In the last two years, social division has become a destructive force. Conspiracy thinking, anger, rhetoric, full-on lies and disinformation have infected everything; social discourse, politics, health, families.
This stuff - opposition to necessary health measures, bizarre beliefs the government is scurvy and not trustworthy - has become currency in certain social/cultural groups in this country, the US and the UK, and to a somewhat lesser extent all over Europe as well.I dislike the term "dog whistle," but it is apt: this rhetoric - they're out to get us/kill us/destroy our country - signals to others the person writing/speaking is part of that in-group and that in-group, despite being small but vocal, somehow knows all secrets. This is a core aspect of conspiracy thinking.
It is fascinating to watch people -very often men between 25 and 50, most always white men - align with these sentiments. Curiously, this age demographic is also the most-often represented in crime stats, but that could be a case of correlation, not causation.
This type of group-think, more than borders on cult; members/adherents must accept all of what the group is founded on. "Membership" requires dissociation from certain realities - that the "leaders" are compromised, complicated, criminal, and in the case of Lich et al, self-aggrandizing grifters - and separation from wider social groups where the group's positions are at best unpopular, and usually rejected for the extremism they espouse. One could study certain - ok, all - religions and see exactly the same constraints.
Certainly, in private, some members of these de facto cults will question parts, or maybe even the whole of the platform. However, publicly voicing discomfort with the group's goals, questioning those, or the acts associated with those goals, results in expulsion and shunning - again, as with cults, you're either in all the way, or you're not in at all.
As with other cults, expulsion results in loss of contact with and acceptance by the group, and the loss of self in some respects: members of these groups - and they are extremist in their own rights - define themselves through membership in the group and by the group values. Expulsion necessarily results in full, usually uncomfortable and often personally devastating reassessment of one's self and one's beliefs. When we add in aspects of "We are real men fighting for 'freedom' ", it's worse because the "who am I, " Am I a proper man," and "Are my values correct?" questions necessarily arise.
The "cult" in the scenario here requires dedication to specific platforms:
Trudeau is a dictator (obviously false and ridiculous)
Trudeau intends to ruin the country (also false and impossible in a democratic country where people vote every four years)
Trudeau is a criminal (false. He might not be great at his job but that doesn't make one a criminal).
The pandemic is fake (ridiculous and the core fallacy)
Health measures (used by every country in the world to the extent a country's economy allowed) violate "freedoms."
Vaccines are dangerous, ineffective, deadly (despite the indisputable fact the VAST majority of people who have access to vaccinations have had at least one and something over 75 percent of people on the planet have had two or more).
VARS is reliable (it is absolutely not, and a disclaimer to that effect precedes the tables of "incidents")
So. It's a cult and it's members share a number of similarities: white, male, under-educated, angry, feeling marginalised, very uncomfortable with significant social shifts (LGBTQ+ rights/Women's rights/autonomy). When that demographic is already feeling very out of control and seeing their world and their hold on "power" shift substantially, and then you add in a pandemic, and necessary health measures, this stuff is a predictable outcome.
EDIT, March 2024:
This week, I happened to find a fascinating TikTok account - a political psychologist, who is an expert on the sociocultural aspects of politics, and by extension, although not his specialty, cults/religions. Via that creator, I found a metastudy of exactly the points I have covered here: Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition (https://gspp.berkeley.edu/assets/uploads/research/pdf/jost.glaser.political-conservatism-as-motivated-social-cog.pdf):
I am no expert, and my background in sociology amounts to a diploma, but this stuff fascinates me mostly due to clear evidence since 2016 of how incredibly destructive membership in certain social groups and in religion generally are in terms of people subjugating themselves.
