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Rule #5: Emotional Hijack — Keep the Audience in a Reactive State

The final rule is emotional hijack. Propaganda does not appeal to your logic. It appeals to your fear, guilt, pride, shame, and urgency.

If you’re emotional, you’re suggestible. And if you’re reactive, you’re programmable.

Look at how headlines are designed. They’re rarely about explaining. They’re about provoking. You’ll see headlines like:

• “Experts warn…”
  
• “New threat emerges…”
  
• “This one group is to blame…”
  
• “You won’t believe…”
  

These phrases are not designed to inform. They’re designed to trigger. When you're triggered, your prefrontal cortex — the part of your brain responsible for critical thought — shuts down. You don’t ask questions. You react. You share. You comply.

This is especially powerful when the emotion is moral panic. The feeling that if you don’t act immediately, you’re complicit in something terrible. This turns otherwise rational people into echo chambers for propaganda — not because they’re evil, but because their nervous system has been hijacked.

The propagandist’s goal isn’t to win an argument. It’s to prevent the argument from happening.

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