Magician's rules of misdirection:
1. The spectator's eye will look where the magician looks.
2. Use a broad motion to cover another motion you wish to conceal.
3. Keep the audience occupied with patter and direct their attention....
Like a magician working his sleight-of-hand deceptions to deceive and misdirect
the eye, political sleight-of-hand artists work their deceptions to deceive and
misdirect a society's collective mind and attention. The mass media provide the
stage on which the theatre of deception unfolds and on which the audience's rapt
attention remains focused. It's large scale spectacle, full of drama and
emotion, fear and prejudice, ideological politics and dubious aims, but
ultimately hollow and bitter as these magicians are not working a benign
entertainment but applying deceit and duplicity with devastating mendacity. It's
worthwhile then to speculate about some of the procedures of 'legerdemain'
(sleight-of-hand) adhered to by the political magicians of our time - what set
of practices allow them success in managing their audience while they
unswervingly pursue their strategic goals.
Note: It's important to realize that political performance is primarily
for the home audience - it's not essential for the other side (the enemy) to buy
into the viewpoints being peddled - but it is important to sell these at home in
order to obtain acquiescence or at least limit domestic resistance to a
particular policy or course of action. (The other side (the enemy) will be
handled through other, more 'vigorous' means.) The homefront is key as it's
through domestic movements that resistance to a particular policy or action
might emerge. So, limiting the effectiveness of that resistance is crucial.
Here then, structured loosely along the lines of a magician's guide to audience
misdirection are the rules of political misdirection:
Rules of political misdirection and deception:
1. The people's minds will follow the media's focus and the media will
follow the official focus. Whatever crisis the official spotlight illuminates is
where the media will focus. Wherever the media looks – the people look. Guide
the media's attention and the people's attention will follow. So direct their
minds towards issues of your choice and away from your key moves and strategies
- from the things you need to get away with doing.
2. Hide one movement with another.
Use a large, dramatic movement to draw their attention. Use it to cover other
movements on which there is too much heat or which are not executed well due to
your lack of skill and ability or due to difficulties encountered (but which you
still desire to accomplish).
3. Keep them occupied with your interpretation of events.
When brutal deeds that need doing are underway keep the media occupied with your
justifications - tell them over and over again that your actions are only a
measured but necessary response for the protection and greater benefit of the
people. Use rule number 1 (feed selected information to the media) to accomplish
this. Repeat this claim incessantly and emphatically.
4. Make them afraid.
Do something (anything) to maintain in the population a general sense of fear or
dread (of imminent danger from enemies). When they are fearful - you can do your
thing. When they become afraid, their critical faculties and overall awareness
is low. Even if they are doubtful about your claims, they will acquiesce to most
of what you do simply because they can't be completely certain that what you say
isn't true.
5. Use broad, sweeping generalizations in your declarations.
Create trepidation in your opponents, enemies, and everyone else by using vague
but ominous descriptions when profiling your enemy and their aims. People will
duck and keep their political heads low to avoid fitting the profile or even
associating with those who might fit the hazy descriptions you provide. When
they're busy trying not to be noticed they'll stay away from words, actions,
demonstrations and open opposition to your goals.
6. Conceal the crucial information.
Secrecy is good. The art of ruling requires maintenance of secrecy. Restrict
access to information for security purposes - tell people this is for their own
protection - now you can make whatever claims you like since it is always
possible that you have information unknown to others and therefore your
opponents cannot determine with certainty whether your actions are based on lies
or whether they are based on "classified information" only available to you. By
the time it is discovered whether they are based on falsehood or fact, it's too
late - you would have accomplished your deception and the discovered information
is largely irrelevant to the situation now at hand.
7. Spin a good story.
It doesn't have to be the truth, so long as it's plausible and captures their
attention. Feel free to mix lies with truth - it really doesn't matter if you're
caught. If they point to the lies, you point to the true parts - blame the lies
on faulty intel. Use the true parts to justify your actions.
8. Keep the momentum going no matter what.
If they discover a part of your deception, deny their explanations and keep
going on with what you're doing. They're unlikely to uncover all your trickery
for quite some time, and the momentum of events will act as misdirection from
what's already been exposed.
9. Restrict their freedom.
First take care of steps 4 and 5. Then tighten the screws on political and legal
rights - institute monitoring and surveillance on a widespread scale - grant
your government special powers to circumvent the existing legal and justice
systems. Tell people this is for their own safety and protection. After all what
do they know - you have all the information.
10. Always keep a few aces up your sleeve.
Hold them back for when the show goes wrong and the audience grows restless.
Produce an ace as and when necessary (but make sure your timing is good) - the
"foiled terror-plot" ace is always good for regaining political ground, pushing
back the opposition, and distracting from weak areas in your performance. Always
make a big show of the ace production - milk it for all you can. This will allow
you to move forward on the other points and may make it possible to salvage a
show that is going wrong.
11. Stay one step ahead of the media.
This one's easy, since you have all the intel and information and they have
nothing except what you tell them. And they're mostly inefficient at actually
doing any real investigating - it's much easier for them just to attend
briefings and report what you tell them and then call in the "experts" to
speculate on what it all means.
Like the audience at a magic show, many of us willingly suspend our disbelief
and accept the illusions (even the poorly executed ones) - and if we're somewhat
skeptical of the performance it's still hard to look away from such vigorously
audacious spectacle. Perhaps it is only through letting ourselves be deceived,
through taking sides and falling into line in order to soothe our fears, that
our consciences can accept the actions carried out in our society's name.
Perhaps, as a society, we have lost (or thrown away, or drawn a heavy curtain
over) the ability to see and judge things according to a realm of supernal
values and ethics (which requires a compassionate connection to the wider world
and a more elevated viewpoint). Instead the realm of desire and will allied with
technical, instrumental, manipulative ability has come to supersede any impetus
among the powerful to move and interact with the world in accordance with humane
values and non-exploitative means. The faint shadow of understanding of ethics
that remains has itself become a thing to be manipulated - useful for purposes
of propaganda or as a mental instrument to be used to gain the acquiescence of
people for the support of certain goals - goals which are ideological, power
based goals, which, if they carry any value, carry a negative one - a negativity
that arises not only from the relentless pursuit of acquisitive ends but from
the heartless and mechanistic use of degraded, amoral means to achieve the end.
As for us, we're simply parameters that need to be managed and controlled and
kept ineffectual (if we're in opposition to policy) while the equation plays
itself out - we're an audience whose attention is to be directed and misdirected
while the "great" goals of this new century are relentlessly pursued.
"...the powerful among the unjust speak out words (of promise) only to lead-on
and deceive....What (they) have brought is deception; (and) surely God will make
it come to nothing....(and) will show the truth to be the truth...though the
guilty may be averse (to it)" (Qur'an 35:40, 10:81,82)
