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JOYCE MCMILLAN for The Scotsman 21.9.12 _______________________________________
DIVIDE AND RULE. THROUGHOUT history, it has been the favourite maxim of oppressive rulers; and it has never been deployed with more success that in the United States and Britain, since the fateful tipping-point – just a generation ago – when our societies began to shift from an age of progress and growing equality, into the present age of reaction.
So last week, we saw how the strategy of divide-and-rule worked to protect South Yorkshire police in the aftermath of the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, when those who died were portrayed to the rest of Britain as drunken thugs, alien to respectable citizens like themselves. And this week, we saw Mitt Romney, Republican candidate for the Presidency of the United States, dismissing half of the voters in his own country – the ones who vote Democrat – as lazy slobs, who pay no…
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