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being taken over by an ideology for the first time is a lot like being in love for the first time. you don't know what it's like for it to end. you can't imagine being obsessed by anything else. and you don't have a frame of reference for what abusive behavior looks like
a lot of the people i respect the most know what it's like to feel betrayed by an ideology, and what it's like to deconvert. it's humbling to know you can be full of conviction for years and then realize you were confused the whole time. you take your own beliefs less seriously
hard to explain to someone who hasn't lived it. you ever tried to explain to a teenager what romantic heartbreak feels like? i tried once. i asked him if he'd ever had a family member die and he said yes, i cried for days, and i said it's like that but they're still alive
ideological deconversion can be worse than that! i know a lot of ex-evangelicals, the kind who really believed. they'll tell you losing faith is like the world is ending. like there isn't goodness in the world anymore. like your parents never loved you because love isn't real
when you're part of an ideological community that's meeting social needs, your ideological beliefs get tangled up with those needs. extending the relationship analogy, it's like if you're friends with all your partner's friends and don't want to lose em https://twitter.com/IntoTheBlues/status/1271525052731752448?s=20
the most dangerous situation is if you abandoned all your other friends and now your *only* friends are your partner's friends. you will not want to hear anyone who wants to point out your partner's abusive behavior, it will become extremely emotionally necessary to ignore them
that is, on the ideological side, if you're in a load-bearing ideological community and it feels like you can't get your social needs met elsewhere, you won't want to hear anything from someone outside who's trying to point out ways your community might be toxic etc.
for further reading about this kind of thing, i got some good stuff out of reading alexandra amor's "cult, a love story" (and as you can tell i find the description of it as a love story very apt), would recommend, h/t @meditationstuff
https://www.amazon.com/Cult-Love-Story-Canadian-Subsequent/dp/0995200653
https://www.amazon.com/Cult-Love-Story-Canadian-Subsequent/dp/0995200653
