NEO-OBSCURANTISM UNMASKED

Association / Dissociation

Association

This tactic consists in presenting two or more different concepts in the same way and in the same context over and over again so that an untrained audience is slowly led to believe there is no difference between the two, or that one necessarily implies the other.
The main purpose of this tactic is to prevent people from considering an inconvenient topic or idea: by repeatedly presenting them in association with other ones that are conventionally agreed to be evil or stupid, people can be manipulated to reject the former together with the latter. In the same way, it can also be used for the opposite purpose, i.e.: to led people to accept harmful (for them) positions or ideas by associating them with universally agreed positive values.
This works better if the presumed connection is not explicitly stated but merely implied, since in this way it is easier for the intended message to bypasses rational scrutiny.

The opposite variant of this tactics consists in repeatedly presenting two different concepts as fundamentally opposed to each other, usually through a "X versus Y", "X instead of Y", "the X side and the Y side" style.
This variant can be used for the purpose of forcing people to "choose a side" between two useful ideas, with the inevitable effect of rejecting one of them and keep them from achieving a complete awareness or emancipation, regardless of which "side" they choose.