Streets of Old Cairo. March 2016. El-Geziry Fayed/ABACA/Press Association Images. All rights reserved.Autocracies, to maintain their hold on power, rely on heavy doses of repression. Their power appears to be heavily centralized in the upper echelons of the social order, however, the reality is much more complex.
Autocracies mould their masses, who are both the victims of repression and its beneficiaries. Beneficiaries in the sense of “smaller” autocrats also repressing those below them in the social order. As such, repression is decentralised, creating fertile ground for ‘societal repression’, the main victims of which are those on the margins and the weaker segments of society such as minorities, women and the poor.
This repression is recreated at all levels of society as well as in a number of situations at schools, the work place, and even within families and homes. With a state policy that condones this form of repression, a society with extremely limited margins of freedom is created in both the public and the private spheres, with the burden lessening as one moves up the social ladder.
