“Divide and rule, the politician cries; unite and lead, the wise man replies.” — Bertolt Brecht
The oldest political strategy in existence predates written history. Break the population into competing groups, set them against each other, and rule from above while they tear each other apart. It works in tribes. It works in nations. It works in empires. And it is working right now, on your phone, in your feed.
The Mechanics
There are three steps to a successful divide-and-rule campaign:
1. Identify a fault line. Every society has them. Ethnicity. Religion. Language. Class. Region. Urban vs. rural. Generation. Find the line that already exists and widen it.
2. Assign blame. The problem is not the system. The problem is them. Immigrants are taking your jobs. The coastal elite looks down on you. The rural population is holding the country back. The other ethnic group is getting preferential treatment. Any grievance can be weaponized.
3. Keep them fighting. As long as the population is fighting each other, they are not looking at the people at the top. The ruling class does not care who wins the culture war. They win either way.
Case Study: Rwanda (1994)
The Rwandan Genocide is the most extreme example of divide-and-rule propaganda in modern history. The Belgian colonial administration had created a false racial hierarchy: Tutsis were “superior” to Hutus based on pseudoscientific measurements. After independence, Hutu politicians weaponized this resentment.
In 1994, Hutu extremists used radio the most accessible medium to spread hate speech against Tutsis. The radio station RTLM called them “cockroaches” that needed to be exterminated. It told Hutus to “cut the tall trees.” The genocide was broadcast in real time. 800,000 people died in 100 days.
The fault line had always existed, but it was activated by propaganda. The same technique works with less bloodshed in every country the difference is only one of scale.
Case Study: The American Culture War
The United States does not have a single ethnic fault line. It has a dozen. Race. Abortion. Guns. Immigration. Religion. Education. Each one is amplified by media outlets that profit from polarization. Fox News and MSNBC do not report on the same country. They report on two different realities.
The result: Americans hate each other more than they hate their actual rulers. And while the left and right scream at each other about critical race theory and trans rights, the military budget increases, the tax cuts for the wealthy are made permanent, and nobody notices.
Carl Schmitt, the controversial German political theorist, defined politics as the distinction between “friend and enemy.” Divide-and-rule propaganda exploits this perfectly it creates enemies out of neighbors and friends out of oppressors.
The Ethiopian Angle
Ethiopia is a master class in divide-and-rule. The country has over 80 ethnic groups. Each successive regime has played them against each other.
The Derg under Mengistu pitted ethnic groups against one another while centralizing power. The EPRDF created an ethnic federal system that formally recognized identity while allowing the center to control everything. The current situation simmering conflicts in Amhara, Oromia, Tigray is the result of decades of ruling elites using ethnic identity as a tool of control.
The tragedy is that the divisions are real. They are not invented by propaganda but they are amplified by it. The fault lines existed before the propaganda. The propaganda made them unbridgeable.
Social Media as Accelerant
The algorithm loves division. It does not have a political preference it loves anger because anger drives engagement.
In Ethiopia, social media has been a disaster. Facebook and Telegram amplified hate speech during the Tigray War. The government shut down the internet multiple times not to stop the fighting, but to control the narrative. The platforms did not care who was right or wrong. They cared about minutes spent on site. Division is profitable.
How to Fight It
- Refuse the binary. You do not have to pick a side in every fight. Most real problems are not team sports.
- Ask who benefits. When you see a story designed to make you angry at another group, ask: who profits from this anger? It is usually not you.
- Talk to people outside your bubble. The algorithm wants you to hate the other side. Real human contact makes that harder.
- Focus on class. The richest people in every country have more in common with each other than with their poorest countrymen. Divide-and-rule works because it keeps the working class fighting among themselves while the owning class takes everything.
coming soon… The Enemy Image — Propaganda 101