Authorities can redirect authoritarian aggression toward almost any target

Evidence

If social deviants and certain minority groups provide ready targets for authoritarian aggression, others can be victims as well. The authoritarian is more likely to attack a conventional person than a nonauthoritarian is, if an established authority sanctions it. This power of authority figures to direct the hostility of authoritarians against almost any target increases the danger of authoritarian aggression to all in a society. — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 153

Categorization

• XREF: This is the mechanism behind Milgram’s switchboard condition and Eichmann-style bureaucratized atrocity — authoritarians as herdable weapons.
• SEED: An essay angle: how every totalitarian regime’s first move is capturing the authority figure whose nod releases the mob’s aggression — the Führerprinzip as an aggression-switching mechanism.