D.A.G. propaganda stickers

D.A.G. propaganda stickers are the central material instrument of James Mowry’s campaign to manufacture the appearance of an organized internal opposition on Jaimec. Printed with a political slogan and the name of Dirac Angestun Gesept, they travel from a concealed supply into public view across cities, towns, villages, shops, offices, vehicles, and walls. Their significance lies not only in what they say, but in the multiplied traces they leave: repeated, conspicuous evidence of a movement whose supposed members may not even know they belong to it.

Form and Message

The stickers arrive among a larger stock of printed matter. A bag contains a dozen small parcels, printed paper of two kinds—stickers and money—and, separately, a lethal can wired to the lock. From this supply Mowry takes an inch-thick wad of stickers. He carries a limited quantity for a day’s work: enough to distribute quickly, but few enough, as the narration notes, to throw away without attracting notice if circumstances demand it. The object is therefore designed for both visibility in public and disposability in the hands of its distributor.

The printed message is bold and easily readable: “War makes wealth for the few, misery for the many.” It connects the costs of war to an accusation of unequal benefit, then names Dirac Angestun Gesept as the figure who will punish those profiting and bring aid. The claim gives the stickers a political voice without requiring a known speaker to deliver it in person. Each copy can repeat the same allegation and promise, while the name D.A.G. supplies the appearance of a single organization behind them.

Distribution and Reach

Mowry’s early work relies on speed, concealment, and repetition. In five and a half hours he disposes of eighty stickers without being caught fixing any of them. He takes risks and has several narrow escapes, but the successful distribution lets the message enter public circulation beyond the moment of any one posting. The stickers make the campaign visible while keeping its operator difficult to identify.

On another evening, between seven-thirty and midnight, he places exactly one hundred stickers on shops, offices, and vehicles belonging to the city transport system. He also inscribes the letters D.A.G. in large, clear writing on twenty-four walls. These paired marks extend the campaign beyond the sticker itself: the repeated initials make the named organization legible at a glance, while the stickers supply its fuller political claim. The different surfaces carry the same name through commercial, administrative, and public transport spaces.

The campaign then moves beyond Pertane. Mowry travels to Radine, a town 240 miles to the south with a population of 300,000, because he reasons that an apparent political “disease” gains menace when it appears in distant places. Later he rents a dynocar for a week under the name Shir Agavan, using the address of the hotel where he had first hidden. With it, he distributes five hundred stickers across six small towns and thirty villages. The widened geography makes the supposed movement seem less like a local disturbance and more like a spreading presence; the scale and dispersion are part of the message.

An Invented Organization and Its Consequences

The stickers help make D.A.G. look like an organization, but the membership is not necessarily a real, coordinated body. When the Jaimec government responds with an order requiring organizations and other corporate bodies to register, Mowry recognizes that the state has made a countermove: registration could force the supposed organization to declare itself and expose people to punishment. Yet he reasons that informers cannot readily be recruited from a membership unaware of its own status. In his formulation, there are no traitors in a phantom army.

That paradox clarifies the stickers’ function. They do not merely announce an existing organization to the public; they help produce the evidence by which the authorities and the public may imagine one. Later, a newspaper reports that forty-eight members of the Sirian Freedom Party have been seized. The report does not establish whether those people are genuine members or whether the account itself is an official fabrication. Its uncertainty echoes the campaign’s central mechanism: a name and a repeated public claim can acquire political force even when the underlying organization remains obscure or unreal.

Mowry’s later reflection on the technique makes the design explicit: the first step is to establish an internal opposition, whether real or imaginary, so long as the enemy becomes convinced of its existence. The stickers are the material means of that first step. Their repeated appearance gives an abstract claim a public footprint; their spread supplies apparent corroboration; and the government’s attempt to respond risks treating the manufactured threat as an actual one.

Narrative and Political Role

As objects, the stickers are ordinary printed paper; as instruments in the campaign, they work through accumulation. A single copy makes a claim. Dozens, hundreds, and then five hundred scattered across settlements make the claim seem recurrent and geographically established. The progression from a carefully rationed wad to distribution across six towns and thirty villages gives the campaign a measurable scale, while the parallel D.A.G. markings turn a slogan into an apparent organizational signature.

Their political effect depends on the distinction between appearance and membership. The stickers can speak for D.A.G. without showing who printed or placed them, and they can suggest a constituency without requiring that constituency to know itself. The government’s registration response demonstrates the danger of that ambiguity: once officials act on the visible signs, the fiction can provoke real coercive consequences. The stickers are thus both propaganda and a trap for interpretation, making the invented opposition look substantial enough to demand action while leaving its actual human structure uncertain.