An integral part of authoritarianism is cruelty. How else can you assert that you have unalienable authority over a group of people? If compliance with authority is easy and painless, you don't really know if people are just acquiescing but silently resisting or not resisting yet but could if they wanted to. By enacting cruelty on others you put them in a position where they absolutely would resist if they could, and thus you demonstrate to the world that people cannot resist your authority.
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