The sanction of the victim

That looter from the State Science Institute was scared when I refused to help him pretend that he was just an honest buyer of my Metal. [...] Why should he have been scared? He has the guns, the jails, the laws—he could have seized the whole of my mills, if he wished, and nobody would have risen to defend me, and he knew it—so why should he have cared what I thought? But he did. It was I who had to tell him that he wasn't a looter, but my customer and friend. That's what he needed from me. [...] they want us to pretend that we see the world as they pretend they see it. They need some sort of sanction from us.

Ayn Rand - Atlas Shrugged

2009-03-30