“Superfluous people in the service of brute power….” — Ryszard Kapuściński

“It is an interesting subject: superfluous people in the service of brute power … these people to whom no one pays attention, whom no one needs, can form into a crowd, a throng, a mob, which has an opinion about everything, has time for everything and would like to participate in something, mean something. All dictatorships take advantage of this idle magma. …It suffices to reach out to these people searching for some significance in life. Give them the sense that they can be of use, that someone is counting on them for something, that they have been noticed, that they have a purpose. .. The dictatorial powers, meantime, have in him an inexpensive — free, actually — yet zealous and omnipresent agent-tentacle. Sometimes it is difficult even to call this man an agent; he is merely someone who wants to be recognized, who strives to be visible, seeking to remind the authorities of his existence, who remains always eager to render a service.”

— from Travels with Herodotus by one of my favorite writers, Ryszard Kapuściński