Uniting an Audience

How does one build or start a company, church, government or revolution?  The truth is you need to have people in order to build things as such.  Not only need people you have to persuade them to buy into your idea in order to form a united front.  Second, how do great leaders successfully get people to follow them over and over again. There are many different ways that leaders can persuade others, but I would like to discuss just a few.

When I first began to think of how to persuade, I thought of how something like a revolution grows to be so big through persuasion.  I began to think a movie trilogy that I recently watched the Hunger Games.  In this film the main character Katniss Everdeen volunteers to go to the games instead of her sisters.  This game was enforced by the capital where it took two young individuals from each of the 12 districts and forced them to fight to death in a virtual arena.  Katniss not only survived but so did the boy Peeta that came with her from her district.  This win started a revolution.  So how did this build into a revolution?  In Burkes writing he says “For as Russell pointed out years ago, an important ingredient of unity in the Middle Ages was the symbol if a common enemy, the Prince of Evil himself.”(193.)  In relation to the Hunger games the president of Panem became the common enemy.  This allowed people from different districts to come together in support of disproval toward one enemy, thus uniting them. Next, Burke also wrote “Commercial use. Hitler obviously here had something to sell—and it was but a question of time until he sold it. For it provided a noneconomic interpretation of economic ills.”(204.)  In the series Katniss also uses commercials to broadcast to everyone to show the destruction that is being caused by president Snow. Lastly, Burke said “The yearning for unity is so great that people are willing to meet you halfway.”(205)  This shows how everyone was willing to get behind the symbol of the mocking jay and fight as long as Katniss fought with them.

 

In sum there are many people that know the secrets to persuade and unite people toward a common goal wither it be good or bad.  While Burkes wiring talked about Hitler and the tactics, he used in order to persuade his audience.  As I showed in the 2 paragraph Katniss uses these tactics in order to accomplish a good common goal of liberating the 12 districts.  She did this by fist volunteering for her sister for the Hunger Games then finds herself saving the life of another in the game.  Later she goes back and breaks out of the game.  Finally, she shoots propaganda videos in order to unite the districts to fight against the capital and president snow.  Her and the secret district 13 show how evil president Snow is in order to create a common enemy.  They did this by showing the bombings in Katniss’s home district.  Secondly, they created the symbol of the mocking jay that she had worn in the game in order to unite the districts under one symbol.  All these things are used to get the people in the districts to come together and fight against the capital for liberation.

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