In the history of the world suppressing part of the people, even a minority has NEVER worked in the long run.
The Egyptians tried it, the Greeks tried it, the Romans tried it, French and Russian aristocrats tried it, the Nazis tried it, South Africa tried it, the eastern German Republic tried it, none ever succeeded in suppressing anything, they had to keep increasing the force they were using and the more force they used the more violence they got back.
On start they all thought some 10% or so of the population isn't a problem, we can either lock them up or kill them, but as increasing governmental force caused increasing resistance, in the end they all had to realize, you cannot lock up or kill 90% of the population in an attempt to run politics that only the top 0.1% of the population benefit from, because there always comes the point where the mass of those who no longer agree with the government becomes so big that the ones on top cannot keep them under control anymore. That usually happens when either the police or the military switches sides, because police officers and/or soldiers are no longer willing to shoot unarmed civilians.
The only difference between old times and nowadays is that these things develop much much faster, where the Egyptians and Romans were able to keep going for centuries, racism in South Africa lasted only 41 years and the Nazis were done after 12 years.
The best quote I ever heard came from Richard Wolff (US economist) who went through the list of all these attempts and when he got to the French aristocrats he summarized how it ended with "they didn't see it coming until they not only got separated from their wealth but also from their heads".
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