https://quillette.com/2022/05/19/gender-ideologys-true-believers/
Posting this from the other thread its just been put on in case people here aren't following both threads.
Bits I quoted on that thread:
Lifton identified eight psychological themes underpinning thought reform—which is to say the ideological coercion (or, more colloquially, “brainwashing”) that happens in cults as well as totalitarian states.
The first is “milieu control,” the severing of communication with those who challenge the group’s beliefs.
No one is told not to communicate with outsiders or read opposing views—they don’t have to be. Followers may even occasionally make a point of checking out the opposing views of “TERFs” (a term of abuse that stands for “trans-exclusionary radical feminist”) to prove they can refute them, but the act is a charade. A dutiful scroll through a “TERF” essay is “reading” in quote marks, with a mind fully shut. Opening one’s thinking to opposing views would not only throw into question the group’s ideology, but jeopardize the follower’s treasured sense of belonging and purpose. The follower identifies so completely with the group that challenges to it are perceived as an existential assault—even “violence,” as trans activists will claim.
“The demand for purity” also stands out among Lifton’s criteria. The group drums into the follower the idea that she or he is guilty or unworthy in some way, and can only hope to alleviate this feeling of culpability by embarking on a futile pursuit of perfection.
“Loading the language” and “sacred science,” two more of Lifton’s criteria, could have been written with trans activism in mind. The group’s dogmas are cast as the latest frontier in scientific knowledge and cannot be questioned.
Lifton noted that thought reform is characterized by a reliance on the “thought-terminating cliché” and transformation of language. New words convey the group’s insights while existing words are given new meaning. “Non-binary,” “cishet,” “genderqueer,” and “genderfluid” are just the beginning of today’s new lexicon.
Proceeding down Lifton’s eight-point list: Under the headings of “doctrine over person” and “dispensing of existence,” we get some of his most chilling observations. The doctrine prevails over any individual human’s life, which becomes essentially expendable. If an individual’s experience contradicts the group’s doctrine, that person’s reality must be manipulated so the doctrine is vindicated. And so detransitioners, whose harrowing personal accounts impugn trans ideology, are shrugged away with some version of the explanation, “They were obviously never really trans to begin with.” Even though this directly contradicts a core tenet of trans ideology—“If someone says they’re trans, believe them”—the sanctity of the doctrine is nominally affirmed and the individual is disappeared. The media silencing of detransitioners and desisters is one of the most disturbing reflections of the obeisance commanded by trans activists, never mind the women, men, and children who suffer as a result of their dogmas.
Every totalitarian or authoritarian group or movement—and cults are crystallized authoritarianism—coheres in opposition to a group that it hates. This was the particular insight of the Frankfurt School, some of whose intellects observed in The Authoritarian Personality that “[the] authoritarian must [their emphasis], out of an inner necessity, turn his aggression against out-groups.”
The whole Left V Right thing is cultish too btw. (Not going to repeat myself too much).
I am tired of it.