Yet Another Political Site

When the United States announced the Declaration of Independence in 1776, they had very specific injustices they were protesting and that they listed as the reasons why King George III should no longer be allowed to rule over them. An incomplete list of the king’s sins were: Limiting immigration Creating new & wasteful government departments  Using the military to enforce the law Restricting trade Altering the forms and institutions of government Protecting his loyalists from punishment for unlawful acts Refusing to implement laws and measures that would serve the public good Refusing to take action on matters that pose immediate threats Many decades later, an unknown headline author for The Chicago Tribune wrote , “History May Not Repeat, But It Looks Alike.” 2025 is not 1776. But there are significant similarities between how Americans felt about George III in 1776 and how we should feel about Donald Trump in 2025. All of the grievances listed above would apply to Donald Trum...

With this understanding of harmful conformity groups (HCGs), we must now undertake to identify and discuss the largest HCG in existence today: the Republic Party since 2015. On the face of it, this may seem like an absurd, even unhinged statement. The GOP has existed since the 1850s and has had dozens, if not hundreds of leaders, including some of the greatest men in history, like Abraham Lincoln. It has been mentioned that the longevity and diverse leadership of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints means it cannot be a HCG. How then could the GOP be one? The key factor is “since 2015”. The GOP, regardless of whatever other flaws or virtues it may have had or still has, was definitely not an HCG before 2015. But when Donald Trump seized control of the party, it devolved into a HCG. Like Koresh taking over the Branch Davidians, the arrival of a new, domineering leader marked the transition from something else into a HCG. (And if it seems that the GOP is too large to be consid...

Correctly identifying a harmful conformity group (HCG) matters, because then we can know how to interact with the group. A different approach is required if you are dealing with a criminal gang or an oppressive government rather than a HCG.  Harmful conformity groups are just that: harmful. Their harm must be guarded against, repaired, and if possible, stopped entirely. But how do we do that? First, we must recognize that the leaders themselves are beyond help or rehabilitation. Members of HCGs can be brought back, but leaders cannot. They would rather die. Like all narcissists, they cannot be reasoned with. They will not change their ways because of logical or impassioned appeals. Petitioning them to change their behavior is pointless. It’s a waste of time to try to understand their reasons or speculate on their motives, because they don’t really have any. They will say and do whatever they think is necessary to maintain control over the group. Second, we must recognize that the o...

When we think of harmful conformity groups we often think of religious movements. There have definitely been some infamous and awful examples over the years, such as Jonestown, the Branch Davidians, and Heaven’s Gate. But there are plenty of examples outside the realm of religion. The atheistic philosopher Ayn Rand was the leader of a society in New York City in the 1960s that displayed many of the features of a HCG. The self-help organization NXIVM had little to no religious dimensions and was undeniably an HCG, as was the wellness company OneTaste. We will discuss each of these groups in rough chronological order. The Collective Ayn Rand, most famous for her fiction books The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged , thought of herself as a philosopher first and a novelist second. The ideas that she formulated with these novels eventually grew into an ideological framework she called Objectivism. In the 1960s, she was living in New York and attracted other like-minded people with her writing...

Somewhat unintuitively, it may be helpful to learn how to identify harmful conformity groups (HCGs) by first looking at what they are not: in other words, by examining types of groups or organizations that may seem like HCGs but are actually something else. To truly understand harmful conformity groups, we need to make some clear distinctions between them and people or organizations that are harmful or problematic in different ways, or just unpopular and not harmful at all. HCGs are not necessarily small: they can come in any size. A group can be a HCG even if it has thousands of members, and just because an organization is small and radical, that doesn’t suggest it is a HCG. Size is not a consideration in the identification of these groups. Organized Crime Sex traffickers, the Mafia and other organized criminal gangs are extremely harmful, but they are not HCGs for a couple of reasons. One, they are not centered around a particular leader. Leaders within organized crime exercise enorm...

We have already identified some of the key features of harmful conformity groups (HCGs): a domineering leader, a superficial commitment to ideas, and extreme pressure to conform. There are however other features that need to be identified, as well as additional understanding of those already mentioned. Nature of the Leader The leader or leaders of these groups come in many different forms. Sometimes the leader’s appearance or charisma is such that you can see how people would be attracted to or drawn in by them. Other times the leader is rather ordinary, or even downright off-putting, and their appeal comes from whatever ideology the group is espousing at the time. At other times, the unusualness or transgressiveness of the leaders’ behavior and words seems revelatory and revolutionary, especially to those who feel disenfranchised or ignored by conventional systems or culture, and people are attracted to that.  These leaders can be old or young, rich or poor, educated or uneducated...