PROPAGANDA Vs CHECKS AND BALANCES
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By Mupishi Jones
12 September 2021 marks exactly one month from the day we lined up to cast our votes in favor of President Hakainde Hichilema of the UPND.Whilst the majority of us knew during the run-up to this election that President Hakainde Hichilema would emerge victorious going by the many silent conversations in privacy,there were still a few myopic individuals who were unable to read the writings on the wall.These are the individuals who,up to now are failing to come back to reality and accept that the people of Zambia voted overwhelmingly for President Hakainde Hichilema.
These are the ones that have embarked on the path of negative propaganda against His Excellence President Hakainde Hichilema.In there own misguided impaired judgement,they think by mounting reckless propaganda, Zambians would rise against President Hakainde Hichilema. They still seem not to believe that President Hakainde Hichilema is still very popular and loved by many Zambians.As a matter of fact,if an election re-run was to be held today, President Hakainde Hichilema would beat his closest rival by close to two million vote difference.
Among those still living in denial is one Sean Tembo.Mr Tembo has engaged in a sustainable overdrive campaign of propaganda on the road leading to nowhere! Sean is hiding in the name of offering checks and balances by opposing and attacking literally everything that President Hakainde Hichilema says,does or wears or eats. However, those that have been following his writings, would agree with me that he’s been attacking President Hakainde Hichilema as a person as opposed to attacking President Hakainde Hichilema’s major policy
pronouncements.
Imagine even attacking the color of President Hakainde Hichilema’s suits!
I doubt if Mr Tembo really carries out an evaluation of his propaganda to establish whether it’s creating the impact he so desires of demonizing President Hakainde Hichilema.I doubt because if he was doing,he could have realized how repulsive his propaganda is to the general public.Ofcourse, the PF members, would clap for him and it is understandable,but not the majority citizens.
In life it’s important to develop self assessment tools to gauge your public performance in a rational and objective manner.During the just ended election campaigns,we saw how Chimbwili Kashimba mounted a similar campaign of misinformation and highly tribal attacks against President Hakainde Hichilema and because he lacked the stamina to conduct a self assessment exercise on the impact of his reckless tribal and hate speech against the innocent man,he too, just like Sean of today,was convinced that the citizens were happy with his highly inflammatory language.Because he lacked self assessment skills,he ended up plugging the entire PF into an irretrievable and irrecoverable bottomless pit! The tribal insults Chimbwili Kashimba was hauling everyday, contributed significantly to the downfall of the once notorious mighty PF.
Chimbwili Kashimba thought his tribal and hate speech against President Hakainde Hichilema was bringing votes to the PF and yet it was distancing voters from the PF.Sean must quickly realize that Zambians hate individuals who publicly and without shame display pathological hatred against other citizens for their own selfish interest.Sean must reflect and see how citizens are reacting to his negative propaganda!
Someone close to Sean must tell him that Zambians are mature enough to see through his propaganda because they had witnessed it under the PF.
In their book ” Propaganda and Persuasion”, authors Garth S.Jowett and Victoria O’Donnell define propaganda as the ” deliberate, systematic attempt to shape perception, manipulate cognitions, and direct behavior to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist”.
Lying and deception are the basis of many propaganda techniques including _Ad Hominem_ _arguments,Big-Lie, Defamation,Door-in-the- face,Half-truths, Name-calling_ or any other technique that is based on dishonest or deception.
We have read and heard how these propagandists have been found to frequently stretch or break the truth.
Many citizens know that propaganda,traffics in lies, misinformation, inflammatory language, and other negative communication to achieve an objective related to a cause,a goal or political agenda.
However,if one is not careful, the way I’m seeing Sean, his propaganda techniques have a huge potential of working against himself! Has Sean forgotten so soon how the PF and it’s entire government machinery mounted an unprecedented and sustained smear propaganda campaign against a single citizen whose only crime was to contest an election as President of Zambia?.Has Sean forgotten that it was that relentless attack on an innocent and defenceless citizen that galvanized almost the entire voter population to vote for President Hakainde Hichilema, the victim of the PF propaganda?
Sean has been using loaded words in an attempt to convince the public to perceive President Hakainde Hichilema as a dishonest and incompetent person even when HH has only been in government for less than 30 days.He has been selecting words that are highly negative to communicate with the public such as those that inspire anger and doubt.
Many of Sean’s propaganda techniques can be classified as ” logical fallacies” since he uses arguments that, while to some unsuspecting citizens, sometimes sound convincing,but are not valid.
More often he writes very long articles, repeating and articulating complex events with the aim of justifying subsequent actions.Usually,the description of these events have elements of little truths, and then he spices it with the “Big-Lie” and generalisations, fusing it together and eventually supplanting the accurate perception of the underlying event.
As far as the majority citizens are concerned, the performance of His Excellence President Hakainde Hichilema in the few days he’s been in office,it has brought a lot of fresh air in the country. We wonder why Sean is not on the same page with Zambians.
Sean must know that in a village, when one of the locals keeps on insisting on validating something which the entire village population knows that it’s not true, the focus of the discussion shifts from that issue to the mental stability of that local resident!
Sean must offer credible and convincing checks and balances if he has to avoid joining the class of Chimbwili Kashimba
*Mupishi Jones*
Provincial Vice Youth Treasurer UPND Western