Politics 101 : NEVER EVER PUT YOUR FAITH IN THE MOB !
Posted by Nonso Chukwudebe | 9 years ago | 3,473 times
Students of history will tell you that one of the greatest harm any leader can do to himself is to believe the smiles from a mob is permanent...
You see, the mind of a mob swings like a pendulum depending on who manages to hold its attention at any given time...
It is foolishness to believe the embrace of a mob equates to genuine love and any leader who swoons for joy at their open display of love, unwittingly "works out his own ruin"...
Julius Caesar, that greatly loved Roman Emperor had just been murdered and one of the conspirators Brutus stood in front of the Roman Mob speaking words that made their hearts swoon in admiration and awe at how noble the man Brutus was for putting country before friendship...
Brutus unleashed such oratory that turned the hearts of ordinary Roman citizens against the now deceased Caesar they once loved....
The same mob that only yesterday hailed Caesar now saw him as the worst thing that ever happened to Rome and when Brutus declared "not that I love Caesar less, but that I love Rome more", the crowd went wild in utter admiration for a man so noble...
Propaganda is a most willing tool for sustaining the attention of any mob and as long as one can come up with a spin that strikes an emotional chord, you have their temporary attention....
Only yesterday, the Nigerian mob swooned and rose to defend he who told them he had no shoes growing up....
To them he was noble Brutus with the right words, telling them he felt what they felt because he had been there....
And like the Roman mob, sentiments became the order of the day and they "loved" him....
But like I've always maintained, the mind of a mob is fickle and it's attention span depends on the ingenuity and ability of the spin masters to stay relevant by speaking words that resonate with the mob...
It also depends on the ability of yesterday's spin master to not give any room for new spin masters to feed the mob with rhetoric that is at variance with what you're already feeding them with...
And "noble" Brutus made what has to be the singular most fatal error known to history in allowing a Mark Anthony to speak to the same crowd, in the same arena....
You all know the story, Mark Anthony would go on to cunningly debunk everything Brutus had labored to build only a few moments ago...
As Mark Anthony spoke, as his superior counter logic took a hold on the minds of the mob, Brutus watched in desperation as the same mob who only a few moments ago, hailed him as the hero of Rome, the same mob who swore Caesar was the Devil's incarnate turned around and cursed the day he was born!
The same mob that cursed Caesar now turned and mourned him with many tears!
What am I saying?
Yesterday's orator made the mistake of believing the open show of love by the Nigerian mob was permanent forgetting that many Mark Anthony's in the form of various hostile online news platforms where waiting to seize the moment...
Only yesterday the mob cursed the day a certain General was born and unleashed venom when they were told the gentleman was the new face of bigotry...
Today it would appear some sing a different tune...
From the early days of the shoeless one's control of power, the Mark Anthony's in our midst came up with their own strategy to confront that which was spun about their revered General and they brilliantly zeroed in on one word, "CLUELESS"...
If their principal was made out to be a bigot, there was nothing stopping them from foisting the term "Clueless" on his opponent so they went to town using all known news outlets, spreading the "Gospel of Cluelessness" to the point where the word stuck in the minds of the mob...
It didn't help that the world was grappling with a new security challenge, one which Nigeria certainly wasn't exempt...
It didn't matter that the claims that Oga shoeless achieved nothing was not really correct, all they did was summarize him and everything about his government with the word Clueless...
You know repetition is the law of lasting impressions and the more one hears a word, the more it's likely to take root in the mind, so the Mark Anthony's stayed unrelenting in bombarding the mob with the word whilst not forgetting to make Oga Shoeless it's "illustrious" representative...
It can be argued that unlike what was obtainable in the past, where previous Oga's didn't give room to those who engage in excessive criticism, Oga shoeless behaved like Brutus in allowing these Mark Anthony's to use every available outlet to spread their own spin...
But it's not yet Uhuru for either side because this battle is merely one for the mind of a mob that can still swing depending on who spins the most....
Unfortunately real issues are lost in the back and forth spins and what we have is really the kettle desperately trying to paint the pot black whilst presenting itself as the cleanest thing since angel Gabriel's wings!
Readers Comments
comment(s)
No comments yet. Be the first to post comment.
