Lessons Learned by The Bad Buys

There are three lessons that the bad guys learn. They adsorb these lessons from birth, need no education in the application and acquire and practice them intuitively. There is an old lesson, old as any form of human grouping, a not so old lesson, derived from social changes, and a new lesson, a sign of recent times.

The old lesson is that it is impossibly simple for a small group of people to dominate, subjugate, enslave a much larger group. This has been the effective default form of human governance since the start of human collectives. There is a phrase used by the justifiers of the authoritarian and the totalitarian. It does along the following lines; “It is inconceivable that such a large population could be dominated by …”. The phrase is used to explain, for example, why Communist or Fascist dictatorships and their armies could not commit mass murder on their subjugated populace. But is it all too conceivable. Because it has happened countless times.

The second lesson is not so old. It is from times when the larger subjugated population started looking for rights based on historical and social trends and developments. The lesson is that you should never give into the requests for greater freedom, representation, leniency and other demands. That is a one-way and accelerating downwards path towards loss of domination. If you want to succeed as a bad guy, never give in. Give an inch and the people will demand miles of concessions and freedoms.

The third lesson is the newest of all. It is a lesson learned from observation and from inherent cunning. It is that, as a dictatorship is the modern age, the countries ranged against you are arranged along a spectrum, from profound hostility to considerably less certain opposition. As a coalition, your opponents are internally riven. Right-wing opponents are less implacable in their opposition to right-wing dictators. Similarly the left finds excuses for the left. This is further accentuated by internal divisions among your opposition. As a bad guy, you know intuitively how to exploit these differences to ensure there is no consensus for action against you. A fragmented opposition is less likely to be able to take effective, concerted action. Slice and dice, divide and conquer or, at least, divide and paralyse.

The current bad guys of the world – Burma, North Korea, Zimbabwe, China, Sudan and so on – know and apply these lessons to achieve continued existence. It is easy to dominate and continue to dominate your population. Never concede. Divide and conquer your opponents.