This is how propagandists repeat things and try to manipulate you

Repetition is cause for doubt / collage by Ulad Rubanau, Euroradio
Repetition is cause for doubt / collage by Ulad Rubanau, Euroradio

"People were taken out by Sharp's methodology", "everything is just by Sharp's methodology", "just as Sharp bequeathed" -- the American political scientist is mentioned dozens of times on STV's website alone. The anchors of the channel keep repeating that everything that happened in Belarus in 2020 was done according to a certain "methodology" (which, by the way, does not exist, unlike the regular monograph).

The propagandists often repeat the same thing over and over again, even if it is obvious nonsense. This is how the "ad nauseam" or "to the point of nausea" method works.  

No such thing as too much

The essence of this method (both in everyday disputes and in government propaganda) is to repeat a thesis so often that in the end people get tired of arguing with it and don't try to refute it.

"See, no one even tries to refute it," the manipulator cheerfully reports after the hundredth repetition of some nonsense. And someone may believe: well, yes, it really is not refuted.

There's another effect as well: what has been repeated many times is already familiar to us, and we are more inclined to believe in something familiar on a psychological level. It is a kind of trap: first it is "thrown in" and repeated, and then it begins to live on its own, because there are no denials and people are familiar with it.

In the same way, for example, Russian propaganda introduced the thesis of "Ukrainian Nazis". By tirelessly repeating that there were Nazis in power in Ukraine, the propagandists managed to make many people stop even trying to refute this nonsense. As a result, the thesis became familiar, irrefutable. Now it continues to be repeated by the Russian and Belarusian state media. It is boring "to the point of nausea", but some people do take it seriously.  


Don't repeat it, verify it

Any thesis, even a familiar one, can be critically evaluated: is it really true? For example, people sometimes try to claim that Viktar Babaryka wanted Belarus to become part of Russia. Some Internet users have been repeating this thesis for almost three years, and some already perceive it as proven fact, not as a distortion of someone else's words. But when you hear something many times, you don't always think about whether it's worth checking.

This method is used all over the world. For example, in one of his recent speeches, Ron Desantis, the Republican governor of Florida, spoke about fighting the "woke" (as the progressive wing of the Democrats is called) 5 times in 25 seconds.
 

It may seem that these "woke ups" are some kind of organized force with their own evil agenda and secret conspiracies, a term that is becoming increasingly common among supporters of the far right.

So what to do? Simple: check and critically analyze any thesis. Especially one that someone tries to repeat to you over and over again. 

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