With Us or Against Us in Literature.
- The concept of "War is Peace" in Nineteen Eighty-Four boils down to this trope.
- In "The Bleeding Man", the government official implies that the doctor's lack of enthusiasm for her plans would be troubling to the government higher-ups.
- In Darkness at Noon, Rubashov recalls having enforced the principle that not to be absolutely with the Party was to be against the Revolution, and realizes he is doomed by that same principle now that the Party has decided to destroy him.
- Invoked by both sides near the end of Deryni Checkmate, during the acrimonious Interdict debate in the Curia which began the schism in the Gwyneddian Church. At one point, Cardiel addresses a couple of junior bishops: "Siward? Gilbert? Do you stand with us? Or with Loris?" Loris finally hangs the lampshade when Cardiel (host of the assembly in Dhassa) orders him to leave: "Then it is war. All who side with the enemy shall be counted as the enemy. There can be no other alternative."
- Something of a Zig-Zagged Trope in The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri. Illustrated in the form of this quote."The darkest places in Hell are reserved for those who remain neutral in times of a moral crisis."
- Considering what happened to him (The Other Wiki has a lot of information on that), this view becomes understandable in hindsight.
- In The Illuminatus! Trilogy, Hagbard Celine says, "People who say, 'You are either a part of the problem or a part of the solution' are usually the former."
- This was one common slogan activists used in The '60s, making it a Take That!.
- In the Left Behind books, during the Tribulation, it eventually comes down to joining God or joining the Global Community, as both sides end up squashing any sign of neutrality on the issue.
- Belgarath defines the battle at the core of The Malloreon as "them and us" at one point (as opposed to "good and evil", which he considers a dangerous game to start playing).
- In A Song of Ice and Fire Melisandre believes that people either are on the side of her god R'hllor or that of the Great Other. She uses the analogy of a half-rotten onion to prove to Ser Davos that a man who is half-evil is still evil, not good.
- Cersei has the more selfish, very paranoid form of this: either you are on her side (and agree with almost everything she says or does), or you're an enemy she must belittle, control, side-line and/or get rid of. The pool of people "on her side" — isn't all that great in size, and it gets smaller book by book as she turns on even those who were genuinely on her side at some point. See, if you disagree with her and she has some emotional investment in what you're unhappy about, you just have to be an enemy now. It's that simple. It goes about as well as you'd imagine. If not worse.
- King Aerys "The Mad" Targaryen was very much like Cersei in that it was his own self-centred paranoia that eventually turned him into a side of one vs pretty much the whole Kingdom. Cersei's own brother, Jaime, eventually put him out of his (and everybody else's) misery, the poor sod.
- In the Sword of Truth series, one of the explicitly stated Aesops is that our lives are our own, and we should do with them as we choose. Not a horribly warped lesson, right? Yet Goodkind turns this into a Broken Aesop with parts of the rest of the books that claim the only "real" choice for our lives is to fall in line with his views, and that any other choice just makes you as wrong than the bad guys. Even if people have been lied to all their lives, like the Hakens in Soul of the Fire, they either side with Richard, or they have crossed the Moral Event Horizon, and should die like the evil swine they are.
- Similarly, the bad guys' whole belief system is based around the exact opposite idea, that your life should be spent only serving others, and if you are special in any way or, God forbid, try to enjoy life, you deserve everything the evil army is going to do to you. In fact, it's not so much "any other choice makes you wrong," as the only choices: Side with Richard (and probably be steamrolled by the Order anyway), be willingly oppressed by the Order and (probably) live, or get caught in between them and die either way. This is a world with no middle ground.
- In The Thrawn Trilogy, Borsk Fey'lya sees his political rivals as his enemies. He's not above leaving them to die, and thinks that everyone else thinks in similar terms. Thrawn in fact counts on Fey'lya acting this way to paralyze the New Republic and dispose of the people who pose a real danger to him, like Admiral Ackbar. This is a trait that most Bothan share; Bothan society
is based around a system where the pursuit of power and influence were paramount, and it was quite normal to use backstabbing, political maneuvering and character assassinations against others to gain influence. However, they previously only did it within their own society; Borsk was either unable or unwilling to see that other races didn't operate this way. Thrawn, having analyzed species' psychology based on their artwork, knew and took full advantage of it. - In Thud!, the narrator discusses the increasing dwarf/troll conflict and its effect of causing dwarfs and trolls to resign from the Ankh-Morpork City Watch:Some people would be asking: Whose side are you on? If you're not with us, you're against us. Huh. If you're not an apple, you're a banana!
- X-Wing Series: Elscol Loro, an anti-Imperial fighter who's much more extreme than the New Republic, has come to believe this by The Bacta War. She tells Iella that there's no way to really stay "neutral". Either you're with the Empire or against them. Attempting to not get involved just tacitly supports the status quo of the Empire. As a result, she claims she'll target civilians if they don't wake up and side with her fight, but Iella reins her in.
