It is popular to use simple broad statements as a tool of division:
“Tax the rich.”
“People need to work more like they used to.”
Best work simple, yet ambiguous, statements that people understand as they like, which put them into two very clearly defined groups that disagree with each other. Look at the examples: Who counts as rich and which taxes should be increased? Who needs to work more and how much more, and for which reason? Those statements have no factual information really. But they create hate between the pro and con groups and none of the anger and energy in the arguments is directed towards the actual problem that needs solving. This technique is called dog whistling, because a dog whistle is understood differently by humans and dogs. Dog whistling means to split groups who understand or answer the same thing differently. It is a tool to maintain the status quo despite claiming to work on changing it. Why does it work?
The created emotion is used as a weapon. Emotions affect critical thinking and can be used as a tool of manipulation towards taking an action that would not be taken otherwise. An “us vs. them” story is very effective in doing that. Stress and a feeling of urgency have the same effect.
This potential for manipulation is also the base of social engineering, a set of methods to break security systems and procedures by causing privileged people to take actions that allow an attacker to abuse their privilege, like passing on security credentials to an external party.
Economical cycles and society cycles always develop in common. During private household recessions, a society typically develops strong conservative powers that promise going back to an idealized good old time would solve all problems, and that includes discrimination of minorities, claiming their subject to be the root of all evil. During booms, the lack of economic stress no longer supports manipulation, which leads to more tolerance. A prime example was the boom of the 1920s, which created the safest space up to that point for the LGBTQ community. The following world economy crisis that led to the second world war and the subsequent cold war was a time where being a communist or homosexual was equally bad in the western world. The leading cryptography analyst Alan Turing, whose team deciphered Enigma and significantly shortened the war by creating an advantage for the allied forces, allowing D-day to succeed, was not celebrated as a hero. He was driven to suicide for being both gay and autistic. The stress of the pandemic fell together with cutting back civil rights and democracy worldwide.
The current sovereign debt and fiscal spending crisis, although not having turned into a recession up to this point, so far is economically closer to the cycle after the second world war than to the 70s, as often claimed. The society cycle goes along, which yields many examples of this communication technique.
As an engineer, is there any solution?
The most recommended counter measure against social engineering is the mantra: Stop, look and think. It works by avoiding the fast instinctive thinking that is our primary way of survival and supporting the slow logical thinking.
The same helps to deal with polarizing statements: Analyzing them according to the four sides model leads to surprisingly little factual information and many questions on the other layers. Fact checking the thin factual information likely reveals misinformation or forecasts sold as facts.
Buddhism recommends not to cause division and hate, because it creates harm. It is interesting how communication theory offers a tool to deal with that.