Well, if you want easy... check out Undermining. Every enemy ship you destroy gives you 30 Merits
https://elite-dangerous.fandom.com/wiki/Merits . So set up your Cutter (if you really need to - I prefer a 'vette or a Krait Mk.II for pewpew) for this sort of combat (include an interdictor), hop into any of Zac Hudson's control systems and kill everything with "Federal" in its name. As long as you restrict yourself to these PP ships (and you're pledged to an enemy power), this won't (shouldn't - you never know with FD's bugs) give you notoriety and only a nominal powerplay bounty per kill (easily paid off once you reach rating 4 - and that's only 50 kills).
Once you killed enough, the Fed hunters will come to you so you won't need to interdict as many.
If you play in Open, that will (could) also get you into conflict with players supporting (in this example) Zac Hudson (if there are any left...). Last time I did this (in my case, eradicating Denton Patreus' ships), though, none of the player Anacondas I saw in SC was interested

.