JOSEPH GOEBBELS NEVER VISITED KERALA

 

“Veettil Oonu,” (വീട്ടിൽ ഊണ്), the board outside the roadside restaurant in the town screamed. The two Malayalam words literally mean 'home food’. Everyone knows that home food is prepared and served at home. The restaurant that screamed ‘home food’ was neither home nor homely. It kept the hearth going for its owners and workers. Such boards are common along the length and breadth of Kerala. How can anyone buy ‘home food’ in a wayside restaurant? Everyone knows it is a blatant lie.  If you walk into such a restaurant hoping to eat something homely, you could be disappointed. The food they serve is a ‘meal’ sold in all restaurants across Kerala. ‘Meals,’ for the uninitiated, means an unlimited supply of rice and curry, served on a banana leaf or plate. If you thought Veettil Oonu would be cheaper than normal meals in other restaurants, maybe if you are lucky, you could be right. Anyway, people still walk in knowing that the board screams untruth. The name sells.

Why are names important?

Names grant a unique identity and a sense of differentiation. It creates an association between the entity and its attributes, helping us to shape our perceptions about the entity. Name provides the most potent emotional connection between the entity and the environment. Once a name is ingrained in our memory, a recall triggers the release of associated emotions stored and, therefore, predictable behavioural responses.  Every time a Malayali hears the words ‘Veettil Oonu’, it immediately brings him close to the food that his mother prepared for him. 

The concept of Veettil Oonu, most likely, would have started when a Malayalee, most likely a poor but enterprising lady, decided to cook some extra food at home and serve it in her dining space for a price. Her business would have catered to the hunger needs of a few in the locality. These enterprises were initially confined to the premises of houses. She must have been a visionary. It did away with the need to subordinate oneself to food inspectors and law enforcers who visited merely to demand subservience, allegiance and conformance to the practice of graft both in cash and kind. It did not incur additional infrastructural and organisational costs and allowed her to keep the extra income outside the hungry tax net. Restaurants saw the opportunity and relabelled their noon meals as Veettil Oonu. It used the unbreakable bond between names and our memories. It also guaranteed business because there were enough hungry, homesick and gullible folks walking around.  All those who go in know that the board is a blatant lie, and they are not walking in for a homemade meal. Joseph Goebbels called it the big lie.

Joseph Goebbels, the chief architect of Nazi propaganda, showed the world the power of propaganda. He turned blatant lies into slogans and sent them out to the environment. He repeated it so much that the environment became saturated with his slogans. Short but lethal, his slogans like “Der Führer hat immer recht” (The Führer is always right), “Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer” (One people, one Empire, one leader), created a cult figure, wielding unmatched lethality, reigning over a people driven not to reason but to inflict untold cruelty on a section of people, once their own neighbours. He would have never imagined that two simple Malayalam words, coined as a benign tag, could lure people again and again, even when they know it is a blatant lie. Veettil Oonu is a powerful trigger, a brand name without a patent or trade disputes. 

Can slogans be so powerful that they can kill the sense of reasoning inherent in us?

Yes. We always reason out. We seldom reason against the intended purpose. We reason it out as the master wanted us to. Slogans are words brought together to create a predetermined emotion. Slogans can be benign or provocative. Benign slogans are like the ones that companies like Nike market their products. “Just do it” is what they say.  It motivates the person to do something. It does not have any underlying or embedded negative messaging. There are loaded slogans or taglines. “Make America Great Again (MAGA)” is one such. On the surface, it calls upon each American to shoulder their part in making the country great. The presence of the word ‘again’ gives the slogan a different tone. It implies that the country was great sometime back, slipped down to being not so great now, and therefore needs to be made great again. It also implies that someone had failed the country by bringing it down from the exalted position it once held. Surely, someone must be responsible for it! But more importantly, everyone who hears it will, without doubt, tend to believe that the person giving the MAGA call is leading the way to MAGA. It also means that anybody who opposes the person calling MAGA is anti-national. 

The trick is to use names and words to associate the base instincts of a people with their insecurities, make them aware of a potent threat, real or imaginary and promise a way out. Goebbels was a master of the art. He believed that if a lie is so big that no one would believe that anybody could distort the truth so much, then people will tend to believe it as the truth. Repeated enough, the lie will be cemented as truth amongst the masses. When Goebbels gave the slogan “Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer” (One people, one Empire, one leader), he, on the surface, sought unity amongst Germans as one people. Who would reject it? After all, anyone who supported it was the Volk. “Ein Reich” sold a dream to the people of making their country a great empire. Inherent to the slogan was the conquest to redraw boundaries. Anybody who believed in the Reich naturally agreed with the military campaigns. Anybody who spoke against the conquest was not part of the folk. “Ein Führer” was a call for a leader capable of doing it. Adolf Hitler was the Führer. Another slogan made popular by Goebbels at that time was “Der Führer hat immer recht” (The Führer is always right). It proclaimed the infallibility of the Führer. The economic crisis provided the perfect setting. People were angry. Now, their ire could easily be directed against anything or anyone. Someone. Goebbels decided to target the Jews. “Die Juden sind Schuld,” screamed his slogan. The slogan seeded frenzy. People turned against their neighbours. Anyone who saw any other rationale was against the Volk and was mercilessly dealt with. This phenomenon did not end with Hitler and Goebbels

When differences in opinion can be labelled treason, fear will triumph over reason, and people will become tormentors of others who were once their own. Politicians across the world would continue to manufacture lies so colossal that even the well-read would believe that a lie of such proportions is impossible and therefore must be the truth. These lies will be used to make slogans, and slogans will divide people into communities that turn one against the other. Fuelled by slogans, the public goes into a frenzy while politicians on the sides feed on the bleed. No amount of proof can quell the frenzy.

Are people so gullible and naive?

Like the hungry walking into the wayside restaurant, driven by hunger and blinded by greed for a cheap but familiar taste of home food, people at large, driven by their base instincts of insecurity, blinded by their greed for easy gains at the cost of someone else, go berserk. Insulated from consequences, individuals become groups, and groups become mobs, dispensing devastation on the hapless.

“What is in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” said a love-struck Juliet to her equally tormented lover Romeo. The Capulet family, to which Juliet belonged, were sworn enemies of the Montague family, to which Romeo belonged, and that became the biggest hurdle for the two lovers. It took the lives of a few before the two families agreed to bury their hatchet. By then, the lovers were long dead. Pardon Juliet for being blinded by love and desperate to be with her sweetheart. Shakespeare should have known better. After all, he lived through ‘The Felt Makers Riots of 1592' and ‘The Evil May Day Riot of 1593’ against the aliens. When he chose to ask, “What is in a name?” he required Juliet to do it for him.  

The innocuous-looking board luring people into the restaurant for home food should serve us as a powerful reminder of how easy it is for us to be led to untruths unquestioningly. But, didn’t someone say, history repeats itself?