What is a Bully Class?
A bully class, (also called a "thug class" but since we can't even say "blacklist" and "whitelist" anymore without some indignant unemployable taking time out of drawing penises on bathroom stalls to scream at you incoherently, I'm getting ahead of the curve on this one) is a class of people that are allowed to victimize you, but that you are not allowed to defend yourself against. It is a designation that, if you can set it up and point it in the right direction, gives you unimaginable power to effect change in the world.
Originally, bully classes obtained their immunity from violence from the threat of greater violence in return. Hitler's Brownshirts are a good example of this. They could harass you, and you couldn't do anything about it because they would beat you senseless if you did.
Eventually, they got all the little individual people in line, if not enthusiastically behind, the Reich's plans. I remember reading somewhere that only something like 30% of Germans were actually in favor of Hitler and his policies. The rest were kept in place by that 30%, enabled by the "services" of the Brownshirts, who would harass whoever pushed back.
Then the SS got in the game and really cemented it. If you can keep your momentum, you can use the bully class as a filter and pull out some real fanatics for your cause. And there will never be a shortage of fanatics - a disappointingly high percentage of the human population just seems to hang out waiting for an opportunity to victimize others in a socially- or governmentally-sanctioned manner. In fact, this remains a powerful draw for many people entering the police force in the United States today.
Nowadays, effective bully classes get their immunity in a much more efficient manner: from victimhood. Or at least, from the perception of it.
If you've got a bunch of Brownshirts hassling shopkeepers, most people won't want to take them on. But what if you have a few young, strong, and civic-minded young men that happen to be nearby? They may even outnumber the goose-steppers. They could beat them up and win social approbation in the process. The problem then is, how do you keep this from happening?
Well, it's easy. You simply populate your bully class with people that most people would hesitate to hit in the face - out of their own established desire to remain good people.
This actually works on two levels: most people will refrain from hitting, or at least hesitate to hit, these people out of confusion and previously-established sympathy. And second, even if you do have someone who manages to power through the initial revulsion and push back, anyone coming on to the scene halfway through will see things in reverse: instead of seeing a hero resisting the bullying of an obvious aggressor, they will see an aggressor bullying an obvious victim.
And they will step in to intervene, as society has conditioned all good people to do.
Victims that you can enlist, wittingly or unwittingly, include:
I'm not saying it, are you crazy
You say it, I'm not naming them. I don't want to get fired
Yes, them too, even though I think they're losing much of their appeal thanks to last year
We can see from the above examples a third benefit of populating your bully class with victims: everybody is (well, most decent people are, anyway) afraid to even IDENTIFY them, because doing so would, in their minds and in the minds of others, place them out of civilized society entirely. Thus a kind of weaponizing of human compassion can take place, where the empathy of others becomes a shield that the real villains can hide behind while they continue to lob arrows outward.
And a weapon with a perfect defense is a perfect offensive weapon. It may not hit as hard as something else, but if it can’t be taken out, it can continue pummeling the target FOREVER. In a truly compassionate society, members of the majority are the most vulnerable to attack, not the least.
What you end up with is an unregulated unconventional police force, or demolition team if that's your thing, that not only is nobody allowed to resist, they can't even identify them without facing some sort of social reprimand, in many cases, from people that are being bullied right along with them.
And they can be used to police or demolish anything you want, although in recent times, we have seen them primarily (although obviously not exclusively; see number three in the list) used to demolish more subtle things than storefronts and anti-government meetings. Language, for example. Meaning. Ideas. Definitions. This is more subtle than destroying real estate, and flies under the radar for much longer, although the damage that is done can be very efficiently used to enable more overt destruction and policing later.
We haven't gotten to that point - yet. We're getting close though. Your thoughts in comments.