Recipe for Societal Collapse and Authoritarian Restructuring
1. Start with a foundation of slavery and greed, create rules to allow rich white merchant class to maintain and gain power, wipe out native population after demonizing them as “savage” and “uncivilized”.
2. Institutionalize exploitation of the working class, whether slaves, indentured servants or serfs in the name of capitalism and progress.
3. Create false conception of freedom among the general population, obscuring systemic racism and economic control systems.
4. Divide population into 2 groups, use rhetoric and media-driven narratives to pit both groups against each other, continue stirring pot to increase polarization and further separate groups, increasing emotional reactions until nearly every topic under the sun becomes divisive.
5. Use tragic events such as acts of terrorism, war, school shootings, environmental catastrophes or global pandemics to enact further authoritarian policies and limit avenues for dissent.
6. Use orange-skinned political figurehead to incite one side to violently attack the other, using rhetoric that appeals to ingrained systemic racism and xenophobic fear cultivated by generations of passed down ignorance and hate.
7. Use falsified and/or misleading media narratives, public school system and disinformation campaigns to create confusion and general distrust of any institutions trying to promote truth, equality or civil discourse.
8. Isolate and discredit intellectuals, revolutionary ideas and anything else that might threaten the status quo.
9. As civil unrest and chaos inevitably start to rise, use provocateurs to provoke violence and allow conditions for total military crackdown on fractured and polarized population.
10. Enact orange figurehead as supreme leader, round up dissidents and activists using anti-terror laws and place in work camps, providing free labor to build new authoritarian dystopia where rich white men once again have complete and utter control over the country and are able to do whatever they please.
Enjoy!
I don’t want to like this…though I really do. It’s a little too on the nose, even though I live in Britain it is still quite relevant. Our equivalent of the Orange Clown-In-Chief is as feckless, and arrogant to believe he could wield such power.
I like how the poem builds. Each step feels more uncomfortable, like something actually growing throughout.