It Could Happen Here - Idealogical Totalism with Andrew

Episode Date: June 9, 2026

Andrew talks with Garrison about how apocalyptic cult-like groups override critical thought and promote mass violence.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Also Media. ISIS, Al-Shinrikio, and Christian Sinus on. 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 2010. 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. The 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 Krapin here. I'm Andrew Sage or Andrews 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 DeRish and Tim Welforth in On the Edge, as a, quote, 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.

End quote. Lifton saw the potential for the emergence of ideological totalism within everyone. But he noted, quote, 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 minimize 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 the specific movements that I would have mentioned, but we still see the outcome of this ideological totalism in each of these movements to very an extent.

The systematic erosion of individual autonomy in favor of an unassailable authority. Whether we're speaking about ISIS or Amshiricchio or Christian Zionism within the evangelical movement or in any other case, we will see how movements replace individual identity with a collective pro-round persona, where loaded language and thought-terminating cliches make dissent 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, there 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 to humanization, which is stripping the other of human qualities, transforming them from a person into a threat, impure, and infidel and obstacle. And finally, there's enclosure, which creates social or psychological walls. but prevent the us from interacting with them. This ensures the only information the group receives is that of the others perceived malice. In the context of groups like ISIS, the us versus them in June is expressed both ideologically

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 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 Amshamiku, the cults Us versus Them Injun 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, labeling 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. Interesting how all these various cultish elements build on or use the

techniques written about by like Carl Schmidt, the front 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, it has to always be 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 millinarianist like apocalyptic focus, but they're still like moving towards this like larger enemy population. 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. Yeah. You see it with the evangelical movement, which distinguishes themselves from other Christian sects as being heretical or not fully committed to the wood or have gone astray in some way. 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. Yeah, I mean, the beef between the Catholics and the Protestants go kind of far back. You suppose they 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. And a lot of those current differences

that do relate to like military action in the Middle East and what's happening in Palestine specifically. And I found that to be an interesting connection as you're talking about 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 like evangelical Christians and the current stuff like that the Pope is saying, which is very much opposed to what's happening. happening in the Middle East. Yeah, because they've constructed this very robust eschatological framework, which is the next thing that I want to get into. Hey, Ontario, come on down to BetMGM Casino and check out our newest exclusive. The Price is Right Fortune Pick. Don't miss out. Play exciting casino games based on the iconic game show. Only at BetMGM. Access to the Price is right Fortune Pick is only available at

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Flights from Porter Airlines, two weekend gold tickets, and $1,000 cash. Please love me. Lord, Zara Larson, Tina Gray, Sombor, Sombor, 21 pilots, and more. Download IHeart Radio, listen to IHeart new music for 10 minutes, and enter to win. Osiaga, 2026. Every day you listen is another chance to win. Hi, everyone, I'm Cheryl Stray, author of Wild and Tiny Beautiful Things. I'm excited to share that I have a new podcast called Mind Over Mountain.

In each episode, I interview athletes, adventurers, and adrenaline seekers to discuss the inner landscapes and life experiences that informed and inspired their extraordinary. I also bring a bit of advice into the mix, so we too can better understand how to face our own seemingly insurmountable challenges. Do you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to pull out what you already have inside. We're coming into this world, fighting for our lives. All I'm going to do is pull out what you already got inside. We're there to support and celebrate each other. And that's not like your story versus my story. You're going to walk up and over that dang mountain. You're not just going to put your mind over it. Yep. Yep. Exactly. And if I can't walk up and over it, I'm going to go through it.

Listen to Mind Over Mountain every Thursday on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. June is Black Music Month, and on the Drink Chams podcast, we're speaking with the hottest names in the culture, like Sway Lee. Do you realize how legendary you are? I appreciate that. I'd be seeing it, but I'm like, man, I still got, like, so much more to do. Like, Prince, he dropped, like, 30 albums.

We dropped, like, five right now. That's the rate we got to be going. Yep. That's a good attitude. You'll also hear stories from industry legends and hip-hop pioneers like Fab Five Freddy. I directed when the Nas' early videos. Which one? One love.

Wow. I literally filmed in his apartment in Queensbridge. His moms were still up in that apartment. Nause was just beginning to take off. His pops used to live near me in Harlem. His dad introduced him to a whole lot of, you know, conscious stuff, and he made a young prodigy. No matter the era, Drinkchamps brings you the biggest name.

and the most unfiltered conversations. Listen to Drink Chams from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. The language that these movements use helps to control their people. You're controlling 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 it's 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 censor their minds.

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

Exactly. Thoughts emanating cliches and also just a broader cognitive enclosure. So in the case of Omshin Riccio, 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. Yeah. And if you don't commit to their incomprehensible dogma, then you don't get it.

You're going to be an outside of ever. You are not enlightened. You are outside of the truth. Yeah. And this is a problem across a lot of different groups, including groups that are not this, you know, apocalyptic or fascist or like religiously based, but they 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. Yeah, and very idiosyncratic definitions of words that have otherwise common definitions. Yeah, no, and how much politics is like this 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. Lifting points out that there is a tendency for ideological totalism in a lot of movements as I already mentioned. So it's something we have to be on guard for if we want to avoid falling into these traps. And so we look at the example of Omshamikio 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 corrupt. Every dynamic, every binary is zero or some. 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 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, it's not. like arguing with God. 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 Al Mchenrico, 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, Omshinicchio 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, that 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 up purpose that was compensated with the promise of Italy. 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 become an instrumentalized for the sake of God's plan, by framing Israel's ascendance in the Middle East as an essential, precoaster 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 fulfillment 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. Amm Shinrikio 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 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 continued 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 land. 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 have a a condition 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 are they 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. It 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 favor of our emotions. The primary defense against thought reform is the refusal to let any authority, religious, political, or otherwise, becomes secret and beyond questioning.

Yeah, I think that point that you made towards the end there, but this thing just being the most visible consequence of the contradictions of our current social system is like really important. It's because, yeah, I mean, we're all sorting through the same sorts of causes 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 fully alien.

It's just a very visible outward manifestation of the same sorts of internal contradictions. And like, fascism feeds on these same things. You can see how much fascism overlaps with a lot of the stuff that you're talking about here. Yep. And it seemed kind of like suicidal tendencies, this destruction of the self, right?

That is dealing with those same sorts of, like, social tensions and internal contradictions that produce like outbursts of antisocial behavior like this, or in some cases, like genocidal behavior. Yeah, yeah. I think it's very much resultant. There's the structure of our 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 You and a pal in Montreal and Oceaga With four nights at residents in downtown Montreal Flights from Porter Airlines Two weekend gold tickets

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Hi everyone, I'm Cheryl Stray, author of Wild and Tiny Beautiful Things. I'm excited to share that I have a new podcast called Mind Over Mountain. In each episode, I interview athletes, adventurers, and adrenaline seekers to discuss the inner landscapes and life experiences that informed and inspired their extraordinary feats. I also bring a bit of advice into the mix, so we too can better understand how to face our own seemingly insurmountable challenges. Do you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to pull out what you already have inside. We're coming into this world fighting for our lives. All I'm going to do is pull out what you already got inside. We're there to support and celebrate each other. And that's not

like your story versus my story. You're going to walk up and over that dang mountain. You're not just going to put your mind over it. Yep. Yep. Exactly. And if I can't walk up and over it, I'm going to go through it. Listen to Mind Over Mountain every Thursday on the IHeart Radio app, Apple. podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. June is Black Music Month and on the Drink Chams podcast we're speaking with the hottest names in the culture like Sway Lee. Do you realize how legendary you are? I appreciate that. I'd be seeing it but I'm like

man I still got like so much more to do like Prince he dropped like 30 albums. We dropped like five right now like that's the rate we gotta be going. Yeah that's a good attitude. You also hear stories from industry legends and hip-hop pioneers like Fab Five Freddy. when the Nas is early videos. Which one? One love.

Wow. I literally filmed in his apartment in Queensbridge. His moms were still up in that apartment. Nause was just beginning to take off. His pops used to live near me in Harlem. His dad introduced him to a whole lot of, you know, conscious stuff, and he made a young prodigy. No matter the era, Drink Chams brings you the biggest names

and the most unfiltered conversations. Listen to Drink Chams from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I think a part of our task, in like a general sense, is providing some alternative to this, right? You can look at the way the really on like a global level, like the left has really receded a lot in the past 50, 60, 70 years. And that leaves a lot of, you know, people who are who are trying to look for this sort of purpose, right? They're trying to understand the contradictions of the world. there may not be a humanistic option for that. So it gets directed into a much more destructive

ways sometimes. You can see what happened in Rojava with a Democratic confederalism. They actually did that, right? They saw what was needed and they did it. And it's directly opposing the sort of alternative version, which is ISIS, which is like super interesting, right? But I think we have the same problem here. But we don't really have a strong alternative to that, right? A healthy, a healthy and growing, like working class movement, which attempts to actually solve the sort of problems that are in the world that these sorts of other things like feed on, right? They grab onto these very, very present problems and apply an emotionally soothing response to it, even if it is self-destructive. Yeah. The work of

of building an alternative and demonstrating it and showing people living it, I think is very, very important. Yeah. I also think that when you consider the fact that the whole mark of totalizing systems is the elimination of the other and the criminalization of dissent, our antidotes, 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.

Yeah. To allow them to engage with each other without trying to just override it with some false unity. Those tensions and conflict are like important. And that is how we will like develop our thought and develop our movement forward. You have to, you have to have those tensions. You have to have that conflict and disagreement, which will hopefully produce more positive.

outcomes. Yeah, hopefully such generative conflict and not destructive conflict. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and I mean, and some conflicts can be generative if we accept that they can't be resolved. Yeah. I think part of what makes some conflicts destructive is this effort to kind of, uh, just paint over them with some kumbaya sense of, oh, well, 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 yeah, 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 care outreach towards. Yes. 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. Yeah.

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 with the system and the solutions that we have on our than engaging in fruitless to beat with right-wing her zoh. Yeah, and I think that's actually the most effective form of de-radicalization. Exactly, exactly. There is a lot of problems with the sort of 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 does appeal to most people. It doesn't need to be catered toward 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, through and tried, like ideologically committed, right? There's some and they're maybe very vocal on the internet. But that's not actually like most. Yeah, and also the internet is at least half bots at this point. So, 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 little. 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. Debuting them is not going to help. Debating them is not going to It's better to think of yourself more as a connecting force rather than a correcting force. You're a lifeline, yeah. 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're 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 contextualize their 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

will 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. 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 IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen here listed directly in episode descriptions.

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