Hate

Turning into the people you hate the most

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Last month, Al Jazeera reported the following curious fact:

“Right-wing Israeli Jews dress as Muslims to enter the Al-Aqsa compound in efforts to change the status quo at Islam’s third holiest site.”

The Al-Aqsa compound, known by Jews as the Temple Mount, has been restricted since the year 2000 in the interest of public safety. Only Muslims are allowed to pray there.

Trouble is, while this 37-acre area is the third holiest site in Islam… it is also the number-one holiest site in Judaism.

Many Jews want the Temple Mount back. They want it back bad.

How bad? From the Al Jazeera article:

“The 26-year-old swaps his orthodox Jewish clothes with a thobe – a traditional garment also called a dishdasha or jalabiya, worn by many Palestinian men, and his black kippa for a white prayer skullcap. Peering into a mirror, he slicks his long, dark sidelocks back with hair gel to hide them under the cap, mumbling a few Arabic words to refresh his memory.”

It’s not just comsetic changes, either. The article says that the Jews sneaking into the Temple mount will take Arabic classes and study the Quran to be able to get past the security guards screening any non-Muslims from the Al-Aqsa compound.

So what?

So maybe you’ll say I’m taking an unwarranted leap here, but this brings to mind a quote from Eric Hoffer’s True Believer:

“Though hatred is a convenient instrument for mobilizing a community for defense, it does not, in the long run, come cheap. We pay for it by losing all or many of the values we have set out to defend.”

Hoffer’s argument is that in fighting the enemy, you often become the enemy.

I don’t know how universally true this is. Maybe it just sounds good because it’s shocking and counterintuitive. But I feel there’s definitely a kernel of truth there.

In any case, it brought something else to mind also. It’s the most valuable thing I got from Ben Settle’s Villains book (actually from Ben’s promo emails for that book):

Villains are proactive, and heroes are reactive.

In other words, Villains make the heroes and authorities react to them, while heroes wait for something to happen, always chasing after the fires set by the Villain to distract them as they carry out their machinations. (And notice when a hero does try to be proactive, you end up with Ultron…) If you look around at the most successful people in business and life, they may not be evil, but they are Villains, and do the same thing.

You might not like the idea of being evil… of being anybody’s enemy… of being a villain.

Fine.

Just remember Eric Hoffer and Ben Settle above. And at the very least, make sure you’re not cast as a hero.

​​Instead, set your own agenda, and then follow it.

Otherwise, you’ll end up playing catchup to other, more proactive people around you… and the shame of it is, in time, you will end up dressing, acting, and even thinking in ways that you hate the most.

On an unrelated note:

I have an email newsletter where I often write about persuasion, marketing, and psychology ideas. If that kind of thing fills you with religious fervor or at least some curiosity, you can sign up to my newsletter here.

Better the devil they don’t know

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Bzzzzzzz bzzzzzz bzzzzzzzz – the front door buzzer kept ringing aggressively.

Pavel, barefoot and still in his underwear, patted over to check the security camera feed.

Six large men were standing outside his door.

“They had guns and they looked very serious,” Pavel said later. “They seemed to want to break the door.”

Pavel looked despairingly at his phone. If only he could call his brother and share just a few critical instructions.

But what could he say?

What kind of message could he send?

After all, the guys outside the door were from the secret service. And the secret service could read and hear anything.

“I realized I don’t have a safe means of communication with him,” Pavel said in an interview with the New York Times. “That’s how Telegram started.”

I just read a new Wired article about Pavel Durov.

In 2006, Durov founded VKontakte, a Russian Facebook clone.

VK eventually became a multi-billion-dollar company. Durov got rich.

Then in 2011, Durov drew the worst kind of heat upon himself.

He refused to cave to the Kremlin’s request to block opposition groups on VK. And he tweeted his “official” response to the government – a photo of a dog with its tongue hanging out.

That led to the visit at his home.

Durov survived that encounter. And he wasn’t cowed.

A short while later, he launched Telegram, the messaging app.

He positioned Telegram as a secure, decentralized, no-censorship alternative to corporate offers like WhatsApp.

That positioning went back to the origin story from 2011, with secret services thugs beating on Durov’s door.

The positioning has been reinforced by Durov’s actions since. As things got hotter for him in Russia, he picked up his small team and started moving around the world.

“I’m out of Russia and have no plans to go back,” he told TechCrunch in 2014. “Unfortunately, the country is incompatible with Internet business at the moment.”

Well, if you believe the Wired article, all that’s PR and marketing hype.

According to Wired, Durov wouldn’t be the CEO of Telegram today without powerful Kremlin connections yesterday.

And even after he supposedly left Russia with no plans to go back… he still kept his posh offices in St. Petersburg. He continued to visit there, and regularly spent entire days working in the office.

So what’s the truth?

I personally don’t care about Telegram or about Pavel Durov. But I do care about persuasion and influence.

And so the only truth I want to share with you is the following idea from the book True Believer:

“The ideal devil is a foreigner.”

Durov knew this instinctively. As one of his former business associate said,

“Pavel is a king of PR and marketing. Probably one of the best people in the world. I think he wanted to play the good guy with the West.”

It definitely worked.

Telegram grew steadily, and it became the world’s most downloaded app in 2021. It’s phenomenally popular in Asia, Latin America, and increasingly in Europe. To date, it’s been downloaded over 1 billion times.

In large part, that’s because Telegram is seen just as Durov wants it to be seen. As a decentralized, anti-establishment, freedom-fighters app.

How else could it be? The founder himself had to run away from the secret service of that foreign devil Putin… and the repressive state Putin represents.

So there you go:

If you want strong positioning for your product, create a good-vs-evil struggle between you and Vladimir Putin. Or at least some other foreign devil, relative to your target audience.

But what if you can’t get a good foreign devil?

In that case, keep an eye on Pavel Durov and the future of Telegram. Because as the Wired article says:

“As Durov’s run-ins with the Kremlin recede into the past, authoritarian surveillance has, in some ways, ceased to be the symbolic foil that it once was for Telegram. Instead, Durov has increasingly cast his platform in heroic opposition to Facebook, Apple, and Google.”

Will Apple and Google serve as well as Putin did?

Maybe they will. Maybe they won’t. Or maybe Durov has also read True Believer. And so maybe he’ll get some use from the full quote above:

“The ideal devil is a foreigner. To quality as a devil, a domestic enemy must be given a foreign ancestry.”

But maybe you’re wondering why I don’t take my own advice and talk about some foreign or domestic devils.

Don’t worry. I will. I just don’t want to draw attention to it by doing it today. If you’d like to keep an eye on me as I create some foreign devils, sign up for my email newsletter here.