Stockholm syndrome gets romanticized like everything else. Movies dress it up as tragic devotion, songs paint it as twisted but beautiful. That’s bullshit. Stockholm syndrome is survival math. If you can’t escape the hand strangling you, you convince yourself the hand is keeping you safe. You call the leash a lifeline. You defend the captor because the alternative—facing the void without them—is worse.
In empire collapse, Stockholm thinking spreads like a virus. Citizens defend their cages because freedom feels too big, too terrifying. They rewrite cruelty as care. They convince themselves the surveillance is protection, the rationing is generosity, the punishment is fairness. That’s not weakness. That’s adaptation. That’s the human brain doing whatever it takes to keep breathing in a system designed to crush it.
Bunny is the perfect metaphor. She can’t help it. She loves the leash. Not because it’s soft, but because without it she’s nothing. That’s the tragedy. Bunny doesn’t know where she ends and the empire begins. She’s rewritten herself so many times to fit the system that her own thoughts are indistinguishable from propaganda. It’s not devotion. It’s erasure.
And yet, once you fall into that mindset, you’ll fight anyone who tries to free you. That’s the part people never talk about. Stockholm victims don’t just endure oppression—they defend it. They argue with the rebels. They report dissenters. They protect the very thing that breaks them. Because if they admit the system is wrong, they have to admit their survival strategy was built on lies. That’s unbearable.
Stockholm isn’t romance. It’s survival. And that’s what makes it terrifying. Because it works. Empires don’t last on violence alone. They last on citizens who convince themselves the violence is love.
I’ve watched this play out in daily life too. How many people defend jobs that chew them alive because “at least it pays the bills”? How many defend relationships that starve them emotionally because “at least they’re not alone”? That’s Stockholm logic. And the empire knows it. They exploit it.
RAW Empire branding weaponizes this truth. We don’t hide the leash. We glitch it, fracture it, make it obvious. “Follow the Bunny” isn’t a comfort slogan. It’s a dare. It’s a reminder that if you’re defending the hand strangling you, you’re already halfway erased. The only way out is to admit the leash isn’t love. It’s a noose.