"Reasons we shouldn't trust Pine... at ALL."
This post shows at least three types of propaganda: coercion, personal testimonials, and loaded words. The lengthy post demonstrates them in the following ways:
Coercion:
“They told us they would break our bones one by one if we didn't vote for him. We could always hear screaming in the other rooms. When we'd ask about them, they would flog us and laugh maliciously. We learned quickly not to question them.”
Coercion is the forced manipulation of someone through physical force or the threat of physical harm. This demonstrates coercion because the Pine supporters are threatening and physically abusing their victims in order to get them to vote for Candidate Pine. They are intimidating them by threatening to breaking of their bones and actually beating them so that they would vote for Pine, leaving their victims terrified and desperate for help. What despicable people!
Personal Testimonials:
“The second day after we arrived at the factory, we were all brought into a single room. They took one look at our beautiful Four haircuts and screamed, 'BRING IN THE BARBERS.' A legion of robots swarmed in, each bearing a foot-long, rusty blade caked with dried blood. Another order followed, and they began to shear off our signature Four haircuts. An hour passed. Once the methodic clipping had halted, we looked around the room, only to find everyone with identical bald heads.
They had given us... Five haircuts.”
This is an example of one of the four testimonials in the post. A testimonial is someone describing their first-hand experience—testimonials are often used in infomercials so as to make the product advertised seem effective. Testimonials are also given by survivors of wars, giving their audience a glimpse of what was really going on through the eyes of someone who saw it all. The four excerpts from the statements of “gun-shy survivors” of Pine’s horrible plot are testimonials because they are first-hand accounts of an event.
Loaded words:
‘These gruesomely heart-rending stories are just another reminder of why we should never, EVER trust a Pine. Lock your doors. Close your windows.
Because THEY KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE.’
This excerpt from the end of the post is chock-a-block full of loaded words. Loaded words are words with a strong emotional connotation for the audience—in this case, “they know where you live” is an especially haunting statement because of the horrors described in the paragraphs above it. “They know where you live” also makes anyone who reads that statement feel watched by the heartless people that they have just read about, so the reader would naturally feel inclined to support Candidate Fir because of the atrocity and creepiness of the Pines.
This biographical narrative is a prime example of the red herring strategy of plain folks. In this essay, it turns out that Candidate Douglas Fir, “one of the world’s most eminent politicians,” has his roots (no pun-intended) in a small logging town in Georgia. He grew up poor and hungry on the streets of Douglas, and, once he finally got to school at the age of six, was bullied mercilessly by cruel children (including the boy who would grow up to be Candidate Coniferous Pine) for his “humble beginnings.” This endears Candidate Fir to the readers because it makes him seem much more human and a lot less overly idealized by his supporters. That is the whole point of the strategy of plain folks; Candidate Fir’s inspiring story would probably give countless poverty-stricken children hope, which is exactly what was intended by the essay. Now that it is known that Candidate Fir shares something with multitudes of people, they are much more likely to vote “fir” him because of their similarities. However, not only does this article make Candidate Fir much easier to identify with for the readers of it, it also makes the reader pity the young Candidate Fir and maybe even consider their behavior towards children like him. Overall, this essay successfully gives Candidate Fir a place in the hearts of adults with children, the poor, children themselves, and anyone else with a heart (so not Pines).
~ Tasia Urnov, 8th grade LA Janik
