Why populations fall in love with the people who are destroying them
by J. Gloomy – Faculty of Political & Social Sciences
Landen, 2026
Summary
Governments killed more of their OWN unarmed citizens in the last century than all wars combined. 262 million people. Scientists call this democide = death by government.
We always ask: “How can leaders be so cruel?”
We never ask: “How can people be so obedient?”
This thesis says: Every successful democide needs two things. A murderous government AND a population that has fallen in love with its kidnapper. Just like in a bank robbery where hostages start defending the robber, a whole country can develop People’s Stockholm Syndrome.
1. What is Democide?
Democide is not the same as genocide. Genocide is killing people because of their ethnicity. Democide is bigger: it’s any murder by a government against its own people.
It includes:
- concentration camps
- man-made famines like the Holodomor in Ukraine
- forced labor camps like the Gulag
- secret police killing squads
- policies where the government KNOWS people will die, but does it anyway
The formula is simple:
Total Power + Extreme Ideology – Freedom = Democide
A real democracy has never committed democide against its own people. It only happens when power is absolute.
Every democide has the same 3 steps:
Step 1: Labeling. The government divides people into “THE GOOD PEOPLE” vs “THE ENEMY.” Enemies used to be called kulaks, Jews, counter-revolutionaries. Today they might be called anti-vaxxers, climate deniers, farmers, or extremists.
Step 2: Making it legal. Murder becomes paperwork. You get decrees, lists, QR codes, camps. It’s no longer murder, it’s “following the rules.”
Step 3: Flipping good and evil. Murder becomes a GOOD deed. If you don’t participate, YOU are the bad person. “If you don’t wear a mask, you will kill grandma.” “We have to destroy the kulaks to save the children.”
2. What is People’s Stockholm Syndrome?
You know regular Stockholm Syndrome: A robber takes 4 people hostage in a bank. After 3 days, the hostages defend the robber. Why?
Because of 4 conditions:
- Your life is in danger
- The bad guy sometimes gives you something small and nice
- You are isolated – you only hear his story
- You can’t escape
Now imagine a government does this to 80 million people for 70 years.
Then you don’t get 4 confused people. You get a confused CULTURE.
People’s Stockholm Syndrome is when a population under constant threat from the state falls in love with that state to survive. They start to think like the oppressor, believe its ideology, and even attack other citizens who rebel.
Your brain can’t handle this thought: “The person who is supposed to protect me wants to kill me.” It’s too painful.
So your brain flips it: “The person who wants to kill me is actually protecting me.”
3. The 4 Ways It Works
1. Learned Helplessness
If you are punished randomly and constantly – random rules, random lockdowns, random taxes – you learn one thing: fighting back is useless. So you stop fighting. You even start asking the government: “Please tell us what to do.”
2. The Brain Needs an Excuse
You did something that feels wrong. You snitched on your neighbor. You cheered while your own family starved. To not feel guilty, you NEED to believe it was for a good cause. That’s what ideology is for. Communism, fascism, but also words like “public health” or “safety” can work as a painkiller for your conscience.
3. The Victim, Savior, Villain Triangle
The government plays all roles. It creates the danger – virus, climate crisis, fascists. Then it says: “We are your SAVIORS.” And it points to a scapegoat: “THEY are the villains.” The people stay forever the victim, and therefore forever dependent on the savior.
4. We Start Policing Each Other
The state doesn’t need to hit everyone. It hits one person, and everyone else starts hitting each other to earn the state’s love. This is the most twisted part. The oppressed become the biggest police officers.
In East Germany there were 189,000 secret citizen informants. On social media today, there are millions of volunteer censors. People who do the government’s work for free.
4. Real Examples
Example A: Soviet Union – 60+ million dead.
Stalin took all the grain from farmers. Farmers starved. But many farmers still cheered for Stalin. Why? Because they believed the sacrifice was needed for a perfect future utopia. And if someone doubted? His OWN neighbors reported him. That’s People’s Stockholm Syndrome in its purest form.
Example B: Nazi Germany.
It wasn’t just fear. Many Germans truly LOVED Hitler because he brought order after years of chaos. Small kindnesses – jobs, highways, pride. Those small kindnesses made the huge cruelty acceptable.
Example C: The Modern Soft Version.
No camps. But social death. If you didn’t have the right pass, you couldn’t work, travel, or go to school. And the crazy part was not the pressure from above, but the hate from below. People who complied were angry at people who didn’t – not angry at the government that pressured both of them. Classic hostage behavior: hostages fighting each other instead of the hostage-taker.
5. How Do You Know If You Have It? And How Do You Heal?
You can test yourself with 3 questions:
- The Language Test: Do you use the EXACT same moral words as the government to judge your neighbor?
- The Empathy Test: Do you feel more empathy for the government than for the government’s victims?
- The Freedom Test: Are you more scared of being free and responsible for yourself, than you are of being controlled?
You can’t heal someone from Stockholm Syndrome by arguing with facts. If you tell a hostage “your kidnapper is bad!”, they will defend him even more.
Healing needs 3 steps:
- Distance. First, the hostage situation has to stop. Turn off state propaganda for 30 days. No TV news.
- Get your power back. Do small things yourself again. Grow your own food. Trade with your neighbor. Build things without permission.
- Truth and Grief. Only when you are safe can you mourn what you did and what you let happen. Without grief, there is no healing.
6. Final Thought
Democide is not some weird thing from history books. It is the default result when power gets too concentrated and nobody can stop it.
People’s Stockholm Syndrome is the glue that makes it possible. As long as we think the state is our savior, we will allow it to be our executioner.
So the question is not: “Will it happen again?”
The question is: “Do we see it happening right now?”
And the most uncomfortable question of all:
Where am I suffering from People’s Stockholm Syndrome myself?
Core books to read if you want to go deeper:
- R.J. Rummel – Death by Government
- Hannah Arendt – The Origins of Totalitarianism
- Joost Meerloo – The Rape of the Mind – the original book about how governments murder the mind
