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[–] 7853663? 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago  (edited ago)

Yep. If you can trick people into identifying themselves just by what groups they belong to, then they'll be easy to control. You're no longer an individual with a complex personal history... you're a collection of the approved categories that you check off. It's demoralizing and disempowering, and robs people of their actual personal history.

Then you just need to control that group identity, which is a lot easier than trying to control how millions of individuals see themselves and others. It fits in with many people's natural pattern matching heuristics, so it's fiendishly easy to teach, and various groups have used it in different forms through history. The modern variant that's so popular in the western university system may be the most insidious, though.

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[–] effusive_ermine [S] 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago 

Don't forget the part where you accuse your enemies of doing exactly what you're doing, and then provoke conflicts so you can claim to be the victim. It works.