How to Become a Music Dictator for Social Control

A sinister politician’s handbook for music-based domination

Let’s say you’re an expert politician with a thirst for power (which politician isn’t?) and you’ve chosen an underrated tool to control the masses: music.

Forget legislation.

The subtle notes of every melody are your legislative decree.

As the political maestro that you are, your regime will not be forged merely by laws but by the sinister tunes you orchestrate into the fabric of society.

As you journey into the dystopian depths of this symphonic abyss, you’ll discover music as your perfect tool for social control.

So how do you achieve this?

Tuning minds into obedience

To ensure everyone is on the same page, you’ll use music to amplify your propaganda.

You’ll instill anthems that fuel blind allegiance, melodies that romanticize authority, and lyrics that manipulate loyalty.

You’ll serenade your citizens into unquestioning obedience from a young age.

Learn from your predecessors like Joseph Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda of Nazi Germany, by promoting German-only composers and social rallies (e.g. Nuremberg Rallies) with massive musical performances to manipulate emotions and foster allegiance.

Or look no further than the Chinese government with the “The Red Song” campaign. With songs like “Without the Communist Party, There Would Be No New China” the Chinese Communist Party reinforces ideological conformity and fosters national pride and unity among its citizens.

If they don’t believe your message from the very start, don’t worry. The behaviors you enforce will slowly crawl into people’s minds to change their thoughts. They’ll have to either adjust their behavior (which they can’t) or their thoughts.

In your system, where changing actions isn’t allowed, people will try to make their thoughts match the rules to avoid feeling conflicted. All hail cognitive dissonance, the unsung hero of conformity.

Congratulations! You’re on the right path to success.

Strangling rebellion with melodies

How do you drown dissent when people keep annoying you?

You don’t allow them to think about it in the first place. You censor songs that promote rebellion, artists that dare to show an alternative line of thinking, and erase lyrics that speak ill of your government.

You need a monolithic narrative to ensure there’s just one message echoing loud and clear for your people. Extinguish the chords of dissent before they can resonate within people’s minds.

Learn from the Soviet Union. They knew how to control the narrative. They kept a tight grip on music production and distribution, allowing only what aligned with state-approved ideas. Musicians didn’t have a choice but to conform to government-sanctioned themes and narratives if they wanted to perform publicly. You don’t want the likes of Dmitri Shostakovich in your regime not conforming to state principles (in his case, socialist realism)

But that’s ancient history. Look at what countries in the Middle East are doing. Lyrics, album covers, and performances have to follow Islamic values or face nasty censorship measures. Just ask Hamo Bika who’s banned from singing in Egypt for blending folk and electronic music into a style called mahraganat.

Do you really want unconventional ideas roaming freely in the streets of your country?

Unconventional tools for crowd control

And if they do want to protest, you don’t have much of an alternative but to use an LRAD device.

Think of it as an audio cannon on steroids. The Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) pumps out high-decibel sound waves and blasts everyone in its path. You can use it to broadcast commands or warnings over a wide area and get what you want: civil ear-bleeding obedience.

This wall of sound tearing your inner ear apart isn’t just loud, it’s directional. You can aim it precisely at a specific group without affecting others nearby. You have a surgical sonic precision to target anyone, how awesome is that?

Make people seriously reconsider their life choices amid a riot and crowd control your way into the 21st century.

But you can also use sound more subtly.

Consult with the urban planning team to bring your soundscapes to life. You have public spaces all around your country, make use of them. Create an environment that encourages specific behaviors while discouraging others.

The U.S., Canada, and the U.K. have been using classical music for over thirty years as a sonic weapon. They’ve used it to discourage people from engaging in certain behaviors (e.g. loitering, smoking, swearing) and have proven effective as a way to police public spaces.

Here are some examples of this social engineering to help you with your cause:

• Opera at rail stations: the regional transit department in Portland broadcasts instrumental music and opera at its light rail stations, purportedly leading to a reduction in service calls for help.
• Vivaldi against smoking: the central library in London (Ontario) uses Vivaldi’s music to discourage smokers and other loiterers as a strategy that goes beyond just commercial spaces.
• London’s tube broadcasting system: in 1997, they started broadcasting music by the composer Frederick Delius at some of their stations to address what was described as ‘low-level antisocial behavior,’ such as smoking and swearing.

Turns out music can be intentionally used to shape behavior in public spaces. Who knew?

Music choices for cultural conditioning

It’s not enough to dissuade them from engaging in certain behaviors, you need them to believe in your ideas. How do you achieve this with music?

Learn from the music industry. They’ve been promoting certain ideals for decades. They commercialize specific genres or artists to mainstream certain beliefs like consumerism. Make them craft popular songs not just for artistic expression but to encourage a certain way of life.

They’ll enjoy the music and adhere to your now popular belief without even questioning it. Just look at how the West has succeded with consumerism:

• Material Girl: Madonna’s song from the 1980s is often associated with the materialistic culture of the time. The message is clear: despite searching for true love, material wealth is a must.
• 7 Rings: Ariana Grande embraces a lavish lifestyle and sings about the pleasures of wealth and luxury. How can we enjoy life without a culture of excess?
• Money: Cardi B highlights her financial achievements and the luxuries she enjoys, so why not tell it to the world loud and clear?

Go to the record labels and tell them what you need. They’ll steer their artists in the right direction. You’ll need that homogenized music landscape to get your message through more emphatically.

Local news stations already do this. Saying it over and over will certainly imprint those words in people’s minds, no?

You know what to do.

Limit the exposure to diverse perspectives and promote a narrow set of cultural norms.

You got this

Now you have your dystopian tour of orchestrating societal control through music. The perfect harmony to manipulate the masses.

• Musical indoctrination: induce blind allegiance by enforcing certain behaviors with catchy and recurring tunes.
• Silence dissent: mute unconventional ideas and steer the people to ideological conformity with music.
• Sound arsenal: engineer public spaces to the desired behaviors with a controlled sonic landscape.
• Sound norms: steer societal values like consumerism with songs specially crafted for your ideals.

Every note should be a calculated move in the grand chessboard of power.

Each citizen, a note in your grand symphony, awaits your command.

In music, we unite!

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