Self-fulfilling prophecies are false beliefs that lead to true happenings. This is an actual phenomenon. According to Robert Merton, a self-fulfilling prophecy is “in the beginning, a false definition of the situation evoking a new behavior which makes the originally false conception come true.”
Is self-fulfilling prophecy, as such, powered by the placebo effect?
Placebos work because the person using/consuming them hope or otherwise expect them to do so. It’s a very specific type of faith.
And that faith is effective. It’s just not scientific, so people tend not to take it seriously. It’s simply a byproduct. It’s something experimenters account for and measure in their studies, but they’re not conducting experiments to produce the effect in question. Usually it’s detritus. It’s like noise, in a way: you must account for it, then rule it out, to get an accurate measurement of what you’re truly seeking.
But what if what you’re running could use the placebo effect (or, more accurately, the faith generated as a necessary derivative)? Might you harness (or, psychologically speaking, canalize) that libidinous dynamism?
The placebo effect is not predictable and is ephemeral, but it’s guaranteed to show up as a background process.
So what if something like this is powering this nascent fascist movement? All the orchestrators would need to do is produce momentum. Once the goal is achieved (successful coup) that energy wouldn’t be needed any longer. The placebo effect would need to be effective only for a slim window of time.