[This document was leaked to us by an anonymous but high-placed person.]
Owner's Manual for a Billionaire
February 21, 2013
You are a billionaire. You possess more wealth than ordinary people can even dream of. You enjoy luxury and privilege unlike all others. Most importantly of all, you have enormous power--the power to make others do your bidding, to shape the world according to your fancy, to tell "the people"--the little ones--how it's going to be whether they like it or not. All of this you now possess. But can you hold on to it? That is the supreme question! You own the world today, but what must you do to ensure you still own it tomorrow? You need the Owner's Manual. Fortunately for you it is now in your hands.
This Owner's Manual summarizes lessons learned from the experience of your forebears, people just like you over the past millennia: Emperors, Kings, High Priests, Moguls, Communists and ruling elites of every stripe. Some lessons come from their discoveries of methods for staying in power. Others are lessons learned the hard way, from the crucial mistakes of those who once were mighty but were overthrown because they did not know something that you will know when you read this Manual. Heed the wisdom in this Manual or else the suffering of your forebears who were overthrown will have been in vain, and you, like them, will surely fall from your exalted position of power.
Chapter 1: Know That You Ought To Rule Over the People
Failure to believe, deep in one's heart, that one ought to rule over the people, is the number one cause of failure to remain in power. It causes one to lack the fortitude and conviction to do what one knows must be done to stay in power. Therefore, know this. You are a billionaire because you are better than the multitude. You are wiser. You work harder and smarter. You care about the welfare of humanity unlike the greedy self-serving multitude. You understand that if you don't make people work, then they won't work because they, unlike you, are lazy. Your skill at making people work, by inducing in them the fear of unemployment and poverty if they don't work and the hope of rising a bit higher than others if they work harder, is what produces the wealth of society. If it were not for you being in charge, there would be no economic wealth, there would be no jobs, there would be no science, there would be no art and no high culture: no new cures for diseases, no missions to outer space, no symphonies or operas, no fine literature or poetry. If you are overthrown then society will go to hell in a handbasket. You have a moral obligation to humanity to remain in power. You should feel only deep shame if you allow yourself to be overthrown by the riff-raff and the mob. Whenever you hesitate to do what is necessary to stay in power, remember this: You Ought to Rule Over the People! The very future of the human race depends upon it.
Chapter 2: The People Are Your Enemy
The People--the "little ones" who are not billionaires like you--are your enemy. Forget this, and you are lost. Left to themselves, the people would make a world without billionaires, a far more equal and democratic world than the one your very existence as a billionaire requires, a world in which you would have to work and live as a mere equal with all others, a world run by people who are, as you know, a lazy good-for-nothing uncultured riff-raff, a dangerous mob who must never be allowed to take over. But this catastrophe is exactly what the people want, and this is why they are your enemy.
You dare not destroy The People, however, because you need them; they create your wealth, and without the people and their obedience to you your power is nothing. Since you cannot destroy the people you must control them. You must prevent them from making the kind of equal and democratic world they want. You must never forget that their aims in life are the opposite of yours. When they create relations of solidarity with each other, and decide to help rather than compete against each other, it means you are in trouble. Even when they do this on a small scale merely in their own little corners of the world out of the sight of others it is a threat to you that you ignore at your own grave risk. What starts on a small scale can erupt in a moment's notice on a large scale, and then it is too late and you are doomed. When the people become confident and hopeful enough to start talking about revolution, it means you are facing disaster. Never forget: the people are your enemy and you must control them!
Chapter 3: Turn the People Against the People
The People will either turn against you or turn against themselves. Make sure they turn against themselves. There are many ways to do this.
1. Wage War
Wage war to make your own people unite behind you in attacking a colleague's people elsewhere, to the benefit of both you and your colleague. Your forebears in the United States, Germany and Japan did this quite effectively with World War II (for details on this see The People As Enemy: The Leaders' Hidden Agenda in World War II.) More recently the leaders of Israel and of the Palestinians have proven themselves masters of this technique (for details on this see "Israeli Leaders and Hamas Need Each Other" and "Listen Anti-Zionist!")
To do this successfully one must first have a credible enemy. If one is not already available it may be necessary to create one. Creativity is required. Adolph Hitler, God bless his soul, is the master to learn from here. His skillful burning down of the Reichstag building and blaming it on Communists was truly inspired statesmanship. By linking Communists and Jews and Great Britain and France all together as the source of everything afflicting the German people, Hitler created the perfect all-purpose enemy.
Your predecessors did the same thing marvelously with the Cold War against Communism, secretly arming the Soviet Union to pull it off.
The Americans who orchestrated the 9/11 attack clearly learned this lesson well, and are enjoying the benefits of having a superb enemy that can be "found" anywhere it is convenient to "find" it, from Somalia to New York City. With any luck they will be able to keep the War on Terror going for many wonderful decades. The use of drones to make more people hate America and join anti-American organizations will, one can only hope, succeed in its intended purpose of keeping the War on Terror alive and well.
These enemy-creating ruses will be exposed by various social discontents; therefore use all means to marginalize them so they will not be taken seriously. Accuse them of advocating a "conspiracy theory" and mock them for it. Use your useful idiots across the political spectrum from right to left to tell their followers why the "conspiracy" nuts are not worth taking seriously.
You must learn the proper use of atrocities. Your Japanese forebears are excellent teachers. The Japanese rulers made the Chinese people their "useful enemy" in the second Sino-Japanese War that began in 1937. But they had a problem: the Japanese soldiers were peasants who hated the Samurai officer class who treated them like dirt. Japanese peasants were of the same oppressed class as the Chinese peasants who were fighting in the Communist-led army against them. The Communists appealed to the Japanese peasant-soldiers to join them against their common class enemy, and substantial numbers of Japanese peasant-soldiers began to do so. There was only one way to nip this problem in the bud, and the Japanese generals--demonstrating admirable wisdom and resoluteness--did it. They committed one of the world's greatest atrocities, the Rape of Nanking, raping and murdering hundreds of thousands of defenseless Chinese civilians. The hatred of Japanese--all Japanese people--engendered among the Chinese put the kibosh on further fraternization between Chinese and Japanese soldiers.
Your forebears who ruled Yugoslavia in the 1990s (Communists, but nonetheless the same as you) applied this lesson magnificently when they launched violent attacks against Serbs by the leaders claiming to represent Croats, and against Croats by the leaders claiming to represent Serbs. These leaders were threatened by a Serb/Croat population characterized by peaceful relations and even high rates of intermarriage. To demobilize these people and pit them against each other required the proper use of atrocities. You must learn from these masters.
2. Divide and rule the people along race lines (i.e., understanding the role of Affirmative Action)
If you are fortunate enough to have a prominent racial difference among your people, then pit them against each other along those racial lines.
Your forebears hundreds of years ago discovered that the key to success here was to make one race chattel property in a system of slavery, and make the other race believe that they were enjoying a "privilege" to be low-paid workers hired by employers (wage slaves) instead of slaves owned by masters. Your forebears enslaved blacks and told whites that black enslavement was not only proper ("the blacks must be inferior or else why would they be mere slaves?") but that it was also a "white privilege," in other words it was something that benefited whites. This worked for a while. But then it started to lose its effectiveness. Some whites saw through the "white privilege" lie and realized that it was no privilege at all, but rather an attack on them, to be dominated and exploited by an upper class using divide and rule racism to get away with it. These whites called for abolishing slavery. The immorality of slavery became more and more apparent to more and more whites until that peculiar institution lost the legitimacy that it required to be sustainable.
There is an important lesson to be learned here. What worked in the past may stop working in the future. Apartheid in South Africa is a good example of this. Zionism (the idea that 78% of Palestine should be a Jewish State, a state only "of the Jews" that must ensure--by ethnic cleansing--that it always has a Jewish majority of at least 80%) may prove to be another example. You must be creative and use new methods of divide and rule when necessary.
For example, when chattel slavery became impossible to use, it was nonetheless possible to use Jim Crow laws ("blacks must be inferior, or else they would be allowed entrance to the same places as whites") to accomplish much the same thing. When Jim Crow outraged the people as much as slavery had then it was nonetheless possible to disproportionately imprison blacks ("blacks must be inferior, or else how come so many of them are criminals?"), thanks to the skillful use of drug laws (whoever said that the "war on drugs" was a failure?), and again accomplish the same goals as the previous methods. These new methods are all fine and good, but they pale in comparison to a novel idea dreamed up by that great servant of our class, Richard M. Nixon, in 1969: Affirmative Action.
Affirmative Action, almost single-handedly, destroyed a looming threat to billionaire power at the time, which was the massive Civil Rights Movement against Jim Crow. The problem with this movement was that it had united millions of whites and blacks around the goal of abolishing racial discrimination. Hardly anybody could publicly disagree with this goal. Solidarity between whites and blacks makes the people start to feel confident that they can make the world more equal and democratic, and it gives rise to a force that is truly frightening. It had to be destroyed. But how? That was the question confronting Mr. Nixon. If the government were seen to be attacking the Civil Rights Movement, the people might rise up even more threateningly against our class.
Mr. Nixon had what some believe was a divine inspiration. He went to the Civil Rights leaders and told them that the goal they should fight for was Affirmative Action, in other words government-mandated racial discrimination in favor of blacks over whites to make up for previous discrimination the other way. The Civil Rights leaders bought it hook, line and sinker. For the next few decades we had our foremen and human relations offices and school and university admissions offices telling millions of white working class people, "Gee, we're sorry we couldn't give you the job (or admit you to the school) because we had to give the job (or admission) to a less qualified black person."
Just as intended, the former solidarity and good will between blacks and whites began to erode, as whites grew resentful of blacks getting favorable treatment. The plan worked like a charm. Of course just as "white privilege" was actually a way our class controlled and exploited whites as well as blacks, the new "black privilege" was actually a way of controling and exploiting blacks as well as whites. The destruction of solidarity made it possible for our class to get away with abolishing most of the social safety net (courtesy of that wonderful man, the "first black president," Bill Clinton) and outsourcing most of the better paying jobs to foreign nations with cheap labor. Thanks in large measure to Affirmative Action ("black privilege" ha ha ha), billionaires were also able to increase unemployment levels for blacks and whites, making them a lot more desperate and easier to control. Everybody's attention was distracted from this ruse by the very visible presence of a small but growing black middle class. This black middle class was yet another benefit of Affirmative Action: it made it possible for our class to say that America with its billionaire rulers was even more equal than before, since there were now blacks such as Barack Obama and Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell and Eric Holder in high positions. Richard Nixon was a genius.
3. Turn men and women against each other
Solidarity between men and women is a very dangerous thing. Therefore, do not fail to take advantage of the obvious differences between the sexes, that only women get pregnant and give birth and that males on average have greater muscular strength, to foment mistrust and resentment between men and women. There have been many approaches to doing this over the centuries. One method that seems to work best in our modern era is the one spearheaded by the CIA in funding Ms Magazine and by the Ford and Rockefeller foundations in funding Women's Studies programs in hundreds of American universities and colleges. Both Ms Magazine and the Women's Studies programs teach (their mainly women audiences) that human society is a "patriarchy," meaning that men as a class, i.e. all men, are the rulers of society and women as a class are the ruled, with men as a class oppressing and benefiting from the oppression of women as a class.
The advocates of this "patriarchy" theory explain everything that they can in the patriarchy framework, while ignoring everything that just doesn't fit in that framework. They call themselves "feminists" (a term that many women, understandably, respond to positively, thinking that feminism is simply about being for gender equality) and they tell women that the source of all their problems is men, or the fact that society is arranged by males to benefit males at the expense of women, i.e. "patriarchy." Your colleagues in the mass media have ensured that this "patriarchy" theory now dominates public discourse so pervasively that many people simply take it for granted as a non-controversial truth. Facts that don't fit into the "patriarchy" framework have been ignored to the point of being excluded from the thinking of most people.
Thus in the United States while men suffer rape (especially in prisons, where the majority of U.S. rapes occur) approximately as much (some argue a bit more, some a bit less) as women, most Americans think of rape as something that only happens to women. Furthermore, while women sometimes commit rape most Americans think of rape as something that only men do. This is due in part to the fact that your agents in the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), who provide the statistics on rape in the U.S., promote the "patriarchy" theory by defining rape to include a male penetrating a female's vagina against her will but to exclude from the definition of rape a female enveloping a male's penis against his will. It's a good thing the CDC does this, because otherwise the number of female and male rapists would be virtually identical (see Tables 2.1 and 2.2 on pages 18 & 19 in the CDC report, showing a 1.1% 12 month prevalence of rape for women and a 1.1% 12 month prevalence of "made to penetrate" for men), resulting in men and women uniting with each other (a thought too terrible to contemplate!) to figure out how to reduce the problem of rape.
Feminists who talk of "patriarchy" need women to view all men as dominating oppressors, so they must focus attention on the fact that most CEOs and politicians are men, while denying the existence of all aspects of society in which men are worse off or no better off than women, such as the fact that men have far higher rates of suicide than women, that men have far higher rates of work-related injuries than women, that far more men than women are in prison, that men but not women must register for the draft, that the woman almost always gets sole physical custody of the children in a divorce instead of joint mother and father custody or the father getting custody, and that domestic violence is as much violence against men as against women. Fortunately for you, the spread of "patriarchy" theory among the public undermines solidarity between men and women; it inclines women to view men as their enemy and men then react with anger at women for being viewed that way.
An added beauty of "patriarchy" theory is that it increases the effectiveness of our old-fashioned ways of undermining solidarity between men and women. Your colleagues have for many years paid women workers less than men, with excuses such as "it's only pin money for women" and it's just "women's work." The smart workers understood (unfortunately) that fighting against discrimination against women was important for all the workers, both men and women, because otherwise the discrimination would undermine their solidarity and thereby make it easier for us billionaires to drive down everybody's wages. But now, with "patriarchy" thinking in the air, the women blame the men workers for our discriminatory practices and the men get angry at the women for that instead of wanting to be in solidarity with them. The result--for joy for joy!--is we don't have to worry about losing our power over the working class. "Patriarchy" theory is a remarkably useful invention; do not fail to use it.
4. Divide the people along cultural lines
The American billionaires are, to their great credit, writing the book on novel methods of social control based on divide and rule along cultural lines. The strategy is straightforward: make one demographic group (let's call it the "liberal" group, which in the United States can be thought of as the NPR-listening demographic) view the other demographic (let's call it the "conservative" group, which in the United States is the non-NPR-listening demographic) as dangerous and certainly unfit to have a real say in society; and make the conservative group view the liberal group as arrogant elitist social-engineering jerks. When done successfully, the liberal group (typically the smaller of the two) will prefer your rule to rule by the conservative group. They will fear genuine democracy because it means letting the much-feared conservative group have a real say in society. They will support you and praise you for keeping the conservative group out of power, and even if they raise objections to some of the things you do, you can rest assured that they will never seriously threaten your power. To control these liberal group people and keep them from getting in your way over the issues where they do actually disagree with you, it is important that you proactively provide them mis-leadership designed to make them as confused and ineffective as possible. For a wonderful example of how to do this, please study the platform and activities of the Democratic Party and the speeches of Democratic Party leaders in the United States, or the Labor Party in Great Britain.
At the same time, the other conservative demographic group (typically the larger of the two, the non-NPR-listeners in our example) will also need to be proactively led by you to ensure that they do not get out of control. You need individuals and organizations loyal to you and specialized for this exact purpose. These individuals and organizations will champion the anger of the conservative group at the elitism and arrogance and condescension of the liberal group, and cleverly direct this anger into support for the rule of billionaires. It is important to note that these individuals and organizations can only succeed to the extent that the liberal group (the NPR-listeners) expresses elitist and condescending views towards the conservative (non-NPR-listeners) group. For an excellent example of how to lead the conservative (non-NPR-listeners) group, listen to Rush Limbaugh (a true master of the art and worth his weight in gold!) and study the platform and activities of the Republican Party.
It cannot be emphasized enough that the success of this divide-and-rule strategy requires simultaneously providing proactive leadership to both the liberals (to make sure they are mobilized around elitist arrogant condescending fear of conservatives) and the conservatives (to make sure their anger at the liberals is channelled into support for the rule of billionaires.) The leaders of the liberals and the leaders of the conservatives have different roles to play but, like a quarterback and a pass receiver or a pitcher and a catcher, they are on the same team--your team. Use them skillfully.
Of the many issues American billionaires have used to implement this strategy, two deserve special mention for the remarkable skill with which they have been employed: same-sex marriage and gun control. Your American colleagues used their mass media to elevate the issue of same-sex marriage from virtual non-existence (who even thought about men marrying men or women marrying women back in the 1960s?) to a question that vies for top place on the agenda of public discourse, with laws enacted to make it legal in several states and more than 30 state referenda on the question. Your colleagues didn't just make same-sex marriage an issue, they also cleverly framed the question in precisely the right manner to make the divide-and-rule strategy work. They did not frame it in the terms that all past debates about marriage legislation have been framed, i.e., in terms of the consequences for the children who may be produced by this or that type of marriage, such as sibling marriage or, in the past before there was a cure, marriage involving a partner with syphilis. No, they very wisely framed it in terms that had nothing whatsoever to do with the welfare of children. They framed it as a question of rights: should gays be denied their right to marry--yes or no?
Brilliant! Conservatives who thought children had a right to know and be known by their biological mother and father, and that social policy should be designed to protect this right, and who objected to same-sex marriage on the grounds that it would promote the use of sperm or egg donor conception (the only way a same-sex couple can produce a child) thus creating children who by design would not know and be known by one of their biological parents--these conservatives NPR etc. portrayed as people who did not want gays to enjoy their "right to marry," and as irrational Bible Fundamentalist homophobic bigots. NPR etc. carefully censored any expressions of concern for the rights of children by opponents of same-sex marriage. In a display of wonderful teamwork, the conservative mass media also censored expressions of concern for the rights of childen by opponents of same-sex marriage. The entire mass media did this so effectively that liberals are totally unaware that concern for children has anything whatsoever to do with why people object to same-sex marriage. Liberals believe the only possible explanation is dumb, stupid, hateful "homophobia."
Conservatives, in turn, hear their concern for children dismissed as bigotry by the liberals and react just as the divide-and-rule strategy requires: with anger at the elitist arrogant condescension of liberals. One can only admire the billionaire agents who crafted this same-sex marriage divide-and-rule scheme.
The other example of effective divide-and-rule meriting your attention is the way your colleagues have employed the gun control issue. The conservative demographic owns guns and the liberal demographic does not. This is the kind of opportunity that a wise billionaire cannot afford to waste. Your colleagues, to their great credit, have put it to great use. Conservatives oppose more restrictive gun control laws because they don't want their right to bear arms to be whittled away. They support the right to bear arms not only because they want to hunt or use them as sport or even to use them in self-defense, but because they agree with the Founding Fathers that the right to bear arms is important as a check by the citizens against a tyrannical government. And they argue that gun control laws don't do anything to prevent bad people from getting guns and shooting good people with them. NPR etc., however, portrays conservatives as people who are crazy and downright dangerous because they don't care about preventing bad people from killing good people with guns. NPR etc. ridicules the idea that guns today can enable citizens to resist any (supposed) tyranny by the United States government. The NPR argument doesn't hold water for reasons discussed by one of your enemies here (you should learn from your enemies) but it does persuade liberals because liberals just don't like guns and will accept any argument, no matter how weak, that stigmatizes gun owners as terrible people who should not be allowed to have a say in society.
But wait! There's more you can do. Read how here and here.
5. Make The People Compete Against Each Other
You must prevent solidarity from developing among The People, lest it give them confidence to rise up and overthrow you. You must therefore instill in the people the belief that life is all about competition and they are all in competition with other people like themselves. Workers in every place of work must be made to feel that their jobs depend on "beating the competition." They must feel threatened by competing workers in the same neighborhood, by workers in different neighborhoods in the same city, by workers in a different city, by workers in a different state, and by workers in a different nation.
Not just the adult workers, but their children as well must believe they are in a vicious competition with others like themselves all over the world. They must hear over and over again that the very purpose of their education is to prepare them to compete in the world economy.
Do not fail to appreciate the importance of the type of money system in use throughout the world as a means of making the people compete against each other. This "fiat" money system allows banks to create (by fiat) money out of thin air when they make a loan (as described in Chapter 6) and then charge interest on the loan. All money originates this way (the paper cash and coins are merely markers for this money.) At any given time, therefore, there is less money in existence than the amount of the loans plus interest that is owed to the bank that lent it out. This means that everybody who ever borrows money (virtually all small business owners, people who borrow to buy a car or get a mortgage to buy a house, or who borrow against a credit card, etc.) is in a kind of "musical chairs" game, forced to somehow get money from other people to pay back their loan plus interest, in a system that makes it mathematically impossible for everybody to succeed in this task because there just isn't enough money for it to happen. The result is that everybody is pitted in competition with everybody else in a system that guarantees some will be winners and others losers. Perfect!
6. Cause Mass Migration (But Pretend to Oppose It)
Do whatever it takes to force people in a foreign land to mass migrate into your country. Then pretend you are horrified at this mass migration and declare the immigrants to be illegal, job-stealing, free-loading welfare abusing and crime perpetrating parasites on the native population who must be dealt with punitively and, at best, made to jump through multiple hoops and wait decades to obtain full citizenship status. As long as you succeed in stigmatizing these immigrants as "the enemy" in the eyes of the native population, then not only will you have divided the people against each other but, as an additional bonus, the immigrants will provide you cheap compliant labor because fear of deportation and their feeling isolated from public support will make them afraid to fight their employers for better pay and work conditions. The only problem is, how to force people to mass migrate to your country. One way that the American billionaires hit upon was to use the NAFTA negotiations with Mexico to force it to drop the part of its Constitution that gave small farmers important rights to the land, and then use their U.S. government to subsidize big agribusiness to dump super-cheap corn into Mexico to drive the small farmers out of business, and arrange for there to be no decent-paying jobs in Mexico, so the farmers had little choice but to migrate north to find work to survive. Your Euroean colleagues have also figured out how to pull this trick off in various ways. Be sure, always, to claim you are only against illegal immigrants, not legal ones, so as to avoid being accused of being racist.
What makes this scheme particularly attractive is that you can also use it to turn the liberal demographic against the conservative one. In the United States, for example, when liberals think about immigration they think about an individual who decides for unique and personal reasons that he or she would rather live elsewhere. Liberals therefore tend to support such a person's right to migrate and be a citizen wherever he or she wishes to live. Conservatives, in contrast, when they think of immigration, think (more realistically) of a wave of mass immigration that, unlike an occasional individual immigrant, has a big and in some ways detrimental effect on the native population stemming from the inevitable problems arising when people with different languages and customs are forced to suddenly live together. Non-liberals therefore tend to favor strict immigration laws to limit immigration, and strong enforcement of laws against illegal immigration and deportation of illegal immigrants. The liberals, rallying around the slogan of "Multiculturalism," accuse the conservatives of being racist for opposing the illegal immigrants. The conservatives react with anger at the self-righteous elitism of the liberals who have no compassion for the native Americans who suffer as a result of the uncontrolled wave of immigrants from south of the border. Could one ask for anything better?
7. Turn The People Against Themselves
So far we've been discussing how to turn one part of The People against another part of The People. Even more effective, however, is to turn The People against their very selves. "Impossible!" you say? Not at all. You simply need to persuade people that ordinary people (at least most of them) are very very bad, and therefore if they overthrew the billionaires and took control of society it would only make things worse. The cartoonist, Walt Kelly, in his comic strip, Pogo, articulated this message in a single line that has become so famous and well known that it is taken as the Gospel truth by millions of people: "We have met the enemy and he is us." This is a wonderful line! The more people you persuade to believe it, the safer the world will be for you.
To make people believe the Pogo message, simply tell them that whatever they perceive or dislike in the billionaire ruling class exists just as much if not more in ordinary people: greed, laziness, dishonesty, violence. Make sure every school child reads Animal Farm and learns that overthrowing the old ruling class doesn't make things better because the new one will be just as bad, and if a revolution aims to make things more equal then it will only mean that some "animals" will end up being "more equal than others." (This is important, also, for lowering the people's expectations, as discussed in Chapter 5--in this case destroying any expectations they may entertain about ever making a better world.)
The key is to prevent people from believing the vicious lies spread by rabble-rousers such as Dave Stratman. Stratman wrote a poisonous book called We CAN Change the World that contains rubbish like this, which he claims to have learned from his experience as a parent of children in the Boston Public schools during the famous "busing crisis" over integrating the schools in the 1970s:
"The meaning of these two years of experience was not immediately clear to me. Certain things were apparent, to be sure. It was soon clear that there was more decency, honor, good sense, and just plain goodness in the working class people of Boston of whatever color than there were in all the forces ranged against them: the politicians white and black, the School Committee, the Federal Court, the Church, the Harvard and Boston University "experts," the Boston Globe, the liberals and the leftists."
The way to immunize people against such lies is to shower them daily with truthful images of typical ordinary people. Good examples of this include the evening T.V. news, which seldom strays from the truth because it is committed so correctly to the principle: "If it bleeds it leads." Television is a veritable fountain of truth, with reality shows such as the Jerry Springer Show and shows that reveal the true inner motivations of people such as the daily Soap Operas. The best people in society--the ones who actually are, unlike most, caring and thoughtful, honest to a fault, firm when necessary in a "tough love" kind of way but tender heated always--are given lots of air time on television too, in shows such as Law and Order: Special Victims Unit and CSI: New York and CSI Miami and NCIS and NCIS Los Angeles and Criminal Minds, all of which feature the very best people in our society--cops. Ordinary people, however, need to be portrayed correctly in T.V. fiction too. That's why the Homer Simpson show and Family Guy are so important; they reveal the true level of intelligence and integrity of the typical American man. Never underestimate the importance of television in persuading people that it would be sheer folly to overthrow billionaires from power.
But television is not the only tool at your disposal. Books are excellent also. Animal Farm, of course, is invaluable, as long as you don't let readers learn that its author, George Orwell, also wrote Homage to Catalonia, praising the anarchist-led Spanish Revolution, which the author fought in, and that his Animal Farm was intended as an exposure of the fact that the Bolshevik Party that made a revolution in Russia was not truly fighting for equality, and not intended to be an attack on the very idea of making a true revolution for equality. Another good book, in fact one that some cities have encouraged everyone to read, is To Kill a Mockingbird. People love the book because it is against racism, but while they are loving the book the important (for you) message of the book enters their minds without their being consciously aware of the fact. This message is that only exceptional white people (such as the lawyer hero in the book) from the higher levels of society oppose racism, while most ordinary people (such as the poor whites in the book) are as racist as can be.
Chapter 4: Make Sure The People Follow Your Goals, Not Theirs
Your French forebears at the time of the French Revolution made an absolutely priceless discovery. They discovered that the people can be made to follow somebody else's goals while thinking they are following their own very different goals. At the time of the French Revolution the people wanted equality. They wanted an end to the inequality of society that made some rich and others poor. They wanted people to be equal, with no rich and no poor. Their motto was "Liberté, égalité, fraternité" and by égalité they did not mean some people being rich and others being poor. Now this was a problem for your forebears taking over from the King at this time. No rich and no poor was not exactly what they wanted. But they needed the support of the people to prevail against the old King and aristocracy that they aimed to replace.
What to do? One of them had a stroke of genius. Declare that the goal of the revolution was "equal opportunity." The phrase featured the word "equal" so prominently that it worked. Your forebears won the support of the people by opposing only one very special kind of inequality--inequality based on inherited status. What the people did not realize was that "equal opportunity" meant an equal opportunity for people to get rich in a society very much still based on there being both rich and poor. They didn't realize that "equal opportunity" was about making inequality more "perfect" in the sense of being based now (supposedly) on individual merit instead of, as formerly, inherited status.
To this day you and your colleagues benefit enormously from the widespread understanding of "equality" as merely "equal opportunity." Beware of anybody who says they want a world of "equality" without immediately following this word with "opportunity"!
Newer variations on "equal opportunity" have been developed. One of the best is the assertion that the goal is to create "a level playing field." The word "level" gets a reflexive nod of approval from the people--after all, playing on a tilted field wouldn't be fair, would it? The beauty of this phrase is that a playing field is where people compete, and in the social/economic context this phrase endorses competition that results in winners and losers, rich and poor. When the people agree to aim for a "level playing field" they unwittingly are agreeing to aim for a society with rich and poor, not one based on equality. Make sure your politicians use the "level playing field" and "equal opportunity" phrases on every possible occasion.
Chapter 5: Lower the People's Expectations
You cannot long remain in power if the people develop high expectations about making a more equal and democratic society. High expectations about changing the world develop when people feel personally secure enough to devote time and energy to such a cause and when they feel their collective strength in numbers as a result of solidarity. The radical upsurge against all forms of established authority that broke out in the 1960s, and which came close to overthrowing numerous elite ruling class regimes in the world, stands as a dire warning of what can happen when people's expectations are permitted to rise.
To lower the people's expectations in life, you must a) make them personally insecure and b) destroy their solidarity-based organizations.
To be personally secure, people need to know that they can count on always having the basics: a good paying job that will employ them long term, good health care when they need it, good education for their children that will give them a good future. Your strategy here is simple: make sure people don't have these basics and that they fear it will be even worse for their children.
Eliminate the better-paying jobs with automation or outsourcing to cheap labor nations. Make health care a commodity that many will not be able to afford and have it controlled by insurance companies motivated to come up with excuses for not covering the most serious health needs. Subject school children to standardized tests that are norm-referenced to produce the same high number of failures no matter how well the children learn their lessons, and tell the children that if they fail the test it means they are not smart enough or hard-working enough to deserve a decent-paying job or even any job at all.
Destroy the unions by refusing to negotiate with them and if workers go on strike just lock them out or even better yet fire them and replace them. (Learn from Ronald Reagan's masterful use of this tactic in dealing with the air traffic controllers' strike.) Make sure that your agents control any remaining unions at the top so they will sabotage efforts by the rank-and-file to win important demands. (For a good example of this study how the United Paperworkers International Union and the United Auto Workers union succeeded in defeating the Staley and Caterpillar strikes centered in Decatur, Illinois in the 1990s, despite some horrifying solidarity developing between the Staley and Caterpillar workers.)
Chapter 6: Use Fake Democracy
Encourage the people to vote. Give them "lesser evil" candidates to vote for. Give them conservative candidates and liberal candidates and third party candidates. Saturate the airwaves with election news and debates as much as you can. Elections are your friend. First of all, it makes little difference who gets elected because the politicians don't make government policy--you make policy. Why else do you have your closed and private by-invitation-only policy-making organizations such as the Council on Foreign Relations and Committee for Economic Development and Business Roundtable and Tri-Lateral Commission? Second, elections give the people hope that all they need to do to get changes they want is to pull a lever now and then. That's exactly what you want them to think. Third, the politicians want your mass media to portray them as serious, not marginal, and they want your money to wage their campaigns. You're in the driver's seat here. Give the best media coverage and the most money to the politicians who seem the most skilled at getting the people to go along with your policies. Fourth, if by some remote chance a politician gets elected who makes trouble for you, use a little character assassination. If that doesn't solve the problem, call in the CIA to do what they do best. (See Chapter 8.)
One of the great things about fake democracy is that with it you can use a Central Bank to make the people believe that the exorbitant taxes you impose on them to lower their expectations in life (see Chapter 5) are for the "public good." Your forebears in England invented this device and it is important for you to understand it and use it well. First you need to create a private central bank that you will own, and give it a public-sounding name like "Bank of England" or "Federal Reserve System" so the people will think it is public, i.e. their own bank. If it were a real democracy, of course, the government would tax you to kingdom come to pay for its expenses. But a fake democracy would never do that. Instead you have your government "borrow" the money it needs from you (your central bank, to be precise.) You don't have to really lend it your money (God forbid!); instead you just enter a big number in the "balance due" line in the government's account at your bank (you see, banks create money this way out of thin air when they make loans) and let the government print the corresponding paper money to spend. The beauty of this device is that now the government can tell the people that it has a big debt to repay (to you: in the amount of the number you entered into the government's account, plus interest for the "loan") and that it needs to tax the people to get the funds to repay the debt. The bigger the government's debt (make sure it takes out loans this way from your foreign colleagues too by selling them bonds), the more of an excuse it has to raise taxes on the people and cut the budget for things the people like, all on the pretext that "We have to repay our debts." Any billionaire who neglects to employ this simple and time-tested device is probably not fit to remain in power.
Chapter 7: Teach the People to Be Nonviolent
Provide the people with leaders who insist they embrace the philosophy of nonviolence. Learn about this philosophy yourself so that you can evaluate which emerging leaders of the people to support and which to marginalize if not eliminate. The philosophy of nonviolence is your friend. It says that people should never use force to overthrow you. It says they should try to persuade you to be "nice" and that they should do things to demonstrate their sincerity to you, such as go limp when police attack them and willingly go to jail when arrested. As long as the people obey leaders who adhere to strict nonviolence, the only thing you need to worry about is the nuisance created by large numbers of people filling up the jails and things like strikes and refusals to work, which can be dealt with by the usual punitive measures. As long as your military forces obey you there is nothing to worry about. But be extremely worried if a large movement develops support among your military personnel; this could be fatal. Everything in this Manual is, in the final analysis, about how to prevent that from happening.
Chapter 8: Assassinate Dangerous Leaders
Dangerous leaders sometimes emerge among the people, despite all efforts to prevent it from happening. Even a leader who preaches nonviolence can become dangerous if he or she succeeds in building a mass movement that has so much solidarity and clarity about its goals that the members of the movement may, in spite of objections by their nonviolent leader, decide to use force to overthrow you.
What makes a leader very dangerous? Here are the warning signs: 1) They identify you and your values as the enemy. 2) They unite everybody else who opposes your values against you. 3) They say things like, "Revolution means shaping society by the positive values of equality and mutual aid shared by most ordinary people, values that the Billionaire class attacks." 4) They never use "We" to refer to the people who are the problem.
What makes a leader acceptable or at least not very dangerous? Here are the key factors: 1) They identify some group other than you (it makes little difference which group) as the enemy. 2) They say some billionares are the enemy but others are not (the reasons can vary: They're our race, or natonality or religion, or they're not fasicsts like the other ones) and should be allied with, at least for the time being. 3) They have as much contempt for the people as you do, calling them, for example, "sheeple" or "homophobes" or "racists" or "privileged" or "complicit". 4) They always use "We" to refer to the people who are the problem.
If you are squeamish about assassinating very dangerous leaders you will be overthrown one day by one. Learn from the steadfastness of your forebears in the United States who confronted four individual leaders whom they had to assassinate. They had no choice if they expected to remain in control.
John Kennedy and his brother Robert were fine team players at first, and entirely loyal to our class. But they got cold feet after the Cuban Missile Crisis almost led to thermonuclear war. The Cold War against the Soviets was the way our class ruled. If waging it meant possibly killing 30 million Americans, that was the price our class needed to pay, and it wasn't too big a price because there would still remain far more live Americans for billionaires to rule over. But the Kennedy brothers lost their nerve. JFK began retreating in the Cold War. RFK would likely have done the same if he had become president. The purpose of the CIA is to take care of such problems, and fortunately they did.
Malcolm X began his career by identifying whites as the enemy. No problem. But then he went to Egypt, had some kind of epiphany, and on his return started giving lectures to white audiences and getting standing ovations. This happened, for example, at Dartmouth College. The man was charismatic and had all of the warning signs of extreme dangerousness. He had to go.
Martin Luther King, Jr. began his career thinking that whites were the problem. He wouldn't use a word like "enemy" because he was also a follower of the philosophy of nonviolence, at least in his public speeches (he also applied for a concealed pistol permit and used armed body guards.) Normally MLK, Jr. would not have been too dangerous to be permited to live. But three things changed this. First, he changed his understanding of who was the problem and began to speak in class, not racial, terms. Second, he succeeded in building a mass movement based on the value of equality. Third, he applied his class analysis so consistently that he broke with all of the other Civil Rights leaders in speaking out against the War in Vietnam, giving American GIs (many of whom were black) encouragement in their growing refusal to fight the Viet Cong. King's leadership was building a movement that had a growing potential to reject his nonviolence philosophy (as black rioters did even when King personally appealed to them to remain non-violent) and overthrow our class. In order to defeat this dangerous movement its leader had to go.
Chapter 9: Give The People False Hope
Be sure always to give The People false hope, i.e., hope that their lives will improve without any need to remove you from power. There are different ways of doing this. Many centuries ago your forefathers persuaded the people that as bad as their lives on earth were and would be until they died, nonetheless if they obeyed the Church (your instrument of social control back then) then they would go to heaven and enjoy total bliss for eternity.
More recently, that great savior of the billionaire class, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, did what he had to do to persuade the revolutionary masses that they didn't really need to make a revolution because the upper class would adequately address their grievances with New Deal legislation. It worked! And a good thing too or else you would not be a billionaire today, enjoying unimaginable wealth, power and privilege while The People make do with some Social Security crumbs.
Lately The People are angry at the extreme economic inequality. So, you must express with as much sincerity as you can fake, how you too are very upset about this economic inequality and how you are going to do something to ameliorate it very very soon. To make your pitch more convincing, explain to The People that you're not pretending to have suddenly changed into an altruistic saint; no, you simply understand that you need to make things more economically equal in order to avoid a revolution. Utter these words as much as necessary to calm the waters of discontent with false hope, and throw The People some crumbs as necessary.
Chapter 10: A Problem that Remains Unsolved
There remains a problem that you must learn to solve without help from this Owner's Manual. The problem is this: How can billionaires defeat a revolutionary movement in which the rank-and-file members all exhibit the warning signs that, in a leader, would mark him or her as very dangerous? Killing its leaders would accomplish little. Your forebears never solved this problem. Fortunately the problem has never arisen yet (or else you would probably not be a billionaire today) but it could happen. Everything in this Manual is about how to prevent it from happening, but the savvier ordinary people become, the less effective all of the stratagems in this Manual are. This is a serious problem! You are on your own. Good luck in solving it.