This article is written by Drew Gillett, a brother Shogun since January 2021. It has been slightly edited for readability and flow.
Having learned Shogun Method and Shogun Method X, I was fascinated by a New Yorker article about the power of Putin’s propaganda in Russia:
What explains the popularity of an authoritarian regime like Putin?
Answer: They have stories to tell.
And, as you know, stories are always more powerful than secret police. Yes, they have secret police and regular police, too, and, yes, they’re serious people and they’re terrible in what they’re doing to those who are protesting the war, putting them in solitary confinement.
This is a serious regime, not to be taken lightly. But they have stories. Stories about Russian greatness, about the revival of Russian greatness, about enemies at home and enemies abroad who are trying to hold Russia down. And they might be Jews or George Soros or the IMF or NATO. They might be all sorts of enemies that you just pull right off the shelf, like a book. We think of censorship as suppression of information, but censorship is also the active promotion of certain kinds of stories that will resonate with the people.
The aspiration to be a great power, the aspiration to carry out a special mission in the world, the fear and suspicion that outsiders are trying to get them or bring them down… those are stories that work in Russia.
It seems to show that entire societies can be brainwashed using stories. Which should make us all wonder… what stories have we been told by our teachers, our professors, our news media, and our other forms of entertainment that are lies?
To quote Scott Adams on Twitter–
Anyway, I thought it all was quite fascinating given how storytelling (as described inside Shogun Method X) can impact an entire society.
Drew Gillett, Shogun
We saw the exact thing happen when Trump was our “so called” president. He devalued, or made the news / media’s words seem invalid with his lies, he called all the people who followed him “stupid” and made them think he was talking about the half of America that didn’t follow him. His stories were so effective that, in fact, half of the American people did follow him as he ransacked America.