Project Mayhem

10 Steps Toward World Domination (Project Mayhem)

1. Invoke an external and internal threat in order to convince the population to grant their rulers extraordinary powers.
2. Establish secret prisons that practice torture, prisons that are initially few in number and only incarcerate social pariahs, but that quickly multiply and soon imprison “opposition leaders, outspoken clergy, union leaders, well-known performers, publishers, and journalists.”
3. Develop a paramilitary force that operates without legal restraint.
4. Set up a system of intense domestic surveillance that gathers information for the purposes of intimidating and blackmailing citizens.
5. Infiltrate, monitor, and disorganize citizens’ groups.
6. Arbitrarily detain and release citizens, especially at borders.
7. Target key individuals like civil servants, academics, and artists in order to ensure their complicity or silence.
8. Take control of the press.
9. Publicly equate dissent with treason.
10. Suspend the rule of law.