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Anti-Bush Memetic Warfare

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Epop Bastart the Justified, I

20:33 / 08.11.04

Ok, I'm no Karl Rove, but Linux outcompeted IBM's own operating systems. Could open-source style memetic warfare push just enough people's view of the world to make a difference in the upcoming struggles?

Post your candidates!

21:25 / 08.11.04

No offense, but what difference would that make?
How specifically do you propose that we wage "memetic warfare"? I doubt that a picture and a slogan will help much.

Epop Bastart the Justified, I

21:31 / 08.11.04

Phase one: discover message.

Phase two: move message out into the world.

I'd suggest stickering, posters, etc. Mebbe Cafe Press. I think the hard part is the message.

22:06 / 08.11.04

HA! I was just coming here to post the very same image!

Cheers!

22:12 / 08.11.04

LykeX, memetic warfare is what's been highly effectively waged against the world by industrialists and politicians. Look into advertising and marketing and you'll see just how sinister their manipulation of sense and perception really is. The human mind is much more capable of integrating images, logos, and short sound bites than they are at comprehending any sort of coherent, logical argument. People are visual and emotional creatures. Speak to them in terms they understand. Tap into the reptilian brain and associative networks.

Honestly, if we're going to get anywhere at all progressive, we must seize control of the media. The internet is enabling this (for now), but don't underestimate the effectiveness of a well-placed poster or bumpersticker.

Epop Bastart the Justified, I

22:31 / 08.11.04

I see three main goals here:

1> Win the next election by a landslide. That means:
- action against voting machines
- bigger youth turn out

2> Protect Abortion Rights
- because it's an issue that people can be mobilized around
- and it's really important

3> Lay Anti-Draft Landmines
- so if it does come, resistance will be pre-seeded in the memepool
- because "go to iraq and get killed" focusses the mind wonderfully

As a subsidiary goal, I'd like to see the Republican Party split like a log, into Christian Conservatives, Corporate Conservatives and Constitutional Conservatives, who by-definition all want mutually exclusive things, and who are bound together by black magic if nothing else.

But I think that The Governator, as a Pro Gay Rights, Pro Stem Cells, Ubermenchenrepublikaner has that front pretty well taken care of. He's a Kennedy alright, is Our Arnold.

If we can hold those two fronts: Abortion and The Draft for four years, I think the rest of the damage can be undone by the next president. But lose Abortion and we're fucked for thirty years, and with a Draft, god alone knows the size of the military expansion, and the psychic damage done to the country. Those are the key topics as I see them.

11:21 / 09.11.04

The important thing about memetics is that the message that you are trying to deliver be assigned to a "carrier", simple slogans don't work, because of the filtering mechanisms of the mind. The mind already carry's memes that will actively oppose a competing meme. What needs to be done, therefor, is to hook the meme to a carrier that activates some good lizard brain stuff, (fear, anger, fight, flight or....well, you get the picture). The Right has done an extraordinary job of this. A good example of this is Bush's use of 9-11, or more properly, his use of people's fear of terrorist attacks. He used that fear to convince one third of the United States that Sadam Hussein was behind the World Trade Center attacks, WITHOUT actually SAYING it! Now if you are talking fundamentalists, their memes have tons of defenses. The only way to imbed memes on such persons is to imbed the meme in a way so that it is not visible to the conscious mind. There are numerous ways to do this. It's my belief that it can be done magickally, through sigils or artwork, or film. There are audio methods as well. I watched a hotel commercial some time ago that did a very good job of this, so good that I had to say that I was impressed. Completely unrelated snippets of film and dialogue woven together to give the impression of one thing.....SEX. Sex was the carrier, the meme was, "Come to our hotel, you will get laid......". I bet that hotel chain's profits will jump..... In the picture above, I think that you should carefully work an ominous looking baphomet, (you know, scary goat and everything), into Bush's hair, so that it is not visible except through the most careful scrutiny. I would bet that Christian fundamentalists would start to get a .....creepy feeling... about him. Christians will never accept a visible baphomet, but if it seeps into their mind without knowing, it will get them nervous without their knowing why, and they will associate that nervousness with GW. Also, change the actual slogan to a non-threatening one. In terms of the ethics involved, remember, the Bush campaign did a ton of it in the election, and through his presidency. Why should only one side have all the fun?

15:56 / 09.11.04

Right, so we need so skilled graphic artists to make some very appealing (i.e. professional looking) images of W with some sort of benign anagram sigil slogan and embedded subliminal occult symbols. Then we just start sending 'em around to all of the Christian and Repub forums. If they're done right, the host will happily gobble them up and further propogate them through their channels.

Epop Bastart the Justified, I

17:52 / 09.11.04

LVX23: now you're talking.

Now you're REALLLLLLY talking.

18:09 / 09.11.04

...Chad? I always thought Chad's pro-Kerry, positive imagery and intent sigil for the election was fantastic (it also combined elements symbolizing peace between Christians and Muslims). So Chad, care to take a shot at this?

15:29 / 11.11.04

anyone care to take a shot at a new sigil for enlightenment and compassion among those who voted for Bush and the Bush administration...?

20:55 / 11.11.04

21:30 / 11.11.04

Fool, great design, as always. I had something a bit softer in mind... Something that would easily integrate into the general Xtian motif.

I had a thought of a a peace sign with a Xtian cross extending from the top (in line with the vertical line of the peace symbol). Underneath or around it would be the words "Thou Shalt Not Kill".

No time to hack it out on PS so the idea is up for grabs if any of you artistes are interested.

01:06 / 12.11.04

I've got a print-ready version that I'll make available for downloads, if'n y'all like it.

See here for the parable that inspired this piece.

02:07 / 12.11.04

Here is a rough rough rough rough draft, just wanted to make sure I had the concept right. Gonna do something a little better with the text, and I'm trying to think of what else I could do with it animation-wise, since I'm making it in Flash as it is. Thoughts? Comments?

Epop Bastart the Justified, I

02:59 / 12.11.04

Could we do the Evil Wins with Bush's head as the Goat of Mendez?

18:08 / 12.11.04

Charrellz, looks good. Maybe widen the lines and make it yellow instead of blue (like the traditional peace sign).

20:27 / 12.11.04

Here's what I got, two different versions. Thanks for the ideas LVX23.

If I get the time to, I might go in and clean them up a little more, but I think it's good enough for now. Let me know if anybody has ideas for more on this.

20:43 / 12.11.04

I think it would look good if the 'Thou shalt not kill' part was in silver to tap into the Solar/Lunar Tipareth/Yesod energies, but nice work either way.

00:44 / 13.11.04

How's that?

05:04 / 13.11.04

Perhaps have the logo on the t-bar of the cross ? ( If it's a pain to fit in, you could possibly shorten it to something like 'Don't Kill.' )

As Bob Frost says though, that's really very nice.

11:13 / 13.11.04

Yeah I like that better, that's starting to look pretty cool and It's giving me ideas.........the thing with myself is that I could draw you something, but I couldn't really do anything to it on a computer...I'll do a sketch on paper aswell if I can and post it up, then if there's any photoshop wizards around they can take it and do what they want with it.

11:25 / 13.11.04

Oh! I've just noticed, if you take the black lines of the cross out either side of 'shalt' and 'not' where it crosses over the top of the peace sign it will join the whole symbol up. (I just noticed as I was sketching it myself on paper.)

13:35 / 13.11.04

Here's a quick sketch I came up with inspired from that one :

It basically looks like nothing without colour. As if dead, but If I could use photoshop I'd have the upper left sphere as the moon, the sun would be rising in the part where the inner circle below 'eyes open' forms part of a sphere and the rays of light would be shining into the sky behind and onto the sea in front, which would have reds and blues mixed in with each other, making purple in the places where they meet. The rays of the sun would throw gold into the sea colour aswell to lighten the whole tone of the picture up.

As for the symbol, I'm not sure but I think I'd have green and gold, again with the letters in silver, which would obviously be filled in and put in whatever style suits.

Obviously the message could be changed to whatever's best, and I'd put a few doves into the sky.

14:08 / 13.11.04

There's a website I recently visited that's got a NLP connection to Republicanism. Look for it on your search engine's. Awesome spin doctor tactics.

15:55 / 13.11.04

Wow. That is amazing Neon Shade. And ya, I spent some time toying with the vertical lines on the cross, I decided to leave them because I thought it made the cross kinda 'pop' a bit more, made it more 3-d, which was sorely needed with the flat coloring I gave it.

I think yours could look really good with some kickass coloring. Come to think of it, I've got an artist friend, quite handy with Painter, who has been curious about Barbelith, maybe this could pull her in.... *puts on recruiter hat*

18:12 / 13.11.04

That looks amazing. Thank you - I'm thinking of sending a few copies off in my sister's direction (she converted to Catholicism about 10 years ago).

The one thought that had occurred to me while reading the text descriptions (before the pretty pretty pics went up) was to overlay the cross and peace symbol so that the intersection points matched up - if the cross is a little bigger (and if we're trying to appeal to Christians, that can't hurt) then the peace symbol kind of becomes the heart of the cross.

Seems so obvious that it's probably been done before, but it's still something else to play with.

02:17 / 14.11.04

Great work, folks! Keep it up!

I'm already thinking of people and places to disseminate... Anybody have any contacts in the South?

02:24 / 14.11.04

As far as southern contacts go, here is the thread of Texasfolk, myself included.

I'm working on a couple other things to get out, including a photoshopped Jesus wearing a peace symbol necklace and various anti-war bible quotes around him. More to come when I finish my papers for class...

03:57 / 14.11.04

Thanks Charrellz, I'm trying to colour it in now in photoshop. It's not as hard as I thought it would be but it'll take a while and the letters might be a nightmare to do.

23:51 / 19.11.04

I haven't done any lettering because I don't really know how to, but here's what I've got so far :

I'll keep at it and see how much I can further it.

00:23 / 20.11.04

Lookin' damn good so far. I really like how you did the water. You might work a little more on the sky, but other than that I'm mightily impressed.

00:37 / 20.11.04

Actually, looking again, the sky looks ok, and I need a new monitor.

16:04 / 20.11.04

Ha, thanks again Charrellz. The water was a total fluke and it's easier than it looks, that's the first time I've ever tried it. With the sky, I've been wanting to change it because it's all one tone at a sunrise and it looks wrong.

Will post back if I suss it out.

13:15 / 23.11.04

Nice!

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