The power of the group has a hold on humans like no other. Being excluded is a primal fear that goes back to the cave man days, when being forced out of the group meant certain death. It was impossible for any man to survive alone at that time, let alone a woman with small children.
That fear still kicks in when there is very real danger of being shunned from the group. That's what all the hard hard virtue signaling is about: "See, I'm still one of you! Don't kick me out! Please! I'll die if you do literally die from The Virus. I'll do anything to stay in the group where I will be safe and protected!"
Anything at all. Including cutting off family and friends. Ratting out neighbors. Ratting out family and friends.
That's how the Nazis got the brownshirts to do all that in the 1930s: Threatened them with social shunning for not following the party line. And it worked.
The power of the group has a hold on humans like no other. Being excluded is a primal fear that goes back to the cave man days, when being forced out of the group meant certain death. It was impossible for any man to survive alone at that time, let alone a woman with small children.
That fear still kicks in when there is very real danger of being shunned from the group. That's what all the hard hard virtue signaling is about: "See, I'm still one of you! Don't kick me out! Please! I'll die if you do literally die from The Virus. I'll do anything to stay in the group where I will be safe and protected!"
Anything at all. Including cutting off family and friends. Ratting out neighbors. Ratting out family and friends.
That's how the Nazis got the brownshirts to do all that in the 1930s: Threatened them with social shunning for not following the party line. And it worked.
It's working now, too.