7.4.1: Soft Control versus Force

 7.4.1: Soft Control versus Force Let’s start with medieval Europe, where we find an excellent example of “soft” control. At that time, land was the primary source of wealth—and only the nobility and the church could own land. Almost everyone was a peasant (a serf) who worked for these powerful landowners. The peasants farmed the land, took care of the livestock, and built the roads and bridges. Each year, they had to turn over a designated portion of their crops to their feudal lord. Year after year, for centuries, they did so. Why? Controlling People’s Ideas Why didn’t the peasants rebel and take over the land themselves? There were many reasons, not the least of which was that the nobility and church controlled the army. Coercion, however, goes only so far, because it breeds hostility and nourishes rebellion. How much more effective it is to get the masses to want to do what the ruling elite desires. This is where ideology (beliefs that justify the way things are) comes into play, and the nobility and clergy used it to great effect. They developed an ideology known as the divine right of kings—the idea that the king’s authority comes directly from God. 

The king delegates authority to nobles, who, as God’s representatives, must be obeyed. To disobey is to sin against God; to rebel is to merit physical punishment on earth and eternal suffering in hell.

 Controlling people’s ideas can be remarkably more effective than using brute force. Although this particular ideology governs few minds today, the elite in every society uses ideology to justify its position at the top. For example, around the world, schools teach that their country’s form of government—no matter what form of government it has—is good. Religious leaders teach that we owe obedience to authority, that laws are to be obeyed. To the degree that their ideologies are accepted by the masses, the elite remains securely in power. Ideology is so powerful that it even sets limits on the elite. Although leaders use ideas to control people, the people can also insist that their leaders conform to those same ideas. Pakistan is an outstanding example. If Pakistani leaders depart from fundamentalist Islamic ideology, their position is in jeopardy. For example, regardless of their personal views, Pakistani leaders cannot support Western ideas of morality. If they were to allow women to wear short skirts in public, for example, not only would they lose their positions of leadership but perhaps also their lives. To protect their position within a system of stratification, leaders, regardless of their personal opinions, must also conform at least outwardly to the controlling ideas. Louis IV being crowned the Holy Roman Emperor in 1328 in Rome. Credit: Lebrecht Music and Arts Photo Library/Alamy Stock Photo  Controlling Information To maintain their power, elites try to control information. Chinese leaders have put tight controls on Internet cafes and search engines. They monitor WeChat and WhatsApp, and they block access to Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Lacking such power, the ruling elites in democracies rely on covert means to control information. A favorite tactic of U.S. presidents is to withhold information “in the interest of national security,” a phrase that often translates as “in the interest of protecting me.” Stifling Criticism Like the rest of us, the power elite doesn’t like to be criticized. But unlike the rest of us, they have the power to do something about it. Fear is a favorite tactic. In Thailand, you can be put in prison for criticizing the king—or even his dog (Hale 2016). Poetry is dangerous, too. Judges in Qatar sentenced a poet to life in prison because one of his poems criticized “the ruling family” (Delmar-Morgan 2012). It can be worse. In Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, the penalty for telling a joke about Hussein was having your tongue cut out (Nordland 2003). In a democracy, the control of critics takes a milder form. When the U.S. Defense Department found out that an author had criticized its handling of 9/11, it bought and destroyed 9,500 copies of his book (Thompson 2010). Big Brother Technology The ideal technology—“ideal” from the perspective of the elite—will allow citizens to be monitored without them knowing they are being watched. This dream of the elite is no longer part of the future. It is here now. Silent and unseen, drones patrol the skies. From 150 feet away, the picosecond laser scanner, which reads molecules, can sniff gunpowder residue on your body (Compton 2012). Software programs can read the entire contents of your computer in a second—and not leave a trace. The FBI’s face-recognition system can scan crowds and instantly match those faces with digitized photos in its files. Most faces in the FBI’s digitized system are not those of criminals, but of regular citizens (Waddell 2016). Face-recognition software can turn the police’s body cameras into stealth surveillance devices, able to identify everyone an officer passes on the sidewalk (Kofman 2017). Dictators have few checks on how they use this technology, but democracies do have some, such as requiring court orders for search and seizure. Such restraints on power frustrate officials, so they are delighted with our new Homeland Security laws that allow them to spy on citizens without their knowledge. Just as with ideology, the new technology is a two-edged sword. It gives the elite powerful tools for monitoring citizens, but it also makes it difficult for the elite to control information. With international borders meaning nothing to the Internet, it takes but seconds for e-mail, tweets, and photos to fly around the globe. Encryption also frustrates governments and excites privacy advocates. Silent Circle shreds files into thousands of pieces as they are sent to the cloud. Only the recipient has the key, which is deleted automatically after a file is downloaded. Governments have not been able to break Silent Circle, PGP (Pretty Good Privacy, a free code), RedPhone, or Signal, which scramble messages until they reach the intended reader. The FBI is upset that Google and Apple have added an encryption option for their smartphones (Kanter 2018). We will see how long these companies resist governmental pressure. In Sum To maintain stratification, the elite tries to dominate its society’s institutions. In a dictatorship, the elite makes the laws. In a democracy, the elite influences the laws. In both, the elite controls the police and military and can give orders to crush a rebellion—or to run the post office or air traffic control if workers strike. With force having its limits, especially the potential of provoking resistance, most power elites prefer to keep themselves in power by peaceful means, especially by influencing the thinking of their people.