Been pointing out again to students in my survey class that the National Party in South Africa won an election in 1948 with a minority of the popular vote among almost exclusively white voters. 1/

How? Because rural Afrikaans-speaking voters were given disproportionately heavy weight in awarding parliamentary seats. Because white voters were afraid of losing control to a very substantial non-white majority. 2/

What did the National Party do? Well, establish apartheid, which hurt everyone, white and black, for the next 40+ years: people died, were tortured, imprisoned, and the country's potential was horribly circumscribed. 3/

All to prevent an outcome which was going to happen eventually no matter what. And you know what else they did, *immediately*, after 1948? 4/

As part of apartheid? They made it impossible for any white opposition to ever win an election against the National Party, And they made all other forms of dissent illegal. They did it with bureaucracy rather than strutting peacock authoritarianism. 5/

That's why governments formed by popular minorities that treat their assumption of power as something that can never be turned back and redefine all opposition as illegal are to be feared in any even nominally democratic system. Oppose them at all costs. They will bury everyone.