Social psychology

Der Mitläufer is two words with one spelling. In an office or a club it is mildly contemptuous: somebody who goes along with whatever the majority wants, never objects and never leads. In German history it is a formal category. The denazification tribunals of the post-war years sorted people into five groups, and Mitläufer was the fourth: those who had joined or supported the regime without, in the tribunal’s judgement, carrying serious guilt of their own. The label was a verdict, and a lenient one. The historical sense has never quite left the everyday one, which is why calling a colleague a Mitläufer lands harder in German than ‘follower’ does in English. The rest of this list names what makes people go along — der Konformitätsdruck, der vorauseilende Gehorsam — and the rarer thing that makes them refuse, die Zivilcourage.