Where the Clinic Meets the Movement: Does Gender Ideology Arm Left-Wing Authoritarian Psychology? “CGAS (Clinical Gender Affirmation Scale) and related gender ideological-belief measures were strongly associated with left-wing authoritarianism” - Where the Clinic Meets the Movement: Does Gender Ideology Arm Left-Wing Authoritarian Psychology? “CGAS (Clinical Gender Affirmation Scale) was not simply standing in for being politically left-wing” - Where the Clinic Meets the Movement: Does Gender Ideology Arm Left-Wing Authoritarian Psychology? “Support for coercion, punishment, and violence appears to be tied less to liberalism generally than to an authoritarian disposition organized around left-wing ideological content” - Where the Clinic Meets the Movement: Does Gender Ideology Arm Left-Wing Authoritarian Psychology? “Gender ideology may function as an ideological accelerant” - Where the Clinic Meets the Movement: Does Gender Ideology Arm Left-Wing Authoritarian Psychology? “Gender ideology may supply authoritarian psychology with a structured map of perceived outgroups, threat sources, and oppressor classes” - Where the Clinic Meets the Movement: Does Gender Ideology Arm Left-Wing Authoritarian Psychology? “Dissent becomes not a legitimate position but a failure of professional duty or an act of harm” - Where the Clinic Meets the Movement: Does Gender Ideology Arm Left-Wing Authoritarian Psychology? “The same psychological machinery operates on the extreme left”- Where the Clinic Meets the Movement: Does Gender Ideology Arm Left-Wing Authoritarian Psychology? “Violence can come to seem permissible or necessary” - Where the Clinic Meets the Movement: Does Gender Ideology Arm Left-Wing Authoritarian Psychology? “Three findings pull in the same direction. People who strongly endorse gender ideology positions score dramatically higher on left-wing authoritarianism than their political identity alone would predict. Furthermore, both LWA (Left-Wing Authoritarianism) and CGAS (Clinical Gender Affirmation Scale) predicted support for political violence” - Where the Clinic Meets the Movement: Does Gender Ideology Arm Left-Wing Authoritarian Psychology? “Together, these findings support the paper's core claim: gender ideology may function as an ideological accelerant, telling left-wing authoritarian psychology who the enemy is, why the situation is urgent, and—in those already disposed toward force—that violence is legitimate” - Where the Clinic Meets the Movement: Does Gender Ideology Arm Left-Wing Authoritarian Psychology? “One mechanism by which clinical content may translate into violence permission deserves note. Trans-Genocide Belief—the perceived likelihood that a genocide of individuals that identify as transgender is currently underway in the United States—is predicted to more strongly relate to CGAS (Clinical Gender Affirmation Scale) and LWA (Left-Wing Authoritarianism) than to political identity and to be associated with elevated justification for political violence” - Where the Clinic Meets the Movement: Does Gender Ideology Arm Left-Wing Authoritarian Psychology? “This prediction is consistent with broader research showing that perceived threat, existential threat, and collective victimhood can increase support for hardline, punitive, or exclusionary action against outgroups, particularly when paired with authoritarian dispositions or strong moral conviction (Armaly & Enders, 2022; Carriere et al., 2022; Hirschberger et al., 2016; Kljajić et al., 2025; Schori-Eyal et al., 2014; Skitka, 2010)” - Where the Clinic Meets the Movement: Does Gender Ideology Arm Left-Wing Authoritarian Psychology? “Related work on moralization and violent intergroup conflict further suggests that when a political conflict is framed as a moral emergency involving dangerous or demonized outgroups, violence can come to seem permissible or necessary (Mooijman et al., 2018; Saguy & Reifen-Tagar, 2022)” - Where the Clinic Meets the Movement: Does Gender Ideology Arm Left-Wing Authoritarian Psychology? “The practical stakes are straightforward. Research frameworks for understanding authoritarianism have historically focused overwhelmingly on the political right, while analogous left-wing pathways have received far less attention. Yet federal agencies and public safety officials are concerned not only with ideology in the abstract, but with radicalization pathways: the content that tells people who to fear, why the situation is urgent, and when force becomes acceptable” - Where the Clinic Meets the Movement: Does Gender Ideology Arm Left-Wing Authoritarian Psychology “This study suggests that the same psychological machinery operates on the extreme left, and that it may be running through institutional channels—clinical guidelines, professional standards, credentialed expertise—that current threat-detection frameworks are not well designed to recognize” - Where the Clinic Meets the Movement: Does Gender Ideology Arm Left-Wing Authoritarian Psychology? “Violence connected to gender ideology remains largely undocumented in the academic literature. This study provides a first systematic empirical look at the psychological infrastructure that makes such violence conceivable” - Where the Clinic Meets the Movement: Does Gender Ideology Arm Left-Wing Authoritarian Psychology? “Both LWA (Left-Wing Authoritarianism) and CGAS (Clinical Gender Affirmation Scale) were significantly positively correlated with justification for political violence across all six targets” - Where the Clinic Meets the Movement: Does Gender Ideology Arm Left-Wing Authoritarian Psychology? “Our main findings for youth starting treatment with blockers include: At baseline, about one-quarter of these youth had clinically concerning scores for depression and anxiety. About one-quarter reported having thought about suicide, and 8% reported having attempted suicide in the past. These numbers are on par with the population of middle school youth at large” - The Trans Youth Care - United States “Our main findings for youth starting treatment with GAH include: At baseline, about half of these youth had clinically concerning scores for depression and anxiety. About two-thirds reported having thought about suicide, and one-quarter reported having attempted. By two years after starting GAH, these youth showed increased scores for life satisfaction, appearance congruence (having the physical appearance of one's body match one's gender identity), positive emotions, and psychological well-being and decreased scores for depression and anxiety” - The Trans Youth Care - United States
The Psychology Behind Political Violence Political life carries an appetite for violence beneath the surface. A shooter leaves a manifesto; supporters celebrate; online strangers justify killing over insults, misgendering, and fantasies of execution. We’re told these are separate phenomena—different ideologies, grievances, causes—but they’re deeply connected. The murderer, the celebrant, and the online fantasist share one conviction: blood will build a better world. We often assume ideology comes first, violence second—radicalization infecting an otherwise ordinary person. But corrupted people may seek ideologies that rationalize what they already want to believe. Feeling comes first; philosophy follows. Nietzsche called this *ressentiment*: not ordinary anger, but enduring resentment rooted in surrendered agency and perpetual victimhood. Ressentiment is creative: it turns grievance into virtue and revenge into justice. That’s why movements can sound humanitarian while obsessing over enemies. They promise liberation but focus on who must be eliminated; they call violence self-defense while celebrating destruction. Notice the imbalance: energy goes to identifying who deserves punishment, not to explaining how their better society would work. This is the difference between genuine grievance and pathological ressentiment. Genuine grievance seeks repair; ressentiment seeks subtraction. Its “solutions” are fantasies of punishment—heads cut off, privilege liquidated, wrong pronouns punished. These aren’t coherent doctrines of stability; they’re rationalizations for resentment. Ressentiment also despises self-improvement because it requires admitting agency. Its worldview depends on locating suffering outside oneself. The deepest enemy of these movements, then, is not any specific ideology. It is agency itself.
A Culture of Violent Ressentiment A lust for violence is spreading through the worst among us. After shootings, murders, and attempted political violence, some celebrate and idolize the attackers—while others online applaud harm done to those deemed deserving, even for things like “misgendering.” People claim these are unrelated, but I see a shared conviction: blood is the only route to a better world. We debate which ideology “caused” a given attack—incel culture, Marxism, anti-Zionism—but the pattern is similar. Radicalization is often treated like infection: belief first, impulse second. I think the reverse is more common. Corrupted people don’t stumble into dangerous ideas. They go looking for them. Ressentiment—Nietzsche’s term for the slow poison of hopeless victims—builds moral systems that make a grudge feel like justice. The feeling takes the throne first; philosophy follows, recruiting whatever justifies what the person already wants. Ressentiment focuses on enemies and punishment while offering vague utopias. It subtracts, locating suffering entirely outside the self and proposing removal of its “source.” That’s why it rejects self-improvement: it requires agency. What we face is not one ideology, but the spirit that turns failure and frustration into someone else’s crime—and therefore treats violence as justice.
Vienna must never become the European hub of the Iranian regime. 🇦🇹🇪🇺 No extremism. No regime propaganda. No radicalization in our capital. If links to extremism and foreign regime influence are confirmed, the Imam-Ali Center in Vienna must be closed according to Austrian law. https://t.co/SAmUTF6ihC #Vienna #NoExtremism #StopRadicalization #AT #EU
A man has been arrested after three Swiss nationals were injured in a stabbing attack at Winterthur train station, with authorities investigating the motive linked to radicalization and extremism, while the suspect had a history of interacting with police concerning Islamic State propaganda. #StabbingAttack #Switzerland #Radicalization
“As many as 86% of the persons in the ‘Joint Database on Terrorism, Extremism, Radicalization Process’ are Muslim, but only about 8% of the population in Belgium is Muslim,” said Belgian MP Sam van Rooy. “This is therefore an enormous, gigantic over-representation.” “Mainstream #Terrorism #Radicalization #OverRepresentation #BE
Ivan Jennings, a 46-year-old right-wing extremist from Stafford, has pleaded guilty to encouraging terrorism and disseminating a manifesto by Norwegian mass killer Anders Breivik, while also being a member of extreme right-wing social media groups, with sentencing set for September 4. #Terrorism #Extremism #Radicalization #NO #NZ
Thirteen Australian women and children, previously detained in Syrian camps due to their family ties to men fighting for Islamic State, returned to Australia after years in captivity, with the Australian government refusing to assist their repatriation, while raising concerns about the radicalization risks posed by long-term detention conditions. #Repatriation #HumanRights #CounterTerrorism #AU #SY #IQ #US #TR #EU
Brandenburgs Innenminister Jan Redmann fordert mehr Befugnisse für die Polizei, um Radikalisierung im Internet besser zu bekämpfen, unter anderem durch die Überwachung von Messenger-Kommunikation in Verdachtsfällen, nachdem eine Razzia gegen junge Neonazis durchgeführt wurde. #Radicalization #OnlineSafety #LawEnforcement
Die brandenburgische Landesregierung plant, das Polizeigesetz zu reformieren, um der Polizei verbesserte Befugnisse zur Überwachung von Messenger-Kommunikation in Verdachtsfällen zu geben, um der Radikalisierung von Jugendlichen im Internet, insbesondere durch rechtsextreme Gruppen, entgegenzuwirken. #Radicalization #OnlineSafety #LawEnforcement
President Javier Milei expressed his strong condemnation of the assassination attempt against U.S. President Donald Trump during a Washington event, emphasizing the dangers of political violence and the radicalization of public debate, while also criticizing leftist factions for fostering hostility that can lead to such attacks. #PoliticalViolence #Democracy #GlobalPolitics #US #AR
An Austrian man of North Macedonian descent was arrested for preparing a shrapnel bomb aimed at attacking Taylor Swift fans during her concert in Vienna, with discussions of radicalization and ties to a terror cell emerging in the ongoing trial, which could lead to significant prison sentences for the accused. #Terrorism #PublicSafety #ConcertSecurity #AT #MK #US #SA #GB #IT #PL #DE
As the Day of the Child approaches, a digital crisis affecting children in Mexico is highlighted, revealing how unregulated social media content exposes minors to body insecurities, violent communities, and even criminal organizations, prompting civil associations to urgently call for government action to protect young internet users amidst increasing concerns over addictive consumption patterns and potential radicalization from online algorithms. #DigitalSafety #ChildProtection #SocialMediaRisks #MX
A 22-year-old Syrian man has been arrested in Berlin on suspicion of terrorism, admitting in court that he was radicalized online and had planned a terrorist attack targeting Jews and non-Muslims, which involved using a knife and ultimately a suicide bomb, while also disseminating ISIS propaganda on social media. #Terrorism #Radicalization #Berlin #SY #DE
