Ideological Abuse Series: Ideological Abuse Is A Spectrum

It's not as simple as looking for red flags

{Previously: Some Terminology.]

One very inconvenient fact about ideological abuse is that a lot of ideologically abusive behavior is on a spectrum with normal, even healthy things that high-commitment groups do all the time.

For example, think about isolating people from their friends. Very bad thing to do, right?

But I have a friend who’s Catholic. Her entire social group is atheists, many of whom are antitheist. We urge her to have more Catholic friends: it isn’t good for her to have a group of friends who don’t get something this important in her life. She needs people she can talk to about God and prayer, people to help her with moral dilemmas who are working from the same premises she is. It’s lonely for her to not have any friends who share her beliefs about one of the most important things in the world. Naturally, because she only has so much energy to put into friendships, making more Catholic friends will cause her to spend less time around her atheist friends, especially those she’s currently more distant from. But that doesn’t mean that Catholicism is ideologically abusive! It’s normal and natural for people to want to seek out friends who share their beliefs about the most important issues—even if it means spending less time with people who disagree.

Or consider lovebombing. Showering people with attention, affection, and love can be manipulative and harmful: if people can get approval and attention with you that they don’t get anywhere else, they’re more likely to stick around, even when it gets toxic. But you know what else “giving new people attention and approval” is known as? Being welcoming.

Being new in a group can be confusing and overwhelming and alienating: everyone seems to know each other, the conversations are about things you can’t understand, and you have no idea when you’re supposed to sit and when you’re supposed to stand. Healthy groups that want new members are aware of this. Someone might (officially or unofficially) talk to someone new, answer their questions, and reassure them that no one’s judging them and everyone was new sometime. There might be special events for new people, which are welcoming to stupid questions. A speaker might call for a round of applause for the new people who had the bravery to come out. And people are going to make an effort to be patient, helpful, and gentle with new people.

Or think about fasting, sleep deprivation, and drug use, which are common in ideologically abusive communities. But these practices are common in many spiritual communities for the same reason: they induce altered states of consciousness which many people find meaningful to experience. Altered states of consciousness can make you more vulnerable to believing things you otherwise wouldn’t or obeying people it’s not wise to obey, but they can also create peak experiences that are some of the most significant events in the participants’ lives.

Ideologically abusive communities often demand total commitment from their members: every minute of your life involves working to advance the community’s goals. So do startups, monasteries, many nonprofits, and grad school.¹

Strict hierarchies where higher-up members can command and have more privileges than lower-down members are common in ideologically abusive communities. But they’re also common in many communities which aren’t necessarily ideologically abusive, like monasteries and the military. I am pretty against this kind of strict hierarchy (it’s the Chaotic Good in me), but I don’t think such a structure is universally abusive. It is unhelpfully broad to describe most convents as abusive!

It’s important to be aware that many signs of ideological abuse are on a spectrum with normal behavior, so that you don’t dismiss red flags as “well, that’s normal.” How do we tell when something goes from normal to actually harmful? I propose a four-part test:

1. Is it extreme? Do you see behavior like this in other communities: religions, movements, hobbies? Do your greeters answer questions and recommend background reading, or have sex with potential new members? Does “total commitment” mean “working eighty-hour weeks” or does it mean “dancing is too frivolous to do until the revolution, comrade”?

2. Is it optional? Can people be full members of the community without doing it? Is everyone devoting their life to the cause, or are some people doing it while other people have children, time-consuming hobbies, pet political issues, and self-indulgent art projects? Is there an expectation that everyone go low-contact with people who don’t respect the community’s beliefs, or is it understood that this is a personal decision?

   1. Remember that social pressure can make something de facto mandatory even if it’s in theory optional. Sleep deprivation is not optional if everyone pays lip service to it being a personal choice but makes fun of or condescends to people who don’t do it.

3. Is it pervasive? How often does the behavior happen? Are you fasting once a year for a holiday or every day? Are you losing touch with a few of your more distant atheist friends or cutting off every nonbeliever you know?

4. Is it secret? Are you able to talk about the dynamic with outsiders? This might be an explicit secret (no one who isn’t an initiate is allowed to know what the rituals entail), but it can also be a certain level of discomfort. Are you worried that people outside the group just won’t understand? Are you afraid that they’ll use it to attack the group?

   1. You don’t have to feel comfortable talking about it with every outsider. Some people are just jerks bent on attacking your community. But if you’re scared to talk about something with a friendly, curious person from outside your community whom you’re generally pretty close to, that’s a bad sign

Note that this is not a test for ideological abuse in general; it is a test for whether a particular dynamic common in ideologically abusive communities is ideologically abusive in this case.

A red flag on one of these isn’t necessarily a problem: for example, many religions require everyone to fast on certain holidays unless there’s a health reason not to. But I do think if something pings more than one of these, or one of them very badly (for example, fasting without a health exception), it’s a very very bad sign.

1. Although arguably many grad school advisor/advisee relationships are in fact abusive.