Material privilege and status rewards cement loyalty to a violent regime

Evidence

The graduates were granted control over junior recruits who catered to their wishes. The graduates also were provided with a host of special privileges such as fancy clothes, free use of cars, free travel, and tickets to entertainment events. … In this brutal transformation, the military junta took ordinary farm boys and turned them into extraordinary torturers. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 675

Categorization

• SEED: Article angle: how regimes buy moral complicity with consumer privilege — the rural-poor recruitment base and the material corruption that locks in loyalty.
• XREF: connects to: Moi’s patronage politics deliberately heightened ethnic salience for regime survival — Johan Brosché and Hanne Fjelde and Kristine Höglund, Electoral violence and the legacy of…, 51; Regime capacity to mobilize violence depends on patron-client networks and assets — Johan Brosché and Hanne Fjelde and Kristine Höglund, Electoral violence and the legacy of…, 83; Social-movement activity depends on regime-backed rights to endure retaliation — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 1178 (+2 more)