Thread by @invisiphilia

What’s wrong with this picture? A Thread. Firstly, like many images in its genre, it appears to simply “capture a moment in time”, yet images of this nature are purposefully designed to be evocative 1/11 #Convoy2022NZ

– usually to promote a sense of unity and nationalism, resistance, or the idea that a prominent public figure has leadership that is in a sense “divine” 2/11 #Convoy2022NZ

To this end, all images of this nature can be categorized as propaganda i.e. promoting an idea that, while appearing to represent social proof, they are in fact artfully designed to sway public opinion 3/11 #Convoy2022NZ

The image of the anti mandate protestors in the dark and the rain, holding the NZ flag high and in silhouette against the buildings of our Parliament has all the hallmarks of an artfully designed nationalistic image 4/11 #Convoy2022NZ

The similarity to other famous images such as the Delacroix painting “Liberty Leading the People” and the Rosenthal photograph “Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima” are obvious. Both are also images designed to promote nationalism … 5/11 #Convoy2022NZ

Which brings us to the problem with nationalism … Nationalism in and of itself, can be nice, I mean even people like me who don’t generally follow sport can find themselves swept up in the moment as our team romps home in sporting events. 6/11 #Convoy2022NZ

However, nationalism can be a dangerous thing as it generally contains an underlying motive. The anti-mandate protestor movement contains an inherent paradox as the “resistance” is against what is claimed to be Covid -19 propaganda by the govt of Aotearoa. 7/11 #Convoy2022NZ

It’s true that govts use “key lines” to sway public opinion. They are our elected representatives, and as such, we have empowered them to make decisions on our behalf and I would also argue that for the most part, they know that mandates are unpopular. 8/11 #Convoy2022NZ

This is why they spend years and a whole lot of public money carefully shifting public perception on behavior like smoking, that is costly to the nation as a whole. With Covid, we had a much shorter time frame to heed the call to protect the greater good. 9/11 #Convoy2022NZ

We fairly quickly became “the team of 5 million”, for the most part united under our Centre-Left Labour govt against the unseen enemy “Covid”. Having this unity, has unfortunately brought unwanted attention to the alt-right. 10/11 #Convoy2022NZ

Despite claims to the contrary, there is ample evidence that the alt-right are using propaganda in a social media war of misinformation and disinformation to target the vulnerable and turn them into foot soldiers to undermine our government’s Covid response. 11/11 #Convoy2022NZ

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