “story” is designed by someone with the motive to manipulate, move, you, the audience in this direction — and importantly, they benefit from it.
It might be important to look very specifically at what manipulate means:
ma·nip·u·late | məˈnipyəˌlāt |verb [with object]
1 handle or control (a tool, mechanism, etc.), typically in a skillful manner: he manipulated the dials of the set.
• alter, edit, or move (text or data) on a computer: the pupils can manipulate the data or screen image.
2 control or influence (a person or situation) cleverly, unfairly, or unscrupulously: the masses were deceived and manipulated by a tiny group.
• alter (data) or present (statistics) so as to mislead: nations may still be able to manipulate their own data.
All of those definitions of manipulate help us understand the effect of story: We “handle” the audience’s emotion through language and lead them to the place we want to arrive. We “control” the reader through a manipulation of the narrative. We “alter” reality to create a false problem that drives toward false conclusions. We “edit” and omit information to our advantage. We use the subtlety of language to “influence” through connotation and association. We “present” as truth what we invent.
The “story” is all about the relationship between the narrator and the target audience. We are successful if we “move” the reader to a “feeling” or “action.” To move the audience, we use the vehicle of the Monster/Victim Story. The story is between the narrator and the audience, or the manipulator and the manipulated.
The Manipulator (Narrator/Storyteller)
The Manipulated (Target Audience)
The Story consists of Monster/Victim presented in “conflict” which is also a false dichotomy a motivated construction of the narrator.
The Monster (Antagonist)
The Victim (Protagonist)
PURPOSE OF STORY: TO MOVE THE AUDIENCE
If we look at this on a continuum we can see that the narrator, frames a conflict between a “monster” and “victim” to “move” the audience away from “monster” and toward the “victim.” This reflects simultaneously the exaggerated division from monster and a merge to with the victim. The story works first on an emotional level, but also can be reflected intellectually and with division that can be expressed physically. The division is a violence, including the ultimate in division between life and death, or killing. The merger includes consumption and sex. The farthest extremes of both of these are murder (non-defensive violence) and over consumption and rape (violent merger).
I do suggest that the extremes of violence, over consumption, and rape are not “natural” to the species but a condition of our ongoing relationship with language in the form of the Monster/Victim Narrative, which plays continually on the narrative of “threat of limited resource.” The Monster/Victim narrative exaggerates and, through dehumanization of both monster and victim, eases the psychological ramifications of violence, over-consumption, and sex.
At the same time it obscures the creator of the Monster/Victim Narrative, who exploits the audience through the narrative for private benefit.
The Manipulated “audience” is the target. Within the false dichotomy of Monster/Victim, the outcome is a combined effect of division/separation from “target monster” and merger with “target victim.” While the violence against the “monster” can be realized, the merger with the “idealized victim” can never be.
If we looked at it as a vertical hierarchy it would look like this:
Manipulator
Victim
Audience
Monster
The movement is one of continuous ascension, where the audience is called upon to abandon the “monster” (to death) and chase the “victim” to the “narrator” (immortality). We’ll see that the hierarchy looks a little like our perception of:
God (in Heaven)
Saint (Phoenix or “son of God” Ascending)
World (Audience with “choice” of which way to “move” up or down.)
Hell
The story, in the case above, is meant to “move” the audience away from “Hell” (suffering and feeling) that is below and toward the victim, and by extension the manipulator above, God/Narrator. The arrival is one of “no feeling.”
In a sense the ascension is also a freedom from the emotions of “fear” and “desire.” Both killing the monster or merging with the victim (as in consumption and sex) accomplish this “resolution” of disequilibrium with equilibrium, “heaven.”
The Emotions
The primary emotions are, as I mention above, “fear” and “desire.” Fear is a neurophysiological response to disequilibrium. And desire is an anticipation of equilibrium, or pleasure. Human beings oscillate between these two states constantly.
Pro Tip: Neurologically, we have two states: fast and slow. The “fast” brain is survival oriented, thinks quickly about the necessities at hand. The fast brain does not perceive “time.” The slow brain can consider past, present, and future. When the storyteller can get the audience to “think fast” as in a panic, it is also easier to make the audience feel the “panic” state will last forever. It is easy to manipulate the audience when they are “thinking fast.” Walter Langer, speaking of Adolph Hitler, writes that Hitler’s strategy was always to keep the audience “hot.”
Both “fear” and “desire” are evolutionary neurophysiological responses that enable us to “survive.” We are in a constant state of “running from” cellular damage and “running too” merger for the sake of equilibrium, ie, food and sex. Because there are other issues in the world, we have a “cave” and darkness for safety and emerge from the cave into the light where there is risk. We perpetually move between these states.
Our response to fear is either “fight, flight, freeze, or posture,” according to Michael Grossman in his book, “On Killing.” From my point of view, “fight and posture” are much the same, one simply a physical manifestation of the other — meant to inspire “fear” in the other.
“Flight and Freeze” are also similar in that the are both ways to “flee.” In all instances, however, escaping toward survival is the objective. It should be noted that all of these responses are “defensive.” Creating “aggression” or “pre-emptive” violence, as in killing or rape, is the job of the manipulator, who must convince us that there are no other options.
In a simple way then, the manipulator wants us to flee (because we fear) the monster and run to the victim (because we want to “fuse” with the victim). It is very difficult for a human being to embrace this idea that when we “run to” we also “run from” but this is the case. We “run from” disequilibrium-death — everlasting suffering, while we simultaneously “run to” equilibrium, sex, fusion, ascension, a sense of “life everlasting.” Manipulating the audience is an issue of creating these two poles of “monster” and “victim.”
FALSE DICHOTOMY OF MONSTER AND VICTIM
Because creating the poles of “monster” and “victim” is so fundamental to the manipulation of human beings, we find that in English and other languages, most of our descriptive words can be described as either negative or positive. Those connotations can be felt.
Pro Tip: If you want to do well on a vocabulary test, eliminate the ridiculous and trust yourself to “feel” the language as either positive or negative. Moving from the sense of “literalness” to one of “feeling” is the way I got a 900 on the English GRE.
MANIPULATOR
While we have a vast number of words that fall into either “positive” or “negative” categories, we also have a lot of words and grammatical constructions that are designed to do the other hugely important job of OBSCURING THE HUMANITY OF THE NARRATOR.
Pro Tip: We “background” the narrator to remove the sense that the narrator has a personal, human, sake in the outcome. The narrator, like God, is not meant to be seen as a person with vested interests and desired outcomes that benefit the self, but as a neutral, above the fray, “entity” that witnesses outcomes as if they occur by chance, and pointedly, are not directed to the benefit of the narrator.
The story, then, is presented as a kind of “triangle” with the audience in the middle.
The narrator creates both the conception of monster and victim. The “motive” behind that “creation” is left off the page. What we are left with, as audience, is the sense that only the poles of “monster” and “victim” exist.
Every story is a monster and victim story, I’m afraid to say. And they are driven by a fear of the antagonist (which can lead to violence against the antagonist — as we’ve recently seen in Trump’s Revolt) and that we are equally going to see in violence against the “extreme right.” And violence that we’ve already seen against “the left though Trump’s attack on Portland, for example. We can then understand the purpose of “attacking the left” is to create the frame of the Monster/Victim story and “move” an audience. How it moves will depend on the target audience. This is the same propaganda campaign Hitler waged in German as he grabbed power.
The audience is equally driven to destroy their rival in order to enjoy their merger with the victim. In this way, the monster/victim story is ritual way for us to deal with our fear of death and part of what Solomon et al describe as “Terror Management Theory.” The orchestrated attack on the Capitol on January 6 beautifully illustrates the dynamic of the Monster/Victim story and how it fuses the ideas of merger (sex) with violence.
CLIMAX OF SEX AND VIOLENCE
Narratives that “move” the audience are considered stories. Narratives that do not “move” the audience are not a story. It is a failed narrative. “Moving” the audience is the point.
While the audience is given “transitory emotional” fulfillment through “sex and violence” the storyteller reaps the benefits of manipulating the audience, most often in material terms through the control acquired through violence or the benefit of exploiting a profit from over consumption.
The monster/victim story moves in a predictable way, through “escalation” and toward a “climax.” If that sounds sexual, it is. The rhythm of story follow natural physiological rhythms, like metabolism and sex, rhythms in animals that predates language by a lot.
Arriving at a “climax” is a kind of forgone conclusion, but in stories we can choose two distinct “conclusions” to our story. One in which we “resolve” the tensions of the story and one in which we leave the story “unresolved.”
TWO CONCLUSIONS: RESOLVED AND UNRESOLVED
I have called the “resolved” story one of “merger.” The “merger” story creates a sense of catharsis for the audience. They feel that they “rise.” It is not an active, physical, resolution, but one of feeling “satiated.” It is a “spiritual” resolution.
The unresolved conclusion, very popular in propaganda and advertising, inspires “tension” but not resolution. The resolution is often “suggested” as the only alternative, and requires the “action” of the audience.
Unresolved stories lead to violence, as they did with Donald Trump on January 6th. They are the choice of “advertisers” who pit the monster of, for example, “the reality of dirty laundry” against the victim of a wife and mother who wants to live in a world of perpetual cleanliness. As we “move” toward the victim, we also want to resolve our tension with reality, once and for all.
Television was so successful in advertising because it included many “unresolved stories” (advertisements) within a context of a “resolved” story. That is a significant one-two punch that offers “tensions” while also expressing the false narrative that tensions can be resolved, once and for all.
The audience, taking away a feeling of idealized satisfaction from one then seek to resolve the “subliminal” unresolved tensions, and therefore “consume” resolutions of consumption, violence, or sex in the hope of resolving those tensions, created by the narrative of imbalance.
The resolution of story is like sex, as in a feeling of sexual fulfillment, regardless of the mode of resolution, merger, violence, or consumption.
MANY NAMES AND NO NAME
Monster/Victim stories come in many forms. And there are many names for the monster and many names for the victims. And there are many ways to obscure the name of the storyteller, cloaked behind all sorts of labels, associations, jobs, non-profits, or simply disappeared in all. But each has a few telltale characteristics.
1. Manipulator. The storyteller, rhetorician, public relations professional, lawyer or other langue professional with a vested interests, is backgrounded and portrayed as neutral (and in that way also “not of this world.”) They are all knowing. They are without bias. Include what is true and good to include and omit what is “not part” of the story. They (whoever they are) portray the monster and victim.
2. Manipulator will construct a frame that focuses attention on the portrayed Monster and the Victim as being in conflict. This is also known as a “false dichotomy.”
3. Monster: is de-humanized with language and turned into a “fear-object.” Sometimes, an “object” that represents the monster is targeted instead, like a black church, but the objective is to hurt the “monster” behind the object.
4. Victim: is supra-humanized and idealized. They are better than the audience, sometimes by being the most victimized.
5. Audience is given a psychological choice: do they “descend” with the monster or “ascend” with the victim?
6. Either a “resolved” climax or “unresolved” non-climax, which begs resolution through sex (merger with that protagonist/detergent) or violence against the monster.
A FEW EXAMPLES
Manipulator: Writers of Genesis circa 500 BCE. Victim: Adam. Monster: Eve. Eve is susceptible to being enticed by the devil. Adam can be enticed by Eve. Outcome: Enslave Eve.
Manipulator: Cicero. Monster: Antony. Victim: The Roman Republic. Outcome: Cicero controls Antony, except unfortunately for Cicero, in this case, Antony kills Cicero.
Manipulator: Roman Authority: Monster: Jews. Victim: Jesus. Outcome: Anti-Semitism, Murder, Genocide, White Nationalism.
Manipulator: White, European, Male Elites. Monster: all non-white, non-male, non-elites. Victim: Idealized White Women. Outcome: Colonialism.
Manipulator: Founding Fathers. Monster: King George. Victim: “American” White Men. Outcome: Revolutionary War
Manipulator: Southern Landholders. Monster: Black People. Victim: White People. Outcome: Enslave Black People.
Manipulator: Early American Landholding Elites. Monster: Indigenous People. Victim: White, Landless People. Outcome: Genocide of Indigenous People and development of American “First Way of War”
Manipulator: City Landholders. Monster: Unhoused People. Victim: Landless, Towns Folk. Outcome: Exclusion and Death of Unhoused People.
Manipulator: Gun Industry. Monster: People who don’t want to be killed by guns. Victim: People who love freedom imprisoned by people who don’t want to be killed. Outcome: lot of guns sold, lots of people killed.
Manipulator: Police/Military Industry Public Relations. Monster: Black Lives Matter Protestors. Victim: Individual Police Officers. Outcome: Police Violence and Death Against BLM Protestors.
Manipulator: Trump Public Relations Team. Monster: The Left. Victim. The Right. Outcome: Violence against Left.
Manipulator: Big Business. Monster: Government (Regulation). Victim: Small Business and Worker. Outcome: Privatization and Violent Overthrow of Government.
It should be noted that the monster/victim stories become cultural phenomena. The misogyny inspired by the Adam and Eve story was already well represented before 500 BCE. The Anti-Semitism reflected in the Jesus Crucifixion Story persists through today.
The fascist poet, Ezra Pound said, “make it new.” Perhaps that is what he mean. Joseph Campbell talks of the “Hero with a Thousand Faces.” But he emphasizes only the perpetual victim of the Monster/Victim story. The Monsters also had a thousand faces, and each and every time a “monster” was targeted in a story, the storyteller achieved an advantage.
OUTCOMES OF THE MONSTER/VICTIM STORY
The habitual overuse of the unresolved Monster/Victim story to move the audience creates in the audience a sadistic pleasure in violence. While we naturally seek the merger with the idealized protagonist, if we repeatedly moved to “save the victim” through violence, we begin to feel the sexual pleasure of merger in the violent act only. This, it seems to me, is the very definition of sadism. We experience the pleasure of merger with our “love object” victim through violence against the monster — particularly as the “idealized love object” is always out of reach.
We see this violent acting out all over in our current American culture, and certainly in the Trump revolt, the manipulated mob who want to merge with the victim “Trump” by acting out in violence. Eventually, the two emotions fuse, fear and desire until we desire fear (and fear desire). The homoeroticism of guns, as a kind of permissible merger with a violent-love object typifies this. The culture of violence and the rape culture are both the result of the Monster/Victim story.
MEDIA PLATFORMS
Since Monster/Victim Stories always work, whoever better controls the outlets of the Monster/Victim Stories wins, as that directs the masses toward violence.
MONSTER/VICTIM STORY COUNTER MEASURES
If you find yourself or a group of which you are a part, targeted by a monster/victim story, there are things you can do — but they are not easy. It was said that Julius Cesar trembled listening to Cicero speak.
1. CALL OUT MONSTER/VICTIM NARRATIVE
It can be very difficult to “see” the monster/victim story, partly because our language has developed along with this basic story, and those who have used stories to manipulate, like priests, leaders, rhetoricians, propaganda and public relations professional, have studied, through centuries of trial and error what works and doesn’t. But every story is a Monster/Victim Story, and the outcome of all UNRESOLVED Monster/Victim stories is active manipulation and therefore violence against the audience and a target “monster.”
2. DEMAND THE MONSTER’S SIDE OF THE STORY
If you are targeted, you are the monster. The monster is cast and portrayed by the narrator and dehumanized. Sometimes the targeted people who suffer at the hands of the Monster/Victim narrative, are not even represented at all.
One of the best examples is that of “terrorists.” We, as a country, in theory, have a policy of “not negotiating” with terrorists. That means, in our country, we never even hear the “terrorist” side of the story. The monster’s violence is always seen as “irrational.” It isn’t reasonable, for example. It isn’t defensive, for example. That is example of “control of the narrative.”
Insist that every story “show” what every character wants, and the reasons they want it. This is “humanizing.”
Demanding the other side, does not mean providing a recruiting platform for the Monster/Victim narrative, which is hate speech. Hate speech, like the monster/victim narrative is not protected free speech, in my feeling, as it is weaponized and results in physical and emotional violence — and frankly, we have a lot of it already.
1. ATTACK NARROW FRAME AND FALSE CONFLICT
The frame is designed to focus attention, on a false dichotomy, that begs a predetermined outcome, already designed by the manipulator. The “focus” keeps us “hot” and in the fast brain. We can and should expand the focus, and examine a wider context.
At the end of our examination, we should see there is NO CONFLICT. By widening the context, we can always come to compromise between the two parties “framed.” What we’ll find, however, is that “compromise” does not benefit the framer of the story.
2. DESTROY THE MONSTER/VICTIM STORY: DISCOVER HUMAN BEINGS
Language obscures the human beings behind the roles. Do the work to find the human beings. Because of the way roles are “cast” by the manipulator, our work is exactly the opposite. Humanize the Monster. De-idealize the Victim.
3. OUT THE MANIPULATOR
Find the Narrator — who are they? How do they benefit? Out the narrator of the Monster/Victim story. When you find the narrator, you will also find why they are casting the Monster and Victim as they are. You will find the narrator’s motive. Usually, it’s just money, wealth, power, a feeling of their own security. For their “feeling” of security, they threaten the security of others.
4. FIRE WITH FIRE
The other strategy is to fight fire with fire. The monster/victim story depends of representing false reality. We can fight this by presenting an “alternate unreality.” This is the current state of our political system, though, so we can see where this leads — just a continuous shifting of who controls the Monster/Victim Narrative, while those manipulating us with that narrative sit in their think tanks and public relations firms and watch, thinking we’re just as stupid as we might in fact be.
The great reality is that everyone in the story is a human being, neither monsters nor victims. That is not to say that we don’t experience real suffering and even death at other’s hands. But I guess I suggest that in the end, we find those hands are manipulated by others. And if we want to really address that problem of violence, we have to go to the source and not perpetuate the violence by killing the messenger.
But it is also true that we fight for two reasons, because our backs are against the wall, AND we feel we can win. Most often, attacking just makes us more desperate. Losing really isn’t an option. We all want to survive. I don’t have good answers here. We do need to protect ourselves. Make sure our actions are seen as “defensive.” That way, we play a role in the larger monster/victim story, and through our perceivable actions can elicit the sympathy of a wider, worldwide audience.
The manipulator is the monster, seeking control over others, but even that monster is a human being. I don’t personally have sympathy for the manipulator, but that’s me. They are my enemy. Still, I’m sure we don’t find our humanity by becoming the monster ourselves.
5. SEEK REALITY
The solution to the unreality created by monster/victim story is: seek reality. We are human animals. We live in space and time. We have limited resources. We either live together or kill each other. So, we find dealing with this reality is the biggest counter measure to the manipulative Monster/Victim Story.
The Monster/Victim Story is an unreality. That unreality benefits some few human beings, in control of that Monster/Victim Narrative the manipulation of human beings, some, few human beings. Those who benefit from unreality do not want us to seek reality. At the heart, way down the line — after much trouble and surely a lot of blood is that some don’t get more than others. We don’t get more security with the balance of another insecurity. We don’t get more space for some else’s less space. We don’t get a “better” life at the expense of another’s “worse life” or death. Those days will either be over or we will.
Good luck, friend.
