A government engages in human rights abuses to suppress dissent by the public. Human rights abuses piss off the population and make people sympathetic to dissenters. The government responds by increasing human rights abuses to suppress the increase in dissent. The people respond by becoming stronger dissenters due to growing disgust at the increase in human rights abuses.
What is the name for this situation? The solution (engage in human rights abuses) is the cause of the problem that it seeks to solve (a public that is angry at an unfair government)?
It is also what terrorists are doing when they set off bombs or shoot up cafés. They make sure that everyone knows that they are Jeddi: The government and the rest of the population start to persecute Jeddi, who are mostly totally innocent. This drives more of them into the ranks of the terrorists and so on.
The solution is not a solution, its a naive attempt at solving the problem.
Vicious cycles do occur in biology , but they do not in conscious thought.
An example of a biological vicious cycle… You lose weight, but in winter because you no longer have a layer of insulating fat, you have to eat high energy food when outside, get addicted to it.
You’d call the government short sighted, or reactive rather than planning.
You’d call the reaction a knee jerk reaction.
The wrong path, whether biological or conscious, could be called a “slippery slope”.