Aura Forums

How does a government maintain control of a people in order to "keep them down?"

the first that that comes to mind is intimidation.
but I cant exactly work out a powerful method for that aside from like public execution which isnt likely to happen an 'civilized' areas.

and being richer just doesn't seem valid enough.


hey jim, how did the nazi's keep jersey on lock down?

kaos wrote:hey jim, how did the nazi's keep jersey on lock down?

Easy. They had guns. We had pitchforks.

It used to be religion but that has a different master these days.

Don't the US government keep control of you by telling you there are terrorists everywhere?

Maybe that's what he meant by intimidation. Ruling through fear. It's like in 1984. "War Is Peace."

Bogey wrote:Don't the US government keep control of you by telling you there are terrorists everywhere?

not me specificly...but yeah.

anyway. I'm not sure that would work.

I think i need somthing smaller scale.

Maybe I should ask how you oppress a group of people

Ah reminds me of The Manchurian Candidate.

how so?

I only saw a poor bootleg of that film. so i never got into it enough to take anything in.
I may as well have stared at a Snow for an hour and half.

That was about getting a brainwashed person to be president. Didn't really show any direct way of controlling the people.

I was thinking more of V for Vendetta.

I think Bogey hit the nail on the head with the terrorist thing. I mean, it's working, right?

Three decent factors that contribute to working propaganda:

1) An incident, controlled or not, can be used and abused.

2) Control the media. Control the mind (Thank you Westwood )

3) Make people think they're fighting for something just, but instead, you're just controlling them with fear.

9/11. Governments involved control most mainstream media. People buy half the crap that is churned out.

World War 1 (blaiming of the Jews). Nazi controlled media. German people thinking they're fighting a good fight.

Not comparing today's war on terror to Nazi Germany, literally. But the pieces are the same.

I read a theory that North Korea doesn't mind the Americans sitting on their border because it boosts national pride within the country. "War Is Peace" at work yet again.

Everyone seems themselves as the just and heroic, Nazi's are protrayed in TV and film as these evil mutherfuckers out to kick puppies, murder jews and eat children. Now don't get me wrong the where a coupla of stand out individuals that where just evil and they did some really vicous shit, but I imagine the vast majority of rank and file German soldier thought they where in the right. There was a weird kind of logic in what they where saying, It wasn't out of the order stuff where talking about at the start either and I suppose if you villify a target group enough, after a while, anything to stop them seems reasonable.

You're probably right but it's really hard to imagine being in that frame of mind.

"We're taking over the world? Yeah, sounds fair to me."

I still haven't seen V for vendetta yet.(wanna break it down?)

but yeah thinking you're the the hero is a sign of any good comic book villain.
I think i said that last week actually. using magneto as the example.

I won't attempt to break it down. Just see it. It's really good.

They trade the Britian with Nazi Germany. Basically, they start rounding up people that are 'different', didn't seem to be race based although, I'd need to watch the film more carefully to really check, even then it might just be casting, the main factor explored in the movie was, homosexuality and that was a deviant behaviour, so gays got rounded up and put into camps. Also, Political dissent seemed to be a biggy.

The movie doesn't explore the shifts in behaviour that this would require, it doesn't have time, although my memory is hazy I believe it starts off as the country is going to shit, from within and attack from outside. The goverment doesn't seem to be doing shit, so extremist groups get voted into power and more hard line piolicies are introduced.

Something very similar happened last by-election I think, where the British Nationist Party got a mess of more support and they are supposedly linked with extremist groups like neo-nazi's and ku klux clan. Simply because people where tired of the same old shit, different day with the main political parties.

For years in Northern Ireland the main parties where the UUP (unionist) and the SDLP (nationalist), they had a chance to sort out the peace thing and they fucked it up (it may have been doomed from the get go) the general public then went from these groups and polarised to the extremes. Now the main parties are the DUP and Sinn Fein, who both had strong links to terrorist paramilitaries. (although they pretty much all have)

Anyways back to the film.

In the camps they where expiremented on, you know, cause their deviants so fuck it, might as well test some shit out on them, not like they have rights (Gitmo detainees similarly have no human rights). Bunch of nasty virii killed a bunch of them, there was a fire, V gets loose, their are a few outbreaks in the gen pop, they blame it on terrorist cells, the prime minster uses this to dissolve Paraliment and promote himself as Chancellor.

It has a lot of parallels with the rise of Hilter, they may not been entirely intentional, but the block red banners and the look of the guy seemed pretty clear.