With Us or Against Us: Difference between revisions

 

See also [[Black and White Insanity]] and [[Activist Fundamentalist Antics]].

 

== Anime and Manga ==

* In [[Chick Tract|Chick Tracts]], anyone who does not agree with Jack Chick's particular breed of fundamentalist Protestant Christianity is doomed to burn in hell. Even other Christians who have ''slightly'' different views are completely evil.

* 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.

 

 

 

== Literature ==

* In the ''[[Sword of Truth]]'' series, one of the explicitly stated [[Aesop|Aesops]] is that our lives are our own, and we should do with them as we choose. Not a horribly warped lesson, right? Yet Goodkind turns this into a [[Broken Aesop]] with parts of the rest of the books that claim the only "real" choice for our lives is to fall in line with his views, and that any other choice just makes you as wrong than the bad guys. Even if people have been lied to all their lives, like the Hakens in ''Soul of the Fire'', they either side with Richard, or they have crossed the [[Moral Event Horizon]], and should die like the evil swine they are.

** 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.

** 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."

* 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|Satanist]]/[[Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions|superstitious nutjob]], far-left/far-right, [[Depraved Homosexual|homosexual]]/[[Heteronormative Crusader|homophobe]] [this one usually appears just for opposing ANY opinion]). [[Troll|Trolls]] are often to blame for this.

* 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.

[[Category:Politics Tropes]]

[[Category:With Us Or Against Us]]