All societies have laws and all of these laws are enforced through creating the threat of punishment, which is the primary reason people follow particularly oppressive forms of government. Through this threat fear is created which ends up being the supreme authority. Whoever controls this fear not only has the power has to keep people in control but also the potential to create actual loyalty. In Richard Wright’s “Living the Ethics of Jim Crow”, he nearly stares death and only survives by caving in to the system he is faced with. By doing this he is acknowledging to his oppressors that it’s okay to do these things because there is none of that threat of punishment for him to utilize.
An example of fear not just creating control but loyalty to an oppressive system is in Harrison Bergeron. The citizens living in that story had to be handicapped and their best abilities were held back. If they disobeyed they would face severe punishment, but there was only one instance of resistance in the story. In fact the system created a case of mass Stockholm syndrome, a physiological occurrence in which a hostage of sorts not only submits to a captor but empathizes and will vigorously defend their captor, and although this is a fictional story, the principle of loyalty through fear is very much possible.
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