“Oppression” is such an ugly word, especially when we live in a whitewashed Aunt Polly world where everyone is just brimming with lots of supportive platitudes . . . I am so out of the loop. But if self improvement is your actual goal and not just a wistful thought, this stuff is good to know.
Like it or not, chances are you are a member of an oppressed class. Some of us are more oppressed / less equal than others, but nevertheless . . . anyway, instead of blindly complaining about it, I thought it might be helpful for prurposes of freeing yourself from it to know how it works. This is also a handy guide if for any reason you ever want to go into the oppression business for yourself. Bear in mind, it is very hard for anyone to oppress you unless you participate in the process, albeit subconsciously. Here we go.
Step one: Tell people they are all intrinsically flawed entities, and they require outside intervention to be fixed.
This is a very handy approach to making people afraid to challenge authority. Most people are terribly afraid of being “not socially acceptable,” and children in particular will do anything to gain the love of parents/ parental figures. If you can establish yourself as an arbiter of what is right and good (and amazingly, if you arbitrarily do so, precious few people will question your authority), and instill a sense in others that they are flawed, you’re half way home. This has a fabulous effect of suppressing any challenges to your authority, or of anyone developing an “attitude problem” of thinking deserve respect or an equal share.
Step two: Removal of Humility
This one is not so obvious, but if you can repeatedly traumatize people and make them feel afraid of being exposed to public ridicule, this pretty much makes it impossible for that person to ever get themselves terribly organized enough to start growing and thinking and possibly developing enough confidence to challenge the status quo. If they are ashamed of their inner imperfections, they will be wonderfully sensitive to any criticism or any possibility of exposing their imperfections to others, thus they will not grow or change. Even better, their need to constantly project a superior facade will make it far less likely that they will ever gain support and allies, as other people will see them as being so annoying and obnoxious.
Step Three: Create a group of untouchables
Subtle oppression should contain a vague threat of excommunication. If people are tremendously worried about going down in the pecking order, they will be less likely to think about moving up. You may have to actually put some people in that camp and make examples of them just to keep things clear. Of course, you don’t want to throw too many people in that bottom camp, as they might start to read books about political theory, and will start to question the whole situation. This is very bad.
Step Four: Constantly emphasize the total evil of a third party
This handy trick has been employed endlessly, from Machiavelli to Lee Atwater. Emphasis on some evil third party will completely distract the average person. Once that third party threat is established, not only will most folks fail to notice your own evil doings, they will actually support you in hopes of your being a protector.
And finally,
Step Five: Divide and conquer
There are three tricks to this last: Polarize, polarize, polarize. Emphasize any difference you can– race, class, gender, sexual orientation, religion, you name it. The average person is prone to imagining the worst when they have sparse information, and are afraid of strangers generally. Keep them squabbling amongst themselves and they will never get focused and organized enough to ever challenge your authority. In fact, their mutual fear of each other will incline them to give you even more power to protect them from perceived threats . . . Threats that, of course, you planted in their minds.
Maybe I should stop reading Machiavelli’s Discourses before I go to bed.
My “Rich Kid” book is very much about the way we internalize oppression and basically do it to ourselves . . .
© Justin Locke
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