Fear of retribution compels even principled resisters into supporting violence

Evidence

It so happens that a person who would be prepared to make very great sacrifices in order to stop the domination of violence, is compelled to support it, strengthen it and associate with it… . He cannot think to resort to the law, because the probability of being shot for those who do so is far too high for him to expose himself lightly … External circumstances impose themselves on - everyone, irrespective of the inclinations of his mind (Franchetti The ability to use violence, whether direct or in the form of a credible threat, is a generalized ingredient of mafioso behaviour. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 2204

Categorization

• XREF: Mirrors how Saramago’s blind victims are driven to associate with and feed their captors despite moral revulsion — rational compliance under credible threat. — connects to: Defeated officials often redirect vengeance onto what their enemies love — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 2889; Security-force killings of activists triggered escalatory cycles of mourning and reprisal — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 603; Institutional power responds to community defiance with retaliation and decisive action. — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up: Environmental…, 440
• BMF: Echoes the coerced-compliance pattern in the doctor’s wife and the group in Blindness, who must obey armed captors to survive — though that is this same book, not in the reading list.