The Anatomy of a Revolution

Some revolutions are eruptive. They gestate over a relatively short period of time, from the conception of an idea, a goal, a promise or an objective, they quickly transform from intellectual concept into mass action. The shorter the gestation period, the more violent the eruption. These are usually bloody revolutions, executed with the kind of force that dramatically changes the landscape of a society, a nation, or in the most extreme cases, the world. From a historical perspective, the Soviet revolution of 1917, while initially having a somewhat limited national objective (the abolishment of the tsar and the Russian monarchy), few would argue its final impact as being anything less than global. These types of revolutions are remarkably akin to a volcano - while the underlying pressure may have been building up over a long time, its explosion to the surface has an unmistakable identity, objective and effect.




And then there are the subtle revolutions, which instead of erupting, creep into existence. They are spoken about with subdued voices, introduced into circles of conversation without the participants even being aware that the revolution is in fact the topic of conversation. These revolutions quietly introduce new words into the vocabulary, ones which once had a different meaning, but are now transformed to inject new ideals and thoughts, and a call-to-action tension. They may be silent at their birth and through most of their progressing stages of maturity, but their outcome can be just as wide-spread and impacting as their more violent cousin.



These are the revolutions which, once they progress to an advanced stage, create a rude awakening in a society with a "how did we allow this to happen" reaction.



For the revolutionary, language is his most powerful arsenal. And within language, the slogan is his most effective weapon.



The revolutionary has honed the slogan to be his most potent instrument. He uses it to inject his philosophy into the dialog. He uses it to introduce new meaning sympathetic to his agenda into the language. And ultimately, once society has been "softened up" with acceptance of the new terms of the conversation, he uses it to polarize society, creating an "us" and "them" division between his supporters and opponents.



In the early stages, subtle revolutions are almost always fought with slogans. Conversations are generally not welcome since they create a platform for a dialog where the revolutionary's philosophy can be debated and usually defeated. However, ideology slogans are weapons to which there are few countermeasures.



An astute citizen will spot ideology slogans easily. Depending on the level of societal "softening" to the revolutionary's agenda, they are either transparent and direct in their presentation of the ideology ("All Power to the Soviets"- a Bolshevik slogan used in the eve of the October revolution) or quite subtle and non-committal ("Change we can believe in" - Slogan used by the Barack Obama in his 2008 presidential campaign).



Slogans usually comprise very few words, so as to appeal to all levels of literacy and intellect. The power (and at the same time treachery) which slogans present lie in their simplicity and clever obfuscation of the real objective which they promote.