Idealogical Totalism with Andrew

Summary

It Could Happen Here

Episode: Ideological Totalism with Andrew
Date: June 9, 2026
Host/Guests: Andrew Sage (Andrewism), Garrison Davis
Podcast by: Cool Zone Media & iHeartPodcasts

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Overview

This episode explores the concept of ideological totalism—a process whereby movements, through intense thought reform, suppress individual autonomy in favor of totalizing, authoritarian doctrines. Andrew Sage takes listeners on a deep dive into how different groups—ISIS, Aum Shinrikyo, and Christian Zionists—though wildly different in belief and methods, each display the hallmarks of this phenomenon. Drawing from Robert J. Lifton’s theoretical framework, the conversation dissects the mechanisms of thought reform and their manifestations, the societal forces that foster such extremism, and the importance of building resilient, pluralistic alternatives.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Introducing Ideological Totalism

[02:38] Andrew Sage

• Three very different groups—ISIS, Aum Shinrikyo, and Christian Zionists—share underlying structures of ideological totalism.
• Definition: Lifton’s "thought reform" means ideas become sacred convictions, immune to doubt, validated by authority, not evidence.
• Lifton's Eight Criteria:
  1. Milieu control (communication/information control)
  2. Mystical manipulation (orchestrated ‘spontaneity’)
  3. Demand for purity (black/white worldviews)
  4. Cult of confession (compelling confessions)
  5. Sacred science (unquestionable dogma)
  6. Loading the language (jargon to end critical thought)
  7. Doctrine over person (group over individual)
  8. Dispensing of existence (group alone is legitimate)

“We will see how movements replace individual identity with a collective programmed persona, where loaded language and thought-terminating cliches make dissent literally unthinkable.”
—Andrew Sage [04:05]

• The foundation is the destruction of nuance: dividing “us” and “them,” which leads to categorization, dehumanization, and social/psychological enclosure.

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Mechanisms: Us vs. Them

[08:36] Garrison Davis, Andrew Sage

• Cites Carl Schmitt’s friend/enemy distinction: groups define themselves and their boundaries by continuous opposition.
• These boundaries are not static; they are always being reinforced and expanded.
• The groups manufacture the enemy and solidify internal cohesion by constant distinction.
• Applies to both external enemies (infidels, outsiders) and internal ones (heretics within the faith).

"In the context of groups like ISIS, the us-vs-them engine is expressed both ideologically and through physical violence.”
—Andrew Sage [06:40]

• Even within shared religious traditions, divisions emerge for the sake of maintaining authority and purity (e.g., Evangelicals vs. Catholics in Christian Zionism).

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Language as Control

[13:40] Andrew Sage and Garrison Davis

• Totalist movements not only control physical and social environments, but also psychological ones via language.
• Narrowing of permissible vocabulary narrows thought; “you don’t have to censor anybody because you’ve already censored their minds.”

“If you can control the vocabulary available to a person... you can control the range of thoughts that they're capable of having.”
—Andrew Sage [13:40]

• Thought-terminating cliches: Phrases that end discussion and block critical analysis—"it is written," "God's will," or technical jargon.
• Dense, esoteric language can also serve as a barrier to entry and a means of elevating insiders above outsiders (e.g., Aum Shinrikyo’s blending of obscure spiritual and scientific terms).

Application Beyond Extremism:

• Similar dynamics, though less extreme, crop up even in political subcultures, including the left—academic jargon and purity requirements can create barriers to mass politics.

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The Destruction of Self

[16:35] Andrew Sage

• Each group requires the erasure of individual identity:
  • Aum Shinrikyo: Members relinquish morality for the “cosmic” authority of the leader.
  • ISIS: Individual becomes a replaceable part of the Caliphate’s struggle.
  • Christian Zionists: Personal agency is subjugated to a divine plan, ignoring real-world consequences.
• The result: those inside see the annihilation of the self as liberation, but the broader impact is tragic—terrorism, violence, and unyielding support for catastrophic policies.

“The follower is convinced that the destruction of this world as they know it—and the destruction of the self within it—is not a tragedy, but actually a kind of liberation.”
—Andrew Sage [18:28]

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Totalist Mechanisms Within Society

[20:20] Andrew Sage

• The same techniques used by extremist groups can be found in subtler forms across mainstream institutions:
  • Echo chambers in media
  • Loaded language in politics
  • Cultural/religious tribalism

“The extremist can sometimes be the most honest, uninhibited expression, the natural endpoint of our world's authoritarian tendencies and subtle lifelong conditioning.”
—Andrew Sage [21:40]

• The tendency toward deference, suppression of dissent, and pursuit of a singular truth is endemic.

Defense Against Thought Reform

[22:50] Andrew Sage

• Countermeasure: Critical thought and autonomy.
• Active interrogation and skepticism of all authorities and ideologies, refusal to let any become sacred and unquestioned.
• Key defense: "Recognize when an ideology is attempting to bypass our reason in favor of our emotions."

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The Roots and Social Contradictions of Totalism

[23:48] Garrison Davis

• These totalist outbreaks are not wholly alien—they are manifestations of deeper social contradictions and personal tensions.
• "Fascism feeds on these same things"—the impulse is toward simple, emotionally satisfying answers to complex social strains.

"We're all sorting through the same sorts of causes that produce groups like this... In the way that they do it, it’s not fully alien. It’s just a very visible outward manifestation of the same sorts of internal contradictions.”
—Garrison Davis [23:48]

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Building Alternatives

[28:05] Garrison Davis and Andrew Sage

• Societal need for healthy, compelling alternatives to totalist worldviews.
• Reference to Rojava’s Democratic Confederalism as an example of offering meaning and community in opposition to ISIS.
• Western left/labor movements have receded, leaving fewer healthy collectives to channel discontent productively.

“The work of building an alternative and demonstrating it, and showing people living it, I think is very, very important.”
—Andrew Sage [29:22]

• Core to the alternative:
  • Commitment to diversity of thought
  • Willingness to tolerate some conflict and discomfort
  • Avoidance of false unity or suppressing disagreement

“Tensions and conflict are... important. That’s how we’ll develop our thought and develop our movement forward.”
—Garrison Davis [30:06]

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Approaching De-Radicalization

[31:57] Andrew Sage, Garrison Davis

• De-radicalization shouldn’t focus on a combative approach against hardened ideologues, but on providing alternatives for the politically uncommitted majority.
• “Debating them is not going to help. It’s better to think of yourself more as a connecting force rather than a correcting force.”

—Andrew Sage [33:49]

• Practical tips for loved ones:

  • Challenging core beliefs usually triggers the "backfire effect."
  • Create a safe space for doubt, don’t rush or overwhelm.
  • Recognize what needs (trauma, isolation, meaning, etc.) led people to the group.
  • Support hobbies/interests to help rebuild the self outside the ideology.

• The battle against ideological totalism is daily, personal, and social. It’s fought across society, not just at the margins.

“It is a struggle to remain unconditioned by the temptations of certainty, to hold on to the messy, the diverse, the complex, to create a social foundation of individuals who are capable of saying no.”
—Andrew Sage [35:05]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “The foundation of ideological totalism is the destruction of nuance. To build a cohesive us-and-them, they must be clearly defined and definitionally polarized.”
  —Andrew Sage [04:13]

• “You don’t have to censor anybody because you’ve already censored their minds.”
  —Andrew Sage [13:40]

• “We are conditioned to respect authority without question, to prioritize the greater good of the institution over individual agency, and to accept official narratives as the only valid reality.”
  —Andrew Sage [21:53]

• “Tensions and conflict are like, important. And that is how we will develop our thought and develop our movement forward... You have to have that, that conflict and disagreement which will, you know, hopefully produce more positive outcomes.”
  —Garrison Davis [30:06]

• “Debating them is not going to help. It’s better to think of yourself more as a connecting force rather than a correcting force.”
  —Andrew Sage [33:49]

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Timestamps for Key Sections

• [02:38] – Introduction: Ideological Totalism explained; Lifton’s eight criteria
• [06:40] – Us vs. Them: Case studies in group boundary making
• [13:40] – Language and Thought: How control of language restricts thought
• [16:35] – The Destruction of Self: How movements erase agency for group or cause
• [20:20] – Totalist Tactics in Mainstream Society
• [22:50] – Building Defenses: Critical thinking as the bulwark against totalism
• [23:48] – Societal Contradictions: Why totalism thrives
• [28:05] – Alternatives: The need for robust, pluralistic, humanist options
• [31:57] – Approaching De-Radicalization: Outreach and practical support

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Takeaways

• Totalist ideologies, religious or political, rely on erasing ambivalence, suppressing dissent, and offering emotional certainty.
• These dynamics are not unique to cults or terrorist groups—they echo, in subtle forms, throughout society.
• The solution isn’t just to fight radicals head-on but to build healthy, welcoming alternatives that can satisfy people’s needs for purpose and belonging.
• Key keys: fostering critical thought, pluralism, and tolerating discomfort and ambiguity.

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This episode provides both a sobering analysis of how extremism works and hopeful guidance for resisting its lure, in language that is clear, thoughtful, and accessible.

Transcript

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[Andrew Sage]

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media.

[Andrew Sage]

Isis Aum Shinrikyu and Christian Zionism at first glance, these movements appear to have almost nothing in common. One is a transnational but territorially weakened terror network, most active in the 2000s and 2000s one was a fringe Japanese doomsday cult from the 90s, and one remains a powerful political movement embedded in the heart of the U.S. the world's premier imperialist power. Their ideologies may be irreconcilable, their enemies may be different, and their methods even may vary from guerrilla warfare to political lobbying. And yet they have more in common than meets the eye. Welcome to It Could Happen Here. I'm Andrew Sage or Andrewism on YouTube, and I'm joined today by Garrison Davis. Hello, welcome, welcome. So my goal is to try and understand these movements through the lens of ideological totalism, which was a specific theoretical framework developed by Robert J. Lifton to identify the outcome of a successful thought reform process characterized by Dennis Dirish and Tim Woolforth in On the Edge of as a mood of absolute conviction which embeds ideas so deeply in people's heads that they grow inoculated against doubt, ideas cease to be provisional theories about the world and instead become sacred convictions dependent on the word of hallowed authorities for their validation rather than evidence. Lifton saw the potential for the emergence of ideological totalism within everyone, but, he noted, totalistic convictions are most likely to occur with those ideologies which are most sweeping in their content and most ambitious or messianic in their claims, whether religious, political, or scientific. The eight criteria that he identified for thought reform were milieu control, which is the control of communication and information within the environment mystical manipulation, which is the orchestrating of spontaneous events to serve the group's message the demand for purity, which divides the world into black and white, good and evil categories the cult of confession, which pushes members to confess past sins and personal feelings to the group the secret science, which elevates the group's dogma to an unquestionable truth loading the language, which is using jargon or cliches to minimise critical thinking doctrine over person, which subordinates individual experiences and identity to the group's beliefs and finally, the dispensing of existence, declaring that only those in the group have the right to exist. Now, not all of these factors may be at play for each of these specific movements that I would have mentioned, but we still see the outcome of this ideological totalism in each of these movements to varying extents. The systematic erosion of individual autonomy in favor of an unassailable authority, whether we're speaking about ISIS or AUM Sharikyo or Christian Zionism. Within the evangelical movement or in any other case, we will see how movements replace individual identity with a collective programmed Persona where loaded language and thought terminating cliches make descent literally unthinkable, where the enemy other is manufactured and where power is concentrated so tightly that the leader or the dogma becomes the only source of truth. So the foundation of ideological totalism is the destruction of nuance. To build a cohesive us and them, they must be clearly defined and definitionally polarized. First comes the categorization where the complexity of human identity is reduced into a single non negotiable trait, be it religion or nationality or ideology. And then comes dehumanisation, which is stripping the other of human qualities, transforming them from a person into a threat, impure, an infidel, an obstacle. And finally there's enclosure which creates social or psychological walls that prevent the US from interacting with them. This ensures that the only information the group receives is that of the other's perceived malice. In the context of groups like isis, the us versus Them engine is expressed both ideologically and and through physical violence. By committing acts of terror, the group forces the rest of the world to recognize their boundary. There's no cross contamination to be had with the infidel world, no middle ground. You're either a part of their struggle for a global caliphate or you're an enemy to be eradicated. Whether you consider yourself a Muslim or anything else with arm Shirikyu. The cult's us versus Them engine operated through isolation in communes and the severing of external ties. The them was defined as the corrupted world or the spiritually dead, and the group sought purity and enlightenment. So they targeted the individual's existing social networks, family, friends, mainstream society, labelling them as sources of contamination. By cutting off the member from the outside world, the cult ensured that the only reality that existed was the one provided by the leader. And with the political, religious, Christian Zionists, the us versus them engine is built through a historical and eschatological narrative that sees the entire secular world as enemies to the apocalyptic ambitions of Christ's return. They are frequently warned to avoid worldly influences, temptations from the devil that might skew them from the righteous path. The other, in all these cases, is successfully stripped of their humanity. The destruction of the them becomes a logical necessity for the survival of the us and the isolation ensures the group's total control over an individual's interpretation of reality.

[Garrison Davis]

Interesting how all these various cultish elements build on or use the techniques written about by like Carl Schmidt. The friend enemy distinction. And how, like creating groups like this, you know, you have to choose like a border point to choose the point that determines what we are and what our enemy is. And then in order to keep your group active or like, safe, that border has to be moved. Have to, it has to always be like, like pushing. It can't actually stay at the same point. And you see that movement with all these groups, right? They have this like millenarianist, like, apocalyptic focus, but they're still like moving towards this like, larger enemy population.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah. I mean, you see it in, like I mentioned, ISIS has erected this barrier that separates them even from Muslims who may share some of their other religious convictions, but do not share their political ambitions.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

You see it with the evangelical movement, which distinguishes themselves from other Christian sects as being heretical or not fully committed to the word or have gone astray in some way.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, I mean, you can see that with the evangelical leaders and like the President picking fights with the literal Pope of the Catholic Church.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah. I mean, the debrief between the, the, the Catholics and the Protestants go kind

[George Taveras]

of, kind of far back.

[Andrew Sage]

You supposedly share this scripture or this overarching, like, religious framework, and yet there's still a desire to delineate, to separate, to define an enemy even within that cohort.

[Garrison Davis]

And a lot of those, like, current differences, they do relate to like military action in the Middle east and what's happening in Palestine, like, specifically. And I, I found that to be an interesting connection as you're, as you're talking about, you know, specifically like Christian Zionists and how the situation in the Middle east is extremely important for their apocalyptic worldview. And that is like one of the key differences between, between like evangelical Christians and you know, the current stuff like that the Pope is saying, which is very much opposed to what's happening in the Middle East.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah. Because they've, they've constructed this very, a robust eschatological framework, which is the next thing that I wanted to get into.

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[Andrew Sage]

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[Andrew Sage]

The language that these movements use helps to control their people. They control people not just through physical barriers, but through psychological barriers. Yeah, if you can control the vocabulary available to a person, how a person understands the meaning of words, how they understand the meaning of their scriptures, you can control the range of thoughts that they're capable of having. You know, that was kind of the point. That and as cliche at this point is the point that George Orwell was making when he had the Ministry of truth in 1984, that you limit even language available so that even dissent cannot be fully expressed. You don't have to censor anybody because you've already censored their minds.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. And you see that in even their own creation of phrases and terms across all these groups, they come up with specific turns of phrase that just get repeated and that just starts replacing language. It starts filling in the gap of language in communication. So thought terminating cliches.

[Andrew Sage]

Exactly, exactly. Thought terminating cliches. And also just a broader cognitive and closure. So in the case of Shinrikyo, you had the group using this dense, pseudo scientific and pseudo religious jargon that blended spirituality, quantum physics, biology, and those who were most elevated in that group were able to wield that language and make themselves sound so sophisticated and elevated and on a higher plane of truth and reality that made it very easy for them to swindle people within their circle. They created a linguistic barrier to entry so that you couldn't participate even in the group's truth without committing to their incomprehensible dogma.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

And if you don't commit to their incomprehensible dogma, then you just, you don't get it. You're going to be an outsider forever. You are not enlightened. You are outside of the truth.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. And this, this is a problem across a lot of, a lot of different groups, including groups that are not this, you know, apocalyptic or fascist or like, religiously based. But I even see versions of this among, like, the contemporary left. Yeah. Which creates like. Yeah, this, like, barrier to entry by using certain, like, phrases like academic language.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah. And. And very idiosyncratic definitions of words that have otherwise common definitions.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. No, and how much politics is like the subcultural purpose of like, maintaining a certain, like, subgroup, like a social circle versus actually building like, mass politics. And how the idiosyncratic, small, like, purity of groups with their special language and these, like, barriers to entry makes it very hard to do larger political organizing that actually goes towards, like a working class movement. Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

Lifton points out that there is a tendency for ideological totalism in a lot of movements, as ODA mentioned. So it's something we have to be on guard for if we want to avoid falling into these traps. And so we looked at the example of Omnicyo in this case, but ISIS also has a kind of a total elimination of nuance through polarized, emotionally charged vocabulary. You know, you have the believer and you have the infidel, which again includes fellow Muslims. You have the pure and you have the corruption. Every dynamic, every binary is zero sum. You know, you're either with the caliphate or you're an enemy of God to be wiped out. And within the eschatological framework of Christian Zionism, opposing the apocalyptic, informed geopolitical ambitions is tantamount to opposing God's plan. You know, it's like, how dare you. They use these thought terminating cliches, as you would have mentioned. Things like, it is written. Yeah, it's in revelation. You know, it's God's will. And there's no way to actually challenge their policies or actions in their minds on whether it be humanitarian, legal or logical grounds. Because it's like you're speaking Greek. I mean, doing something like that is, is like arguing with God. It's, it's like attacking their faith. And so we also see these movements stripping individuals of their agency for the sake of a transaction. The exchange of the self, with all its very real vulnerabilities and mortality and earthly limitations for a higher purpose that is eternal and absolute. In the case of Aum Shinrikyo, the destruction of the self was achieved through the redefinition of morality that used a distorted interpretation of Vajrayana Buddhism and placed the master's will above all conventional ethics. To follow the master and achieve spiritual evolution, one had to abandon the ego with its moral compass and its human attachments. And in its place, Armichenkyo offered the merit of absolute obedience by following their leader's commands, even those of mass violence that would expose the wider world to their threat. The practitioner believed they were performing a ritual act of spiritual cleansing to become an instrument of a higher cosmic order. You see the same thing with the rise of isis. The destruction of the self achieved through the total absorption of the individual into the monolith. The individual stripped of their specific context, whatever nationality or background they may have had, and being reduced to a singular functional component of the struggle, being given a purpose that was compensated with the promise of eternal significance, the promise of martyrdom, of fighting and dying for the caliphate. And with that, the individual could bypass the mundane struggles of earthly life to secure a place in a permanent divine reality. And in the political theological sphere of Christian Zionism, the destruction of the self has more to do with relinquishing the self's agency and becoming instrumentalized for the sake of God's plan. By framing Israel's ascendance in the Middle east as an essential precursor to the second coming of Christ and doing everything in their power to lobby for and support it. The movement disregards the genocidal costs for the reward being the fulfilment of a divine apocalyptic timeline. And so in all three cases, the follower is convinced that the destruction of this world as they know it and the destruction of the self within it is not a tragedy, but actually a kind of liberation. But all three of these movements have been tragedies for the rest of the world. ARM Shinrikyo deployed chemical weapons in Tokyo's subway system. They killed 13 people and injured over 5,800 others, instilling a long term anxiety for those living in the city that their shared space could be the site of potential terror and that the person sitting next to you could be the vessel for a hidden lethal ideology. ISIS has forcibly displaced millions, killed tens of thousands, and destroyed ancient heritage sites, all in an effort to erase the other. And the Middle east and Africa in particular, continue to be scarred by its violence. Christian Zionist ideology has introduced a variable to the political equation that is immune to reason and negotiation, that cannot question its theological justifications. Of course, Zionism is not entirely dependent on Christian Zionist support. You know, Jewish colonial settlements would have predated British support, American support and Christian Zionist support. But the political cosine that Christian Zionists provide within the premier superpower does aid in the continued support for the Palestinian genocide. So ideological totalism seeks to eliminate pluralism, to eliminate shared truth, and to literally kill. But we should not view the rise of totalizing ideologies as some freak, isolated phenomenon, because it deprives its strength from the very framework and conditioning embedded in our existing social structures. The mechanisms of milieu control, loading the language and other techniques used by cultic tendencies exist in subtle forms within our mainstream institutions. We see the seeds of thought reform in the echo chambers of media ecosystems. We see the loading of language in the polarized rhetoric of politics, we see the demand for purity. In the most aggressive forms of cultural and religious tribalism, the extremist can sometimes be the most honest, uninhibited expression, the natural endpoint of our world's authoritarian tendencies and subtle lifelong conditioning. At home, in the classroom, at work, in civic life, we are trained in the soft versions of the very deference that totalizing leaders eventually demand. We are conditioned to respect authority without question, to prioritize the greater good of the institution over individual agency, and to accept official narratives as the only valid reality. So when a leader arrives who promises to replace the complex, messy uncertainty of our political and social reality with the clarity of absolute truth. The most conditioned minds naturally find the offer at least seductive. And so this disease caught through social conditioning must be treated by a fundamental reclamation of the individual's capacity for critical thought and autonomy. We have to move beyond the mere consumption of information to the active interrogation of it. This means cultivating the ability to recognize the traps of thought reform, the logical fallacies, the loading of the language. To recognize when an ideology is attempting to bypass our reason in favour of our emotions. The primary defence against thought reform is the refusal to let any authority, religious, political or otherwise, become sacred and beyond questioning.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, I think that point that you made towards the end there, but like this thing just being the most visible consequence of, of the contradictions of our current social system is like really important is because. Yeah, I mean we're, we're all sorting through the same, the same sorts of causes that, that produce groups like this or produce the people that move into groups like this. And we might sort these out in different ways, but in the way that they do it, it's not, it's not fully alien. It's. It's just a very visible outward manifestation of, of the same sorts of internal contradictions. And like fascism feeds on these same things. You can see how much fascism like overlaps with a lot of the stuff that you're talking about here.

[Andrew Sage]

Yep.

[Garrison Davis]

And it seemed kind of like suicidal tendencies, this destruction of the self.

[Andrew Sage]

Right.

[Garrison Davis]

That is, that is dealing with those with those same sorts of like social tensions and internal contradictions that produce like outbursts of anti social behavior like this or in some cases like genocidal behavior.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah, yeah. I think it's very much resultant of this, the structure of our world system, you know, the stresses, the anxieties, the pains and pressure points. And you know, we are all different as individuals. And I think that some people respond to these conditions in ways that are very much either self destructive, externally destructive, or both.

[George Taveras]

This is George Taveras and Sam Taggart from Stradiolab. Okay, Picture it. Your apartment after a Saturday workout. The gym bag, the couch, maybe even the car. Mi amor. It's a full novella of odors and not the glamorous kind.

[Sam Taggart]

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[George Taveras]

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[Sam Taggart]

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[Garrison Davis]

I think a part of our task in like a general sense is providing some alternative to this, right? We like look at the way the really like on like a global level, like the left has really receded a lot in the past 50, 60, 70 years. And that that leaves a lot of, you know, people who are, who are trying to look for this, for this sort of purpose, right? They're trying to understand the contradictions of the world and there may not be a humanistic option for that so it gets directed into much more destructive ways. Sometimes you can see like what happened in Rojava with like Democratic Confederalism as like. Right. They, they actually did that. Right. They, they saw what was needed and they did it. And it's directly opposing the sort of alternative version, which ISIS, which is ISIS, which is like super interesting. Right. But I think we have, we have the same problem here and, but we don't really have like a strong, a strong like alternative to that. Right. Like a healthy, a healthy and growing like working class movement which attempts to actually solve the sort of, sort of problems that are in the world that these sorts of other things like feed on. Right. They grab onto these, onto these very, very present problems and apply an emotionally soothing response to it, even if it is self destructive.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah. The work of building an alternative and demonstrating it and showing people living it, I think is very, very important.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

I also think that when you consider the fact that the hallmark of totalizing systems is the elimination of the other and the criminalization of dissent, our antidote, our alternative has to embrace, it has to be committed to diversity of thought and expression. And I also think that it has to be willing to sit with conflict, to sit with tensions.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

To allow them to engage with each other without trying to just override it with some false unity.

[Garrison Davis]

Those tensions and conflict are like, important. And that is, that is how we will develop our thought and develop our movement forward. You have to, you have to have those tensions. You have to have that, that conflict and disagreement which will, you know, hopefully produce more positive outcomes.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah, hopefully. It's, it's generative conflict and destructive conflict.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

I mean, and some conflicts can be generative if we accept that they can't be resolved.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

I think part of what makes some conflicts destructive is this effort to kind of just paint over them with some kumbaya sense of, oh, we'll just, will you just unify? Like that's not consequential or we'll figure it out or that's just how it is. And I think we have to be willing to be uncomfortable with not having the answers and maybe never having the answers. In some cases. There are those who I think will have the capacity to engage into de radicalization of ideological totalists. I don't think I'm among them. And I think that there are others that we can gear our outreach towards.

[Garrison Davis]

Yes.

[Andrew Sage]

I get irritated sometimes when I see people who believe that the focus of our attention right now as people trying to build an alternative, trying to build A better tomorrow that our focus should be on trying to de radicalize right wingers.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

The vast majority of people are politically unaffiliated, politically uncommitted, apathetic, disengaged. And I think that we can do far more if we were to focus on reaching those people and helping those people see the problems of the system and the solutions that we have on offer than engaging in fruitless debate with right winger and zo.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. And I think that's actually the most effective form of de radicalization.

[Andrew Sage]

Exactly, exactly.

[Garrison Davis]

There is a lot of problems with the sort of like de radicalization framework that emerged in like 2018 to kind of meet the rise of like the alt right. A lot of it doesn't work. A lot of it can be fruitless, but there is like a noble intention behind it. And I think the best way to actually do that is by just providing a healthy alternative that, that does appeal to most people. It doesn't, it doesn't need to be catered towards someone who's on like the right or like the far right, because in a lot of cases, those people are suffering from the same sorts of problems that the rest of people are. They've just found a false solution for it. And so if you're able to provide a better solution, a lot of them will move over. There's really very few that are like, true and tried, like ideologically committed. Right. There's some, and they're maybe very vocal on the Internet, but that's, that's not actually like most.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah. And also the Internet is at least half bots at this point. So. Yeah. You know, you take some of those Internet discussions with a grain of salt in terms of being representative of any population, significantly. But I did have some tips with regard to outreach for those who may have a special interest in it or maybe have a loved one that they really want to help where they see being immersed in an ideologically totalistic environment. For one, directly attacking a person's core beliefs are going to trigger something called the backfire effect, which is where contradictory evidence actually strengthens their conviction because their identity is now fused to their ideology. So an attack on the idea is perceived as a mortal attack on the self. Debating them is not going to help. It's better to think of yourself more as a connecting force rather than a correcting force.

[Garrison Davis]

You're a lifeline. Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

To gently guide them out of their radical mindset rather than trying to instruct them out of it, to berate them out of it. And when you notice that they are experiencing doubt in their ideas. It can be very exciting to try and rush in and show them the way, but you don't want to overwhelm them. Doubt, especially for people immersed in that mindset, might literally collapse their entire social and cognitive world. So your focus, I think, needs to be on providing a safe harbor where their doubts can be expressed freely, without judgment or any pressure to immediately betray all that they've ever known. You also need to consider the conditions that led the person into that situation in the first place. If you know what they were like and what their situation was like prior to indoctrination, whether they had certain relationship issues, financial issues, systemic abuses, traumas, isolation, some kind of yearning for meaning or purpose that can help you contextualise the situation. And while you can always fundamentally disagree with their conclusions, it's good to recognize the needs that drove them to those conclusions. But in addition to that, you can try to find out what their passions and hobbies were or are outside of that doctrine so that they have some kind of psychological landing pad if they were to escape the environment. So they're not without a sense of self, so they're not floundering for some form of identity. These movements and this tendency for ideological totalism derived from hierarchy will not be overcome in one fell swoop. It is a continuous daily struggle within the human mind and the social fabric. It is a struggle to remain unconditioned by the temptations of certainty, to hold on to the messy, the diverse, the complex, to create a social foundation of individuals who are capable of saying no. And that's it for me. All power to all the people. Peace.

[Garrison Davis]

It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts, you can now find sources for It Could Happen here listed directly in Episode Descriptions. Thanks for listening.

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