
Apparently, the term salami tactics - also known as the salami-slice strategy - was coined in the late 1940s by one of Satan's most beloved little helpers, Hungarian communist dictator Mátyás Rákosi who boasted of dividing and, eventually, destroying non-communist political parties in Hungary by "slicing them off like pieces of salami." According to Infogalactic, Rákosi employed the tactic in the following manner:
By portraying his opponents as fascists (or at the very least fascist sympathizers), he was able to get the opposition to slice off its right wing, then its centrists, then the more courageous left wingers, until only those fellow travelers willing to collaborate with the Communists remained in power.
Though many credit Rákosi with the term salami tactics, the American economist Thomas C Schelling assured the world that salami tactics were invented by a child:
Tell a child not to go in the water and he’ll sit on the bank and submerge his bare feet; he is not yet ‘in’ the water. Acquiesce, and he’ll stand up; no more of him is in the water than before. Think it over, and he’ll start wading, not going any deeper; take a moment to decide whether this is different and he’ll go a little deeper, arguing that since he goes back and forth it all averages out. Pretty soon we are calling to him not to swim out of sight, wondering whatever happened to all our discipline.
I like Schelling's example because it illustrates the "baby-step" process inherent in salami tactics - just one small slice . . . okay, just one more . . . I think I need two slices this time . . . okay, two more . . . don't complain - you still have the salami! . . . I'm going to need three slices this time around, I'm afraid . . .
And so on until all of the sudden the salami is gone. This is referred to more commonly as "salami slicing" which Infogalactic defines as:
. . . a series of many small actions, often performed by clandestine means, that as an accumulated whole produces a much larger action or result that would be difficult or unlawful to perform all at once. The term is typically used pejoratively. Although salami slicing is often used to carry out illegal activities, it is only a strategy for gaining an advantage over time by accumulating it in small increments, so it can be used in perfectly legal ways as well.
The bulk of the fake birdemic response measures implemented since 2020 have been a masterclass in salami slicing. It's just two weeks . . . it's just a mask . . . it's just a peck . . . etc. I suspect most have seen the memes, so I won't elaborate further.
I mention salami slicing and salami tactics in this post because my employers - both of them - have begun using these methods against me in a manipulative effort to get me to accept the peck as a condition of employment.
As I watch both of my employers sharpen their knives in anticipation of some good old salami-slicing fun, I am struck by how obvious salami slicing and salami tactics are. They were obvious when the Establishment announced they only needed "two weeks to flatten the curve" back in 2020; they are obvious in the divide and conquer strategy of pecked versus unpecked, and they are obvious in my workplaces, both of which are threatening to furlough me for having the incomprehensible audacity of refusing to be pecked in the name of "none are safe until all are safe."
Well, my employers can sharpen their knives all they want because the only thing I'm giving them to slice is air. Nevertheless, going through the process at a more personal level got me thinking: How can tactics that are so obvious be so brutally effective?
It doesn't take long to understand that when it comes to politics and society, salami tactics and salami slicing depend entirely on the willingness and cooperation of the party against which these sorts of tactics are deployed. Put another way, the salami only gets sliced if the other party allows the salami to get sliced. Moreover, the salami-slicing ends the moment the other party takes the salami off the table, so to speak.
And yet here we are.
We are nearly two years into a still largely unnoticed global totalitarian coup and an absurd birdemic narrative and yet the vast majority are perfectly content to let the salami slicing continue.
I'm not sure how much of the salami is actually left at this point, but I get the sense we're getting awfully close to that little metal ring that encircles the end.