War & Society - Brainwashing Tools

You can’t wage a war by yourself. You need an army, you need people to fight, to kill, be killed and destroy. But why would people want to fight, to kill, be killed and destroy? You need to give them a reason. You need to plant that reason in their minds, to let them never forget it; you need to make them not able to forget it. You need to give them feelings and emotions that are overwhelmingly strong in their minds, strong enough to override over feelings and emotions such as love, mercy, empathy and sympathy; basically to cancel their conscious.
To have a war, you need at least one huge group of people who share a common social aspect, united with malicious intent. The most known social aspect used to unite people and give them enough reason to go to war is religion. Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful. Crusades, Islamic Jihad and many other wars in the name of a so called god of a certain religion (which of course is the one and only true religion that is blessed by that so called god) are examples of when ignorant people are brainwashed by eloquent, charismatic and evil ‘men of god’ into believing that their faith is the ‘one’ and it deserves them dying and killing nonbelievers who do not want to join.
Religion is an amazing creation, for it is a very powerful tool to control the many simple minded people to go to war, for it deals with the unknown, with life after death, with nature et cetera. In the Aztec civilization, the main priest would demand a war against smaller tribes to capture humans for sacrifice to the gods for there to be rain for crops.
Poverty is also a main cause for wars. Poor people have many needs that they are not able to fulfill, from food to warmth to shelter, and when they are desperate, a promise of providing some of the most basic of those needs will make them willing to do anything, for with all honestly, they might have nothing to lose. That is for absolute poverty, but even less poor societies can be easily controlled, for they are most likely un-educated. Education makes wise people and wise people can be more difficult to control. Having said that, educated people are still prone for brainwashing, only instead of religion or poverty, scientific, economic and social beliefs can be used. Believing your economic policy is perfect or that your race is supreme et cetera, are all aspects one can use to control others and make them willing to wage war. Fanatics are lethal.

If there is no ideal that you can make enough people fanatical about, or people are becoming wiser and less easy to control, then the last tool you can use is fear. A scared person can get emotionally confused and thus an easy target to control. This tool is in high use currently, the so-called war on terror. After 9/11 and a bunch of other terrorist attacks (Madrid bombings, London tube bombings…), many people in the west have become scared and so they go to their governments for support, and currently, the US government has made the most of the situation. Scared citizens and a greedy government, it’s a recipe for destruction.
Most humans are simple minded, just trying to survive; however, there are a few humans out there who are a bit more ambitious than that and throughout history these people have created and used many tools to control the masses for their advantage, mostly to conquer and own more.