With Us or Against Us: Difference between revisions
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In a nutshell, it's a form of extremism that does acknowledge that there is a gray area between black and white, but that everything that isn't white ''still'' is as bad as black. A [[Sub-Trope]] of [[False Dichotomy]].
In fiction, a [[Writer on Board]] will [[Anvilicious|hammer this point home]] through the use of [[Strawman Political
The [[Knight Templar]] and [[The Fundamentalist]] are characters prone to holding this particular belief due to their belief that they are "right" and the other people are "wrong." Totalitarian regimes ''love'' this trope, if your subjects have this mentality they will beg for your [[Big Brother Is Watching|protection]], thus a common theme in [[Dystopia
Note, this trope is not about whether any particular side is right or wrong, even the middle side. It's just about the views of people that the only right answer is their side, and ''nothing else''.
[[Truth in Television]], as anyone who has gone to a [[Flame War]] on a political or religious [[Message Board]] can attest. [[The Other Wiki]] [[wikipedia:Youchr(27)re either with us
See also [[Black and White Insanity]] and [[Activist Fundamentalist Antics]].
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== Anime and Manga ==
* ''[[One Piece]]'', but not if you are a main character: your [[Badass]] status allows you to be supportive or enemy of the World Government with abandon. Neutral countries, on the other hand, have to accept Government leadership, or their whole population will be deported and enslaved. Because the alternative is pirates, so...
* The Atlantic Federation of ''[[Gundam Seed]]'' does this with regards to [[The Kingdom|Orb]]. Orb has a mass driver, which the Atlantic Federation needs, so they give them this trope as an ultimatum.<ref>Admittedly, this was done mainly by [[Villain with Good Publicity|Muruta Azrael]]; the other leaders of the Atlantic Federation were very reluctant to go along with it</ref>
* In the ''[[Shaman King]]'' anime, this is the reason [[Knight Templar|the X-Laws]] hunt down Yoh and his friends. Like Marco said, they become "too powerful to let [them] be."
== Comic Books ==
* In [[Chick Tract
* When [[Steve Ditko]] took a heavy turn into Objectivism, his heroes started to preach his viewpoint. That "Mr. A" [[Alan Moore]] sings about? That was one of Ditko's, who claimed that man can either be good or evil with no in-between.
* ''[[Spider-Man]]: [[Brand New Day]]'' has [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|The Extermist]]. To him, you are either with the heroes or with the villains, and anyone who dares to criticize superheroes or even laugh at them is evil and schemes to blur the line between good and
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== Literature ==
* The concept of "War is Peace" in ''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four]]'' boils down to this trope.
* In the ''[[Sword of Truth]]'' series, one of the explicitly stated [[Aesop
** Similarly, the bad guys' whole belief system is based around the exact opposite idea, that your life should be spent only serving others, and if you are special in any way or, God forbid, try to enjoy life, you deserve everything the evil army is going to do to you. In fact, it's not so much "any other choice makes you wrong," as the only choices: Side with Richard (and probably be steamrolled by the Order anyway), be willingly oppressed by the Order and (probably) live, or get caught in between them and die either way. This is a world with no middle ground.
** And any nations or cities that chose neutrality in this war get the worst fate. In short, the series, from the time the [[The Empire|Imperial Order]] shows up, is one long [[False Dichotomy]].
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* ''[[Warhammer 40000]]'' demonstrates what happens when you mix this trope into a setting that runs on [[Black and Grey Morality]]. The results, from the Imperium of Man and Tau Empire, are not pretty. And in the ''[[Horus Heresy]]'' novels, this kind of view is expressed by many who are joining the traitors.
{{quote|'''Tarik Torgaddon''': If those are my choices, then I am against you.}}
* ''[[Forgotten Realms]]'' has a [[Church Militant|paladin Order of Samular]]. Once they hunted a demon and an elven community that happened to be between
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** By Act III, Meredith is so paranoid that she believes that anyone who disagrees with her is a blood mage's slave. She refuses to acknowledge the possibility that her fellow Templars might disagree with her entirely of their own free will. You're either with her, or with the blood mages. {{spoiler|This gets even more pronounced when she whips out her lyrium idol sword, which was the cause of Bartrand's insanity and also what pushes her to the edge.}}
** {{spoiler|By the end of the game, Anders has deteriorated to the point that anybody who does not explicitly share his exact opinions on mage freedom fighting is just as bad as an enemy. It's difficult to say how much of this is from Anders himself and how much comes from [[Enemy Within|Vengeance]].}}
* The AI in the [[Civilization]] series often act like this: trade with them, or be considered enemy, trade with their enemies and also be considered enemies. This is particulary visible in IV there its near impossible to stay neutral unless you have the forces and tech advance so noone want to wage war against you anyway, except you have a different religion as [[Trigger Happy|Isabella]], who envokes the
* Ulfric Stormcloak of [[Skyrim]] is like this. In the words of Jarl Balgruuf:
{{quote|'''Balgruuf (paraphrased)''': To not fight with him is to side against him!}}
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== Real Life ==
* This is one of the central ideas of the Objectivism philosophy (upon which ''The Sword of Truth'', see above, draws heavily). "A is A" and all
* Some laws have it as a required concept that this is ''sometimes'' if not ''always'' the case. If you welcome a distressed family member into your home, feed them, try to help them calm down, and then later find out that they are on the run from the cops, you have two choices. Report them to the cops, or be legally considered an accessory after the fact to whatever crime they have committed. (However, some jurisdiction allow you to protect ''family members'' without punishment.)
** A very slight extension of this extends to states who harbor elements like Al Qaeda. President [[George W. Bush]] used the Trope name in a speech speaking to other nations, stating that if they willingly harbored the enemy, they would be considered the enemy. He hardly ''invented'' that line of reasoning: its ''always'' been an act of war to willingly give one of the belligerents in an ongoing armed conflict safe harbor in your nation. That's why neutral powers during wars are required to intern combatants of either side that stray into their territory.
* [[George W. Bush]] famously said, "Either you're with us, or you're with the enemy; either you're with those who love freedom, or you're with those who hate innocent life."
** ''[[Mallard Fillmore]]'' remarked on a Liberal Professor pulling a [[Godwin's Law|Godwin]] on Bush's remark by reminding him that [[Not So Different|his generation was the one that made "You're either part of the solution or you're part of the problem" a famous rallying cry.]]
* As mentioned earlier, Message Boards. This mostly applies to religious and political boards, but can (and usually will) extend to everything else. Anyone who has spent enough time on boards will know that there's often topics where you either agree with a completely insane statement or you're branded as whatever is the opposite of the poster's ideology/beliefs/whatever (examples of popular insults: [[Dirty Communists|communist]]/[[Corrupt Corporate Executive|selfish capitalist]], [[Satan
* In Canada, the federal Public Safety minister tried to bully criticism about a pending online snooping act with the line "You either stand with us or the child pornographers" in the House of Commons. This statement caused howls noting that he is smearing every provincial Privacy Commissioner who expressed deep concerns about the bill and provoked online retaliation with many people twittering their minute personal details to the Minister while another threw all the court info of his messy divorce online.
* During the Rwanda genocide, moderate Hutus were targeted in addition to the Tutsis.
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