Pawn Soldiers
Cambridge Dictionary define a pawn as a person controlled by others and used for their advantage — a puppet. A soldier is a member of an army of any rank. Therefore a pawn soldier is a puppet soldier controlled by others for their advantage.
The 2023 elections in my country have given rise to pawn soldiering. I saw friends, acquaintances, and ordinary people enlist voluntarily as pawn soldiers for their oppressors. But why do people enlist freely as pawn soldiers? Do they enlist out of a patriotic duty to advance their oppressor’s ideological and political cause? Or for greed? Or for other unknown reasons? Perhaps some people might be ignorant of the sad reality of being a pawn in the game of corrupt politicians. I try to explore these motives why most people become pawn soldiers, especially during election seasons.
The first striking motive or reason is ‘Conditioning.’ Over time, many people in my country have been subjected to normalizing the abnormalities in their environment. The abnormalities of the government’s brazen failures in performing their duties. The ruling class — the oppressors have weaponized religion, ignorance, and poverty to manipulate, impoverish, and pauperize the people they rule, thereby making them preoccupied with existentialism — survival. The ruling class ensures that they deny and starve the people from accessing basic amenities like stable electricity, pipe-borne water supply, good roads, good education, and good healthcare facilities. Over time, the people adjust and become accustomed to the deliberate negligence of duty by the ruling class. This conditioning is terrible to the extent that some people develop Stockholm syndrome — by either sympathizing or making excuses for the brazen failures in the governance of the ruling class. They begin to see their oppressors as unchallengeable flawless demigods ordained to them by God. By normalizing all these absurdities via this conditioning, the people become gullible and susceptible to manipulations from the ruling class. So, you will notice some people becoming fanatics and delusional loyalists to their oppressors. For this set of people, loyalty and subordination to their rulers come before rewards and benefits.
During election seasons, the ruling class seeking political offices plays the game of manipulation expertly on this sect of people by distracting them from the issues affecting them and igniting them with flames of ethnic bigotry, tribalism, hate, violence, and fictitious propaganda. Sadly, this trickery and tactics of the ruling class are so effective that most people fall prey to it, becoming pawns in the ruling class’s game of power — a means to an end for corrupt politicians.
The second motive is greed and tokenism — the reward for enlisting and soldiering. Tokenism has been the panacea deployed by corrupt politicians — oppressors to reward their captives. Corrupt politicians offer tokens of cash and minor positions in their government — the SAs and PAs as rewards to some of their gallant soldiers who fought tirelessly for their victory at the polls. Greed motivates this set of people to enlist as pawn soldiers for their oppressors. So, they suspend their sense of reasoning, objectivity, and morality, to chase clout and money. This set of people is collaborators, mobilizers, and active soldiers stationed across all social media platforms with various handles eulogizing, promoting, and spreading the gospels of their oppressors. They are dynamically involved in the frontline of campaigns mobilizing and wooing supporters via cash — tokens and Eldorado promises. They get rewarded at the end with cash tokens when victory for their oppressor is achieved; though in most instances, the tokens don’t reach every one of them evenly as promised by their oppressors.
“At all at all nine bad pass” or “Half bread is better than none” will be their conciliatory remarks.
With these serial and continuous systemic oppressive, deceitful, and wicked tactics deployed by the ruling class on the people, pawn soldiering might not stop or reduce anytime soon in my country. People will still get manipulated and deceived by their oppressors; they will still clamor for tokens and allow their greed to lead them instead. It is a sad reality at the moment, but I am hopeful that an end will come someday. I am optimistic that a mental and psychological liberation will happen amongst the people, liberating them — the oblivious and the gullible ones from being pawns in the hands of corrupt politicians.
