Night Watch

Spoiler Warning: The following article contains plot details regarding the television show Babylon 5. If you are familiar with this work and know how it ends, or don't care whether you find out in advance, feel free to read on.

In Babylon 5, the Night Watch organization initially offers members 50 credits per week to join; the only requirements are:

• members must wear black logo armbands (essentially an Arbitrary Requirement, since these armbands serve no clear function)
• members must help their fellow humans to cope emotionally in the current difficult times
• members must be loyal to Earth

After some time passes, and the political situation has evolved somewhat, Night Watch membership is used to coerce recruits who are otherwise well-intentioned into performing more and more questionable activities (Gradually Increasing Requirements), with the threat of treason used to prevent members from leaving (Asymmetric Entry-Exit). Loyalty "to Earth", initially presented as being fairly abstract and more or less on a level with loyalty to humankind, is refined to mean loyalty to a particular organization which claims sovereignity over Earth (and which created the Night Watch as a way of ensuring popular support desipite their unethical activities). "Helping fellow humans to cope emotionally" is carefully equivocated ("coping emotionally" means we must stamp out negative thoughts; critical thoughts are, of course, negative by nature -- especially any thoughts which are critical of the government's efforts to "help everyone cope") to justify the act of reporting "disloyal" speech, and of arresting those reported to have spoken such. Ultimately "helping people to cope" and similar phrases are used to justify just about anything the government wants to justify.

See also 1984.