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Albert Raez
Mrs. Housepian
English 2H ; Period 5
20 May 2016
Methods to Control A Society
As said by Lord Acton, Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts
absolutely. Acton was one of the great personalities of the nineteenth century and he
said this pungent aphorism back in 1887. This quote tells the truth about power and how
it affects everyone when used effectively. The usage of power from a leader or dictator
allows the emergence of political parties that create societies that can be corrupt. For
example, the appointment of Stalin in 1922 created the Communist Party in the Soviet
Union that shaped the corruption the country endured during the Cold War. Leaders can
effectively use power to gain blind support through the use of propaganda,
manipulation, and post hoc fallacies in order to exploit them.
The use of propaganda allows leaders to easily seduce individuals to go in the
direction that the leader wants them to. During the 1930s, the crop failures and famine
in the Soviet Union resulted in the Bolshevik Harvest. A poster was released in 1931 of
a woman smiling with crops in her hands while women working in the background with
an officer looking after them (Voron). The poster was used to promote peasants to work
to increase the productivity of the crops during the harvest. This piece of propaganda
allows leaders to persuade their people into conforming to his or her actions. This can
also relate to the story Animal Farm, especially after Old Major announces the Ten
Commandments to the animals; one of the commandments is written on the wall and

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the sheep repeat it: Four Legs Good, Two Legs Bad (Orwell 13). The words on the
wall got into the mind of the sheep and resulted in the constant repetition of this phrase
throughout the entire novel. Old Majors words were created as a form of propaganda
that worked to employ animals to follow his footsteps. The attraction of the mass of
citizens through the usage of propaganda allows the leaders to trick and as well
manipulate to productively use their power.
A leaders use of power can manipulate the minds of his citizens and even the
minds of the opposition through his actions. Adolf Hitler was elected as the Chancellor
of Germany in 1933 and the Nazi party began to shape. In a photograph, Hitler is
elected into office and many SA members are grabbing and applauding him, and as
shown in another photograph, the Jewish and many other types of people are shown at
the entrance of Auschwitz eleven years later. Hitlers appointment gave Nazi Germany a
new leader and a new direction that he wanted the country to go towards. The
excitement for Hitler by the SA members allowed Hitler to manipulate them to go
through with his plan to capture and then later exterminate the Jews and many other
types of people. Even though the Jews were the target for Hitlers ultimate plan, some of
them ultimately accepted and actually appreciated him. In the memoir Night, Elie Wiesel
recalls about a moment where his neighbor had lost all hope and said to him, I have
more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He alone has kept his promises, all his
promises, to the Jewish people" (Wiesel 51). Wiesels hopeless neighbor told him that
Hitler is essentially more trustworthy than God because he has the power to keep his
promises. The power that Hitler possesses allows him to do the actions that vows on
doing; resolving in allowing this Jewish individual to understand this and be obliged. The

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manipulation caused by the power of a leader can also be credited to the use of
rhetorical strategies.
The use of post hoc fallacies can be utilized to deceive individuals into believing what is
trying to be proved. In 1938, Ernst Hiemer wrote a childrens book, Poisonous
Mushroom, to display the evilness of the Jewish people through the view of the Nazi
party. In the book, a mother explains to her son that Just as poisonous mushroom often
lead to the most dreadful calamity, so the Jews is the cause of misery and distress, and
illness and death (Hiemer). The mother is telling her son that Jews are comparable to
poisonous mushrooms in that they give off negative effects. The post hoc fallacy being
used here is in the form of a childrens story to explain the false ideas of the Jews to the
young. The usage of post hoc fallacies by Heimer can relate to Orwells usage of them
in Animal Farm. After the windmill got destroyed overnight, Napoleon shouts out to the
animals that, Snowball has done this thing! thinking to set back our plans and
avenge himself for his ignominious expulsion, this traitor has crept here under cover of
night and destroyed our work of nearly a year (Orwell 28). The reasoning of the
windmills destruction is said to be Snowballs through the use of post fallacies by
Napoleon. The animals believe in this explanation and from that moment on, they began
to take the orders of their new leader, Napoleon. The effective use of post hoc fallacies
create and allow leaders to use this ruse to gain followers to ultimately abuse them.

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No matter how acceptable a leaders use of power is, it became effective to allow
him or her to control a society. Dictators such as Hitler prove this by expanding the Nazi
Party throughout Europe in the 1940s, and as well in literary sources that show how
power can be used to control a society and prevent the leaders downfall. Propaganda,
manipulation, and the use of post hoc fallacies allow individuals to blindly conform and
support the direction that the leader wants them to go. Though the corruption of a
society is prone to happening with the abuse of power, the leader effectively uses it to
achieve their goal of controlling the society.

Works Cited

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Hiemer, Ernst. Der Giftpilz. Nuremberg, Strmerverlag, 1938.


Nuremberg, Germany, Hitler standing in his car and touching hands with SA members,
1933; Jews on selection ramp at Auschwitz, May 1944
Orwell, George. Animal Farm. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1945. Print.
Voron, Maria. Shock-brigade Reaping for a Bolshevik Harvest (1934).
Persuasive Images: Posters of War and Revolution from the Hoover Institution
Archives. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press. 1992. Print.
Wiesel, Elie, and Marion Wiesel. Night. New York, NY: Hill and Wang, a Division
of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1988. Print.

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