“We tend today to exaggerate the effectiveness of persuasion as a means of inculcating opinion and shaping behavior.”
Today I was planning to write a standard email about marketing and persuasion. But I checked the news this morning, and I saw that Russia invaded Ukraine by land, air, and sea.
It’s the biggest attack in Europe by one state against another since World War II.
I’m close to people who have families living in Ukraine, and for them this has real consequences.
So a warning: Today’s email is a persuasion downer.
Because I mostly write about persuasion tricks and manipulation strategies.
There have been plenty of those in the past few weeks from the EU and US both, in anticipation of the Russian invasion. But as a US diplomat put it:
“One of the shortcomings is the deterrence package that we’ve developed is kind of asymmetrical in that it’s mostly economic and we’re facing a military threat.”
Another way to put it is the quote I have up top, which is from Eric Hoffer’s True Believer.
Hoffer thinks that the fabulous power often ascribed to words has “no greater foundation in fact than the falls of Jericho ascribed to the blast of Joshua’s trumpets.”
So if not words, then what?
Well, here’s a last Hoffer quote to wrap this emergency email up. It might be worth keeping in mind as we enter a new age of political black swans:
“The truth seems to be that propaganda on its own cannot force its way into unwilling minds; neither can it inculcate something wholly new; nor can it keep people persuaded once they have ceased to believe. So acknowledged a master of propaganda as Dr. Goebbels admits in an unguarded moment that ‘A sharp sword must always stand behind propaganda if it is to be really effective.'”