authoritarian

DRAFT A SET OF RULES FOR EVERYONE ELSE TO FOLLOW
This is the single most important step for an authoritarian. You must draft a set of rules, laws, dictates, doctrines, and expect that everyone conforms to these. Manifestos are the best, but any form of political/ideological dogma will do.

EXEMPT YOURSELF FROM THESE RULES
Nearly as important to drafting said rules is that you exempt yourself from these rules. Otherwise, your freedom of action will be too constricted, which no authoritarian wants! Authoritarians want maximum options for themselves, minimum options for everyone else.

ALWAYS SAY THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT YOU MEAN
Absolutely vital. Use sweet words to mask horrible deeds, and use horrible words to describe good things. Examples of this abound. For example, when Lenin said (many times) "All power to the Soviets" -- what he really meant was "All power to the Bolsheviks". But he couldn't come out and say that beforehand, so he did the former to enlist worker support and then hoodwinked them.

No one will follow you if you say "I'm going to enslave you" -- so you have to say "I'm going to free you" and then tell them how, once you have their attention. Truth is invariably the enemy of the authoritarian, and must be avoided, twisted, or warped at all costs. George Orwell's 1984 lines about "war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength" perfectly illustrates this tactic.

CENTRALIZE, CENTRALIZE, CENTRALIZE
Decentralization is invariably a threat to the authoritarian, as it disperses power. The authoritarian always seeks concentration of power in the fewest hands possible, most preferably their own. They will, then, act to ensure that decision-making power and initiative remains tightly focused, instead of broadly dispersed.

They will try to build structures in any organization which funnel and channel authority in their hands, although they will never say they're doing this.

ALWAYS PROMOTE YOURSELF
The aspiring authoritarian wants most of all to become a leader; to become vital, necessary and important. The way to do that is through rigorous self-promotion. They beat their own drums endlessly, and will seek to establish a reputation for themselves within a movement as a leader. They want recognition, and will do what they can to get it.

MAKE YOURSELF INDISPENSIBLE
Related to the rampant self-promotion of the authoritarian is that they seek to bolster their low self-image by creating the cult of personality required for their leadership. They seek to make themselves the driving force, the lynchpin of any given movement, to the extent that if you took them out, the rest would fall into oblivion.

An effect of this is that founding left-wing authoritarians often build movements in their name...Marx begets Marxism, Lenin begets Leninism, Trotsky begets Trotskyism, Stalin begets Stalinism, Mao begets Maoism.

Usually you can only attain this demigod status after you've whipped your pet movement into line and smashed all dissenting voices.

CREATE THE NEED FOR YOUR SERVICES
This is an old advertising axiom -- where a need doesn't exist, you create one. The authoritarian invokes ideas about "necessity" and "emergency" to justify concentrating power in their few hands. Authoritarians always speak of "efficiency" and "effectiveness" when seeking to concentrate power in themselves. They pretend that this is forced on them, when in fact they desire it.

No successful authoritarian will use any language other than that of necessity as they erode your power to think and act. To do otherwise is to expose themselves for what they are.

GATHER FOLLOWERS
This is so important it almost goes without saying. The autocrat seeks power, and power means followers. The authoritarian without followers is just another nutcase with bad ideas. So the would-be leader must create dependence in order to bring people into the fold. To that end, the leader will not seek to facilitate personal growth among others, but instead promote dependence. Authoritarians are very willing to offer their services to you, although they do so not to help you, but rather to help themselves.

LIE, LIE, LIE
The accomplished authoritarian must be able to lie with ease and with gusto. If you can't lie, deceive, and mislead, you might as well give up trying to be an authoritarian -- the nature of acquisition of power demands it of you. If you want to be a would-be leader, you might want to practice lying, until you get the hang of it.

USE VIOLENCE WHENEVER YOU CAN GET AWAY WITH IT
Violence and authoritarianism go hand in hand. Violence, in all its forms, is the tool of choice for dealing with those who get in your way.

And there are different types of violence, to be used at different stages of power. Before attaining power, the authoritarian must rely on verbal abuse -- personal attacks, designed to quell dissent and silence opposition. Later, once they're in power, the authoritarian will have a coercive apparatus, whether thugs, police, or troops, who will then be used to carry out physical and pyschological violence on dissenters.

IGNORE WHAT YOU CAN'T REFUTE
In instances where an authoritarian is caught in a bad situation, the best course of action is to ignore the accusation whenever possible. If contrary evidence is offered, ignore it. Follow the preceding tactic to silence the questioner and to discourage further inquiry.

ACCEPT PRAISE, ASSIGN BLAME
You succeed, others fail. A simple but time-honored practice of the authoritarian. When someone else does a good thing, take the credit for it to boost your status. When you do a bad thing, blame it on someone else!

If someone else has a good idea the authoritarian didn't think of, the best response is for the authoritarian to take that idea for their own, and thereby take the credit and weaken their enemy.

NEVER ADMIT YOU'RE WRONG
The successful authoritarian will never, ever admit they're wrong, because doing so shows fallibility, and no authoritarian can risk admitting that they're fallible. The Fascists of Italy had a slogan, "Mussolini is always right" -- which nicely captures this idea.

To the authoritarian, only a weakling admits they're wrong, because anything less than perfection (which they embody, of course), to the authoritarian, is damning. They consider themselves perfect beings, and get all nervous when their human fallibility is revealed to them.

WHEN YOU ARE WRONG, BLAME EVERYONE BUT YOURSELF
If you've really screwed up, the last thing a would-be autocrat wants to do is accept blame for the wrongdoing. Find a scapegoat, any scapegoat, and blame them for your screwup.

INSIST ON IDEOLOGICAL CONFORMITY
Ideological conformity is the fuel from which authoritarianism springs, by eliminating the natural human impulse to rebel against that which is contrary to their reason or experience. By insisting on such conformity, the would-be leader creates followers, an essential component. These are people who then depend on the leader for guidance and instruction, which, for the authoritarian, is a highly desirable situation to be in.

While building power within an organization, the best way to do this is to brand wrong-thinkers (e.g., anyone who questions the would-be leader) traitors, spies, or provocateurs, and have them expelled from the organization. Such successive purges will create a homogenous, ideologically conformist movement and serve as a lesson to those few free thinkers who may still remain.

Dissent and diversity is considered weakness to the authoritarian, and will be opposed and fought at every turn, although they won't say that's what they're doing.

WEAR A UNIFORM
Uniforms and authority go way back. Authoritarians love symbols, because they create emotional responses in those who see them. A uniform has always been a powerful symbol -- it allows you to transcend your everyday self and assume a role or persona. Like any costume, it masks your true self. Any good authoritarian will seek to create a uniform, and stick to it. Authoritarians a very image-conscious. Also, it's important to insist that your followers wear such a uniform as well, to show that they're suitably conformist.

Look around for uniforms, and you'll find authoritarians. Of course cops and soldiers, but also business execs, and Marxists -- remember those snappy Red Army uniforms of decades past? In some ways, there's even an anti-uniform among lifestylists -- a "look" that distinguishes your pack from the rest, in the manner of punks and Goths.

The point of a uniform is symbolic abstraction -- you stop being you and become an it, part of something larger than yourself.

TRUST NO ONE
No authoritarian can depend on anyone, lest some of their accrued power slip away from them. They must then insist on absolute obedience as the prerequisite for continued favor. By eliminating individual initiative, the authoritarian creates a well-honed political machine.

But authoritarian "trust" is based purely on continued right-think (obedience to the autocrat). Dissenters must always be swiftly purged.

NEVER COMPROMISE
Authoritarians have colossal egos, and rely on their enormous self-confidence for sustenance. Thus, they see compromise as weakness. The authoritarian idea of "compromise" is you accepting their proposition, rather than them accepting yours. It's a one-way street.

ANYONE WHO ISN'T WITH YOU IS AGAINST YOU
Obedience is what authoritarians expect from others. They are absolutely intolerant of dissenting views, and will view anyone who disagrees with them unfavorably. There are only two classes of people to the authoritarian -- followers and enemies. If you aren't the former, you must be the latter.

Much of this stems from their utilitarian ethos. If they can't use or manipulate you, then you are their enemy. Authoritarians believe there is their way of doing things, and the wrong way of doing things.

NEITHER FORGIVE NOR FORGET
The successful authoritarian avoids cooperation and reciprocity whenever possible, because these are the traits of a weakling. If you must appear to cooperate, feign it, but don't take it to heart. Your purpose is to favorably leverage yourself against everyone else, so you must not let any slights go unpunished, lest you be put in a position of weakness relative to your rivals.

GET MAD AND GET EVEN
If someone has the nerve to cross you, get fired up. Positively explode with rage. This works wonders with regard to quelling dissent in your group, as it creates the necessary fear which is the grease that keeps an authoritarian machine running smoothly. Fear works wonders in soliciting obedience, so the more you're questioned or challenged, the more tantrums you should throw!

These tantrums are a result of the rest of the world failing to see that the would-be leader is infallible, which produces enormous frustration in the autocrat-in-training. They know they're perfect, but when you don't see it, they get so mad!

AVOID HUMOR
Humor of any form is anti-authoritarian, because it pokes fun at the sacred and untouchable, and provides a satisfying release of emotion in the seditious form of laughter. Autocrats are a humorless breed. They take themselves very seriously, and if you laugh at them, they will hate you for it.

The only permissible jokes for the would-be authoritarian are those that are at others' expense -- jokes which demean, denigrate, or humiliate others. They like those kinds of jokes; anything else is not to be tolerated. Make no mistake: humor and merriment is seditious -- it erodes authority.

THAT WHICH CAN'T BE USED IS USELESS
Autocrats are utilitarians; they judge good and bad in terms of that which they can use and that which they cannot use. This explains why they shift alliances so often -- why today's trusted comrade is tomorrow's political exile! When you are no longer useful to the authoritarian, you are bad.

Ergo, anything which they cannot use, manipulate, twist, or distort, is useless, and must be done away