The Lisbonic Plague

By Eanna Kelly

"These are the stakes! To make a world in which all of God's children can live, or to go into the dark. We must either love each other, or we must die".

This excerpt was taken from the American television campaign, 'Daisy', whose premise was ‘fear sells’. The ad' was used to promote the candidacy of Johnson for the 1964 presidential election. The concept of the ad’ was revolutionary, in a sense, and highly provocative. A little girl is seen slowly counting the petals of a daisy when an ominous-sounding voice begins to count down a missile launch. The camera zooms in on the eye of the terrified girl until her pupil fills the screen and blackens it out. A mushroom cloud from a nuclear explosion replaces the shot. The message at the end is straightforward, vital and piercing: "The stakes are too high for you to remain at home."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkWAhuXtalw

Fear-mongering is used to influence political views. Post September 11th, the American Government utilised fear of another terrorist attack and exploited it to remain in office. ‘Shockvertising’ has also been prevalent throughout the two Lisbon campaigns. The Irish newspaper ‘Alive’ (which can be purchased at all good churches) recently peddled an article claiming that "under the Lisbon Treaty the EU could seize elderly people's savings and homes, and can take children off people who suffer from mild forms of alcoholism or depression; or who do not own a family home." This is positively stark raving lunacy! Incidentally, this article led to Deirdre De Burca announcing that the paper was the "Irish Taliban"……….although I would imagine its level of human rights violations is significantly less!

Fear and advertising now exist concurrently. What about those ads that show bacteria lurking in every part of your house? The post-apocalyptic novel ‘World War Z’ summed it up perfectly when the billionaire who made his fortune with a phony vaccine asked: "People selling their products? No. People selling the fear of you having to live without their products." Coir’s campaign, which suggests that the minimum wage could become €1.84 per person, I mean, where did this figure even come from? It’s just not plausible! The Charter of Fundamental Rights safeguards rights such as those of fair and just working conditions. The least I can say for the Yes campaign is that they don’t advocate anything as glaringly fallacious as this (although their campaign is both insipid and uninformative…one only has to look at Labour’s forthright and unimaginative ‘Vote Yes’ poster.)

I shall say this: sleep with one eye open; don’t get sucked in by misinformation! The battle of Lisbon rages onwards- there are acrimonious arguments and vehement venting, yes, but at last there is a public debate to savour! Polarised viewpoint...but no indifference this time around.