Salami tactics

Salami tactics, also known as the salami-slice strategy, is a divide and conquer process of threats and alliances used to overcome opposition. With it, an aggressor can influence and eventually dominate a landscape, typically political, piece by piece. In this fashion, the opposition is eliminated "slice by slice" until one realizes (too late) that it is gone in its entirety. In some cases it includes the creation of several factions within the opposing political party and then dismantling that party from the inside, without causing the 'sliced' sides to protest. Salami tactics are most likely to succeed when the perpetrators keep their true long-term motives hidden and maintain a posture of cooperativeness and helpfulness while engaged in the intended gradual subversion.

The term Salami tactics (Hungarian: szalámitaktika) was coined in the late 1940s by the orthodox communist leader Mátyás Rákosi to describe the actions of the Hungarian Communist Party. Rakosi claimed he destroyed the non-Communist parties by "cutting them off like slices of salami." 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.

The term is also known as a "piecemeal strategy", as used by the Nazi Party (which used the term Gleichschaltung) to achieve absolute power in Germany in the early months of 1933. First, there was the Reichstag fire of February 27, 1933, which rattled the German population and led to the Reichstag Fire Decree, which suspended many civil liberties and outlawed the Communist Party and the Social Democrats. An estimated 10,000 people were arrested in two weeks, soon followed by the Enabling Act on March 24, 1933, which gave Hitler plenary power, allowing him to bypass the Reichstag and further consolidate power. Hitler and the Nazis continued to systematically establish totalitarian control by eliminating potential opponents, such as trade unions and rival political parties. They also established organizations with mandatory membership, such as the Hitler Youth, Bund Deutscher Mädel and Arbeitsdienst. The Enabling Act was renewed in 1937 and 1941. Finally, on April 26, 1942, the Reichstag passed a law making Hitler the oberster Gerichtsherr, the supreme judge of the land, giving him power of life and death over every citizen and effectively extending the Enabling Act for the rest of the war. This gradual process of amassing power is today lumped in as Salamitaktik (salami tactics).

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