The Discourse of Horror

The oldest and most intense emotion of humanity is fear, and the oldest and most intense of fears is the fear of the unknown.

H.P. Lovecraft

Horror is a literary genre, extreme fear where the unimaginable becomes flesh and plunges us into the most catastrophic thoughts you can imagine.

It is defined in different ways, as an intense feeling caused by something terrifying, by the sensation that causes fear.

Nöel Carroll in "The Philosophy of Horror" explains that the most important characteristic of the horror genre is the effect it has on the audience; horror must necessarily provoke fear in the viewer.

Horror always includes a creature that transgresses the rules or conventions of the diegetic world in which it is placed.

That world into which the reader or viewer enters when they allow themselves to be "captured" by a story.

Political speeches, elaborate foundational narratives where an attempt is made to rewrite history and exacerbate the dichotomy friend/enemy, heaven/hell.

The famous contrasting phrase by Peron "To the Friend everything, to the Enemy nothing but Justice."

We can sow Horror with very simple techniques and thus make submission more effective.

-Adopting a single idea, a single symbol. Individualize the adversary in a single enemy.

-Gathering various adversaries into a single category or individual. The adversaries must constitute an individualized sum.

-Blaming the adversary for one's own errors or defects, responding to the attack with the attack. If you cannot deny bad news, invent others to distract from them.

-Turning any anecdote, no matter how small, into a serious threat. 

-All propaganda must be popular, adapting its level to the least intelligent individuals it is aimed at. The larger the mass to be convinced, the smaller the mental effort to be made. The receptive capacity of the masses is limited and their understanding is poor; moreover, they have great facility to forget.

-Propaganda must be limited to a small number of ideas and repeated tirelessly, presenting them again and again from different perspectives, but always converging on the same concept. Without cracks or doubts.

-It is necessary to constantly emit new information and arguments at such a pace that when the adversary responds, the public is already interested in something else. The adversary's responses must never be able to counteract the increasing level of accusations.

-Construct arguments from various sources, through so-called trial balloons or fragmentary information.

-Silence the questions for which there are no arguments and conceal the news that favors the adversary, also counterprogramming with the help of sympathetic media.

-As a general rule, propaganda always operates from a pre-existing substrate, whether it be a national mythology or a complex of hatreds and traditional prejudices. It is a question of spreading arguments that can take root in primitive attitudes.

-Reach the conviction of many people that they think "like everyone else," creating a false impression of unanimity.

These 11 principles were developed by Joseph Goebbels.

Using them, they created the greatest Horror in human history.

But they are still widely used, especially in Political Propaganda, where they are most applied. Because they are used categorically, there is no process of adapting ideas.

Humans are very fond of horror and its forms of presentation; they provoke it simply because the other feels an extraordinary power that subdues them and has no choice but to be subdued.

With all this, how is Horror presented?

We might think that it is presented openly and crudely, showing its most manifestly terrifying face.

No. Not like that.

The evil embodied in Horror is very intelligent and subtle.

A friendly and smiling face can show us the horror of its discourse, empathizing even with its victims. To the point that they accept its proposals, showing horror as an everyday fact that is not extraordinary but convincing that the demanded sacrifice is for the general good.

This is even more evident when using Magical Realism, a Latin American literary movement whose greatest exponent was Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Where the fantastic and unusual are shown with naturalness as an everyday fact that does not register greater worries than the normal ones of daily life.

The character or characters that emit the message are generally imbued with a certain character that provokes a supranormal stimulus, and what it provokes gives it a magical character so that in everything it intervenes, there is a real solution, or that is what is intended to be shown.

For example, high inflation. A sophist like Maslaton or Anibal Fernandez, generally all of them, see it as a fact of the country and that it has nothing to do with the mismanagement of Economic Policy; moreover, they will tell you that the private sector is the cause of all your woes.

In this way, and by drilling so much into the citizen's mind with a compact and permanent message, we will be inclined to think that the great solver is the State when all the arguments are fallacious. Irving Copi "Introduction to Logic," a simple book to review concepts.

One of the most remarkable examples of the Discourse of Horror is that of Candidate Sergio Massa saying:

"I will be the president who defeats inflation and defends wages."

As of the date of this post, he holds the dual role of being a presidential candidate and Minister of Economy. As Minister, he has not been effective because economic variables have entered hyperinflation.

So, the arguments as a candidate are invalidated because the facts indicate that he cannot defeat inflation.

Furthermore, his arguments fall within the parameters of the Discourse of Horror, using Magical Realism to its fullest extent.

Because either they are two different people or we are facing a psychotic.

But if we analyze the speeches of the different candidates, we will also find similar arguments. To the point that there was a question that was asked of all the candidates, which for me was the best so far, it shows how disconnected from reality the candidates and their speeches are.

How much can you buy with 2000 pesos?

None at all could answer.

Because their speeches do not have a grasp of reality. They are full of promising images that clash with everyday reality; today, the voter is worn out with their arguments, and besides, they are not stupid.

Returning. If we combine Goebbels' 11 principles with Magical Realism, as well as with everything I have been exposing, we can approach the discourse of Horror as a 'transmedia' phenomenon.

It is a story that is disseminated through multiple media and communication platforms, and in which a part of the consumers assumes an active role in that process of expansion. What is intended is to achieve sufficient flexibility for the narratives to circulate in an articulated and subtle way through multiple scenarios and platforms.

The way is to retransmit the message, and as we know, this message ends up being altered and deformed to the point that after several retransmissions, the original message has nothing to do with the final one.

For the content of the transmedia story to work, the user must go through the different platforms, investing time and effort, and thus achieve a more meaningful experience.

But it is not only that because if the issuer represents an instituted power, the message can envelop certain unreal capabilities of the issuer, enveloping it in a magical halo as we already have many examples.

Furthermore, not only are these tools and communication methods used, but to affirm that omnipresent power, strong symbolism of its own is needed.

In this, we can give the example of Nazism and governments allied to the use of that methodology where the Symbol not only falls on the issuer of the message but on everything that surrounds it, that is, the receiver must be imbued with all kinds of symbols that keep him present or better yet, Omnipresent.

Symbolism is manifested in all public objects of everyday use, from commemorative buildings baptized with the leader's name no matter how many, always more, money with all the symbols and "own printed characters" those that embody some supposed heroic deed. Streets, avenues, tunnels, bridges. It even goes beyond, penetrating with symbols into education from childhood.

The Discourse of Horror is a contrasted discourse that leaves no room to be annulled, especially when it is used by power, creating the sensation of hegemony and becoming a True Force of Occupation.

This is what happened in Argentina in the last 23 years, changing our culture and values, creating entire layers of the population plunged into poverty and dependent on the state.

With increasing corruption in the bowels of the State that still continues and buys wills in the most exalted of the 3 powers.

What I have described in a general way above is only the enumeration of facts that have happened in Argentina.

The Discourse of Horror

The denial of reality

Operators with aligned speeches showing false data about reality

An increasingly extreme misgovernment

Inflation rates bordering on those of Venezuela submerged in the cruelest hyperinflation

A poverty rate of over 50%

The precarity of work led to more than 70% of the population living in the Black Economy

Impossible to pay contracts

Lack of health

Lack of security

And the day after the Primaries

It will be chaotic with a government forced to transfer power to a legislative assembly to call for definitive elections.

We face Azathoth to bury it definitively

Will we?

Or will we continue on the path of the Cauldron of Misfortunes?"