Induced complicity in murder binds members to the movement while front organizations lend respectability

Evidence

Nothing binds people to each other stronger than shared responsibility for an act that they admit is criminal. Commonsensically, we explain this kind of solidarity by the natural wish to escape punishment; the game theorists’ analyses of the famous ‘prisoner’s dilemma’ also teach us that (providing no one confuses the stakes) to assume that the rest of the team will remain solidary is the most rational decision any member may make. We may wonder, however, to what extent the accomplices’ solidarity is brought about and reinforced by the fact that only the members of the team which originally engaged in the sequential action are likely to conspire to defuse the paradox, and by common consent offer some credibility to the belief in the legitimacy of past action in spite of the growing evidence to the contrary. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 454 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Front organizations are two-way facades for the movement and the outside world; Organized violence creates member security that validates the movement’s fictitious world; Shared responsibility for criminal acts binds accomplices together — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 454 (+1 more)

Related

• Shared responsibility for criminal acts binds accomplices together (similarity 0.88)

Broader Connections

• Organized violence creates member security that validates the movement’s fictitious world #corroborates (0.85)
• Shared responsibility for criminal acts binds accomplices together #corroborates (0.82) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 454
• The front-organization structure recurs at every level inside the movement #expands (0.78)