Machiavellianism Essay, Research Paper

After months of routinely being metal detected and

blindly handing over my bags to be searched, I finally

stopped to think about it the other day. I realized that

all the security cameras, metal detectors and guards were

merely used to gain power over the people by oppressing them

and forcing their submission; not to protect us. We are all

blind to this. We think it s for our own good, but it s all

part of a Machiavellianist Plot.

Niccolo Machiavelli lived in Italy in the early

1500 s. He thought that if one person, namely Lorenzo de

Medici, could be the absolute ruler of all Italy, then order

could be restored. In an effort to gain favor with the

powerful Medice family, he wrote The Prince as an early

blueprint of a New World Order justifying the use of any

means, no matter how sinister, to gain and keep power.

Machiavellianism envisages: the seizure, maintenance, and

extension of absolute power by the nicely graduated use of

fraud, force and terror; control by the ruler of all

avenues of communication, thus facilitating the deliberate

molding of public opinion; and the employment of

surveillance and terrorist activities of subordinates who

can be disowned and liquidated by the ruler, who thus

escapes the blame for their atrocities. (In other words, the

big political figureheads get their lackeys to do their

dirty work and then use them as scapegoats.)

Basically, what Machiavelli was trying to say was that

if a prince conquered a city, the people would hate him, but

if the prince secretly hired terrorists to create an

insurrection, then marched into the city to put down the

insurrection, the people would praise him. (He would hire

his men to act like they were rebelling, and then the leader

would act like he was stopping the rebellion and protecting

the citizens, thus earning the community s trust.) Either

way, he would increase his domain, but it would be better

for his popularity if the citizens loved him rather than

hated him for doing it.

I see the same things happening today with gun control,

censorship and all the other so-called security the

government has imposed upon us. These are not isolated

incidents. This censorship has occurred throughout history,

whether it was censorship of religion, freedom, books or

individuality and self expression.

The first and most obvious is the case of Jesus and how

he was oppressed and persecuted because he expressed his

beliefs which didn t agree with the political leaders of the

day. These leaders did not want to be disputed or made to

look bad, so if someone got in their way, they killed that

someone. As George Bernard Shaw said, The ultimate form of

censorship is assassination. The most notorious

Machiavellianist leader would be Hitler. He not only tried

to kill a race of people he didn t agree with, but he gained

his country s support in the process. He blamed all of the

citizens problems on the Jews. The citizens were so eager

to blame someone else (who isn t?) that they blindly

followed Hitler in his destruction. The same goes for

whites in America in the middle of the century who blamed

all of their problems on the blacks. The whites believed

they were so superior to the blacks, that when an incredibly

intelligent Martin Luther King Jr. stepped forward to

express his feelings and beliefs, the whites couldn t handle

the fact that the blacks might not be inferior, so they did

whatever it took to stop him.

I think the most interesting case of this oppression of

individuality is that of Salman Rushdie who lives under

sentence of death by the Iranian government since early 1989

for writing books allegedly blasphemous to Islam. As the

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini proclaimed upon pronouncing his

verdict, It is incumbent on every good Muslim to do

everything possible to send Rushdie to Hell. Khomeini and

his government put a United States five million dollar

bounty on his head. Salman Rushdie is currently in hiding.

Society as a whole, not just the government, is afraid

of people expressing themselves in any way because it is

intimidating to them. People will do whatever they have to

do to get rid of individuality. This is why many schools

put a policy of mandatory school uniforms into effect.

Censorship is simply a way for the government to keep people

from standing up against them and getting in their way of

gaining power when the time for the inevitable New World

Order comes around. Television and books are censored so

that people won t get any revolutionary or rebellious ideas

from them. In the words of Heinrich Heine, Where they have

burned books they will end in burning human beings.