This group-think, so called “Reich Effect”, is prevalent throughout America and Western society, especially in Leftist-ideology and socialist-political movements. The political ‘Right-wing’ tend to be more individualist and nuanced by comparison, more Liberty minded (diverse ideas).
How have you experienced these effects, are you a group-thinker?
Has the American Right-wing become the new “Liberals” (pro free-speech, anti-war)?
If this is referring to Wilhelm Reich, the psychoanalyst known for his controversial ideas on sexual repression and authoritarianism, then it seems like a misrepresentation of his work. Reich argued that both leftist and rightist authoritarian structures suppress individual freedom in different ways.
As for the claim itself: Leftist-ideology and socialist-political movements often emphasize collectivism, systemic change, and state or community intervention to address inequalities. However, they also contain a diversity of thought, from anarcho-socialists to democratic socialists, and not all leftists support authoritarianism.
While right-wing politics often emphasize individual liberty, free markets, and limited government, it is also home to authoritarian tendencies, particularly in nationalist or reactionary movements.
So, in reality, both left and right have ideological spectrums, with both authoritarian and libertarian strands. While the political left tends to advocate for collective solutions, and the right often emphasizes personal responsibility, neither side is inherently more “nuanced” or “diverse” in thought—it depends on the specific factions within each ideology.
As a team leader and manager, I was always a group-thinker, which got the backs up of the autocratic higher management but made me popular with the staff. Having said that, I was also someone who went out on a limb on some subjects and (apart from a few mistakes) I generally was proved right.
I often ‘transcended’ the groups I was in without causing a lot of animosity,
No, the right-wing serve as a release valve for a lot of frustration which has built up from elitist thinking on both sides of the spectrum. The conceptual ideologies have not been transmitted so that normal people can get around them and so they choose change, even if they are not sure, what the outcome will be.
The truth lies in the exact opposite direction of the posted item.
It is precisely the men who are the followers and not ony suck it up, but are swallowing the lies of the bigfatorangebabyman, Musk, Tate, Shapiro and other right wing nut jobs.
How else do you think Trump won?
Trump the Father of Lies won because of the weak egos of men who think they have lost control of their women folk and children through social movements such as woke and DEI, that they shall believe any garbage offered to them that massages their hurt egos.
LOL
You mean like MAGA??
The American Left has been captured by Main Stream Media. Fortunately though, with your Boomer generation dieing off, MSM is falling out of power and control. This coincides with the waning power of American Leftism. However, it is rather clear to Americans and the rest of the world, that recent Leftist political power could not convince their opposition of their ideologies, and instead descended into echo-chambers. This ultimately led to their domination by the Trump regime.
American Rightists are a different beast altogether: religious Protestant Christians mostly – and they are diverse in thought, behavior, and political ideology, precisely because of their Anti-Catholic “Protestation”. American “Christians” are very diverse between their Sectarian ideologies.
I don’t see how you can compare American Left-Right group-thinking so casually. Leftists clearly have made major mistakes.
Leftist Group-Think (this means you Scalper):
It would have been interesting to discuss the Reich effect without making it a “their side bad, my side good” shit sling fest.
However, since we did decide to frame this as a political thing, when I Google questions about conservatives and conformity I get results like this.
I find across my searches that conservatives are more conformist (which makes sense considering how much conservativism revolves around religion in the us), more succeptible to misinformation, and more likely to seek and participate in an information echo chamber.
However, I think there’s an interesting non political conversation that’s worth having (perhaps in another thread) about if there’s perhaps any rational basis in at least some thought patterns surrounding agreement-based-beliefs.
Obviously if your entire structure for coming to a belief is “is this belief popular? Will I be unpopular for having this belief?” then you’re not really thinking. But if instead you ask more nuanced questions, like “does this new belief I’m picking up match with what the relevant experts think? Why do those experts disagree?”, having those thought patterns in your toolkit is, I would wager, a strength.
I don’t think you understand the full extent of group-think. Group-thinkers do not go beyond 1-step verification or logic. They are ‘instructed’ (propagandized) to have a certain belief, and they do not doubt that belief, nor the Authority/Legitimacy of their determined Propagandist or Network. They do not doubt. They’re not philosophical in anyway. Instead their ‘Doubt’ is instead and only redirected against their ‘enemy’ group. In Western politics, this is rather simple: Red-team bad, Blue-team good, and vice-versa.
This is why the recent US Election was so devestating to Western Civilization’s consensus, because the West was back-sliding on a Liberal-Leftist agenda, since the 1960s. Western “Democracies” are very finely attuned to the so-called “Popular Vote”. Because this represents the majority consensus. If 51% of everybody has a different belief than you, then your Group-Think becomes ineffective. It becomes, by definition, a minority belief, not a majority belief.
My comparison is based on the fact that every human being is fallible and makes mistakes. This is true of right- and left-leaning people. So, it isn’t so casual, and your blinkered view of the world, in which you focus only on America is probably why you have difficulty with it.
Europe (where I live) has made probably every mistake possible, so we are quite amused by people claiming that they are on the right side of history. It is a sign of immaturity on your part.
It is especially disconcerting, because I know of many ‘boomers’ who live their lives dedicated to leaving the world a little better behind them, and we saw the global economy ravaging the world in the interest of American corporations and hegemony.
Many of us had no power to change that, and it didn’t matter what political party we elected, they were all in the pocket of the rich. So don’t lecture me on anything that your young life has yet to see the consequences of. We are old enough to look back and regret, you are looking forward thinking you can’t make any mistake. Not a good outlook!
A few counter-points:
You touched on the primary issue – the masses of humanity using group-think as a convenient method of alleviating and redirecting their personal responsibility, especially when it comes to mistakes or “accidents”. Doing what others are doing, no matter how authoritative or “legitimate”, does not excuse an individual from a mistake. The mistake is still made. All are still accountable for their mistakes.
European Group-Think revolves around petty Ethno-Nationalism. Europeans are loyal to their Ethnic-Nationality in-group. You are only as “Norwegian” or “Belgian” or “Slovakian” as your Nation’s history and political allegiances. Europeans rely on Conservatism insofar that their populations are 10th Generation or older… the “Old World” mentality. The French claim to be “Liberals”, but they’re not really. No Europeans really are. Europeans operate on 500, 1000, 2000+ year histories. That’s a lot of momentum. That’s a lot of Group-Think.
Your Boomer Generation has gutted America’s prosperity and hopes. The American Boomers sold-out our Industry and Manufacturing to China, India, and other 3rd world nations, for pennies on the dollar. American Boomers have sold-out their children, and grandchildren, to bolster their own Retirements …many of whom will lose it all at the Casino and their gambling-addictions. Very short-sighted, selfish, narcissistic, a violently repulsive Generation that will not be remembered well in the grander scheme of History.
Trump is the Father of Lies.
If you do not know that yet, you have serious cognitive deficiencies.
I did not watch the Video
The fact that we are all individuals trying to find our way through a chaotic world, doing what we can, and making choices based on what information we were given, is ignored by young people with hindsight, and access to information that was not available to us. A mistake something may be, but to make it ‘my’ mistake, I need to have the means and the knowledge to influence an outcome. I would acknowledge a collective blame, but that doesn’t acknowledge an individual neglect.
You are talking about a world that had just emerged from two world wars and a lot of nationalist aggression before that. In addition, the socialist idea of an international solidarity was being beaten down, and the idea of universal human rights was being implemented for the first time.
Rather like your generation may complain about the world we leave behind, the world our parents left behind was one under the threat of nuclear fall-out, and alliances were sought to support the hopes for a better world. An incredible number of inventions were being made that you have the opportunity to use, but which we had to get used to.
Then we have the inherent proclivity of human beings to go from one extreme to another, which your generation is as guilty of as any other. Your knowledge of European culture is minimal, and more taken from books than personal experience, otherwise your theories wouldn’t be so barren.
As part of a generation who was dominated by American hegemony, I can’t see how a European can be accused of gutting America’s prosperity and hopes. America did that themselves, and gutted the prosperity and hopes of a large number of non-industrial countries as well. I’ve seen it and wept.
You employ identity politics of a very cross-eyed nature, accusing a whole generation of being short-sighted, selfish, narcissistic, and violently repulsive, without distinguishiung that a large part of our generation were just as much victims as the following generations.
You are typical for many people who are vocally aggressive against previous generations, but themselves have an unreasonably high sense of their own importance. You need and seek too much attention and want people to admire you. Such people lack the ability to understand or care about the feelings of others. But behind this mask of extreme confidence, you are not sure of your own self-worth and are easily upset by the slightest criticism.
In short, your are at least as narcissistic as anyone before you.
To reiterate, how does the ‘Reich Effect affect/effect group think? In a sense their effect can be exemplify reverse effect on each, in that way the may function variable and invariably, and seen or revised separately or as a primary authentic entity, …
In the US this strategy is well known and practiced between ideological stress(if I may) and the liberalization or relaxation of moral codes versus the black letter ethical laws.
So it’s a recurred interpretation to try to get under the dynamics of energy transfer from one cognitive and emotional entity to the other.
Is anybody surprised though?
Group-Think requires its followers to ignore oppositional propaganda, hence why your one-track mind focuses on a very limited field of information. You are unable to watch a variety of propaganda channels, like Fox News AND CNN, because your adversarial group might persuade you, or more quickly at the least, prove you wrong about your group-beliefs.
We’re not “all individuals” though, “equally”. Some are more ‘individual’ than others. And the difference is how reliant an individual is upon his/her group, and group-thought.
Most of this is projection …I’m describing the mostly-American predicament in this thread, with respect to group-think and generational progression across the general ‘Western’ culture. This includes the EU specifically, because the EU’s culture and politics is directly downstream from American-ism. Hence you and your countries are affected, for better or worse, by US leadership, and especially the current Administration.
Group-Think applies across the board, directly and immediately.
Care to rephrase your main point?
This is just a nonsense comment, pretending to reply but completely meaningless.
We have always been affected, but after the huge benefit of the Marshall Plan, we were very often ‘led down the garden path’ as we say. The misuse of NATO after 1989 is just one area, but the interventions that America undertook in the world were always in the interest of furthering American hegemony first, just like the British Empire’s interventions in its colonies and across the world were in the interest of their hegemony.
Go further then…
How does Group-Think affect Europeans across the Atlantic? How downstream from American “culture” are you? Aren’t multiple Western European countries being plagued with 3rd-world immigrants, usually Arabic Moslems knifing little girls 100s of times, to death, and gang-rapes? How long until one-after-another, Western European countries become minority groups within their own borders?
Do you honestly believe Western European Liberal-Leftist Group-Think is stronger than… Islam? Abrahamism? Judaism?
Go further with your rationale, let’s see it.
It’s just garbage.
Just a waste of time.
I do not need to see a bunch of garbage propogated by a cult to know what a cult is. Life it too short for Trump and his cohorts.
I’ll be happy when “It Happens” - I just hope that some kind of common sense might prevail.
But just because you believe Trump’s lies does not mean that everyone else is also in a cult. You do not get to assume everyone is as suseptible to groups think as you are. Test me if you like. I do not believe. I seek to know.
The truth is out there somewhere. But the MAGA wedge is so far from it that is is obvious.
Example. Trump a day or so ago complained about his stupid the trade deal with Candada is “Who made this stupid deal?” Roll back to 2016 it was him.
Yet the MAGA morons think he’s smart.
Trump is the Father of Lies and his crew are idiots.
