“
Human bodies will forever keep the dictators awake at night with a mixture of love and hatred. Fleshy human bodies are the vessels of ingratiation but are also the tools of sedition. Without these bodies the rulers would have nothing to rule over. However, what fills them with silent dread are associations amongst these human bodies. From the perspective of an autocracy, “excessive closeness” between two human bodies is not permitted because it may set off a sort of avalanche effect—it may cause “excessive closeness” between even more and more human bodies which will set off “excessive closeness” between innumerable human bodies. Dictators despise this sort of outcome. Associations between human bodies are the source of their paranoia and will forever keep them worrying awake at night.
This is the autocracy’s Achilles’ heel; they are delighted when with the wave of a hand they can control gatherings of people such as reviews of the troops or patriotic assemblies. What they fear the most are gatherings of people that they cannot control with the wave of a hand, such as any manner of protests, such as twitterers’ scrutiny of the case of the three Fujian netizens who were wrongly accused, or such as the two grass mud horse banquets that were held last evening.
”— Xu Hui (许晖), “The Symbolic Association of Grass Mud Horses”
