Xenophobic Memetic Campaign

The Xenophobic Memetic Campaign is the Airawa Empire’s effort to turn its citizens against the Sa’ueia after discovering them. The imperial center uses its power to shape belief across the quarter of the Airawa Home Continent it controls, flooding citizens with messages that portray Sa’auei’a life as a threat:

• Their movement from place to place is described as disease.
• Their communal breeding grounds are condemned as obscene.
• Their reciprocal relationships with other organisms are presented as submission to animals.
• Airawa who dissent are accused of being infected by the Sa’auei’a.
• Imperial military violence is justified as the continent’s immune response.

These messages make hostility to the Sa’auei’a part of obedience to the empire. They also give the imperial center a way to treat disagreement as evidence of foreign infection.

Political Use

The campaign helps the empire suppress news of Disconnected Tree Networks. Any report that contradicts the imperial account can be blamed on foreign influence corrupting people’s beliefs. The same accusation serves against both a foreign species and inconvenient news from home.