All of these strategies are being employed in America today.

They invoke an external and internal threat in order to convince the population to grant their rulers extraordinary powers.

They 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.”

They develop a paramilitary force that operates without legal restraint.

They set up a system of intense domestic surveillance that gathers information for the purposes of intimidating and blackmailing citizens.

They infiltrate, monitor, and disorganize citizens’ groups.

They arbitrarily detain and release citizens, especially at borders.

They target key individuals like civil servants, academics, and artists in order to ensure their complicity or silence.

They take control of the press.

They publicly equate dissent with treason.

Finally, they suspend the rule of law.