Who Goes Nazi? (1941)
The essence of any totalitarian strategy is to seize some resources, invent a necessarily preposterous myth, then in exchange for demonstrating belief in the myth, re-distribute the resources arbitrarily among a minority of people who are easily replaceable and know it. The secret is to then reward people from the majority for denouncing and replacing members of the minority for not being zealous enough, so that they can elevate themselves through commitment to the myth. This has the self-policing effect of keeping everyone in line.<p>So long as you can keep those resources coming to your ruling coalition of highly replaceable idiots, you are golden. Read Smith and DeMesquita&#x27;s &quot;Dictator&#x27;s Handbook&quot; for details of how this works.<p>It doesn&#x27;t matter whether that myth is of a 3000 year reign, the supreme right of a proletariat, the divinity of leader, that my golf handicap includes 11 holes in one, the revolution, or even that my particular tribe or ethnic group is morally superior to your tribe or ethnic group. It&#x27;s all the same shit.<p>What people don&#x27;t talk about is how these assholes seize power. It&#x27;s through charismatic promises of future rewards to people who think they have nothing. They appeal to the greed and impulsiveness of the poor, it&#x27;s a straight short con.<p>The nuanced part is how you get current status quo supporters to switch sides and provide their support to the challenger. They do this with a second message that triggers the middling man&#x27;s sense of loss aversion. This is just posing a credible prisoners dilemma in which if moderates and supporters defect now, they get to keep their social position, but if they hold out, they will lose everything.<p>Arguably, this model of political polarization shows how ISIS works, how feminism annexed academia, why Trump is popular, why Occupy failed but why BLM could grow exponentially.<p>Nazi&#x27;s were repugnant, but history would show that being repugnant is likely more indicative of political success than failure.