Two people who barely know each other discover that they dislike the same person. Conversation suddenly becomes easy. Awkward experiences receive a shared explanation, and each feels confirmed: you saw what I saw; we are on the same side.

That closeness is not necessarily false. People harmed by the same conduct may need one another to verify facts and escape isolation. Shared anger can make accountability and protection possible. Opposition is often a legitimate beginning for solidarity.

The danger is a bond that cannot survive without its target. Every meeting renews the case against the disliked person; anyone who complicates the story appears disloyal. The enemy no longer names a problem to solve but supplies the group with identity. Internal differences can remain untouched because attention is repeatedly sent outward.

Such cohesion is powerful and brittle. It cannot answer what the members are for once the opponent disappears. A stable association must gradually turn toward positive work: What are we protecting? What rules would prevent repetition? Would we judge the same conduct similarly if one of us committed it? These questions replace “we are not them” with an account of what “we” will do.

Shared contempt also offers moral permission. Once the target represents the bad side, exaggeration and cruelty feel righteous. But opposing harm does not require copying its methods. Facts, boundaries, and accountability can unite people without making dehumanization the ceremony by which they reassure one another.

Some friendships genuinely begin in shared opposition and grow beyond it. People find projects, forms of care, and room for disagreement that no longer depend on a common object of hatred. If closeness exists only while discussing someone else's failure, however, the participants may not yet know each other. They know only the positions they occupy together against a third person.