How Authoritarianism Seduces: A Psycho-Sexual Reading of Radicalisation
When a loved one disappears into the far-right rabbit hole—Trumpist adherence, Zionist propaganda feeds, monarchist nostalgia—it rarely feels like “just politics.” It feels like they’ve been taken over body, mind and soul. And in a sense, they have. Authoritarianism doesn’t only capture the mind; it reorganises the psycho-sexual economy of everyday life.
Why It Feels Like Addiction
Wilhelm Reich wrote nearly a century ago that fascism thrives when ordinary eros is blocked. Intimacy is replaced by a craving for strong leaders and purity crusades. Anger and righteousness become a substitute orgasm. Social media is the needle: every “like,” every outrage meme, is a micro-dose of political jouissance.
Erich Fromm added that when freedom feels unbearable, people escape into submission. A domineering leader becomes the new lover, the new father. Slogans provide instant identity. Hatred toward outsiders cements the bond. Put bluntly: the authoritarian bubble doesn’t just soothe anxiety. It gratifies needs that used to be met in family, friendship, even sexuality.
The Ritual of the Lie
One of the strangest features of authoritarian capture is the way obvious lies are clung to with fervor. Someone will deny living arrangements, rewrite personal history, or parrot a line that contradicts their own past words. To outsiders it looks absurd. Inside the bubble, the lie itself becomes the sacrament. Denial proves loyalty. The more reality is bent, the tighter the bond becomes.
The Cultic Environment
Robert Lifton’s study of thought reform described how groups narrow the flow of information, enforce loaded language, and elevate doctrine over person. Today, that milieu is produced algorithmically by Facebook, YouTube, and Telegram channels. And it is reinforced not only by the main manipulator but by proxies—the “pious friend,” the distant relative, the ideological aunt overseas. Each plays a role in keeping the subject insulated from dissonance.
Families on the Front Line
For family members, this process is devastating. The person you knew withdraws. Estrangement from children or siblings is reframed as “proof” of loyalty to the new cause. Attempts to argue are met with defensive slogans. The manipulator, meanwhile, positions himself as the indispensable gatekeeper to truth, faith, and belonging. This is why families often sound desperate in their communications—angry WhatsApps, strained phone calls. But these should not be mistaken for the cause. They are the symptoms of years of coercion and the grief of watching a loved one vanish behind ideological glass.
The Way Out
Undoing authoritarian capture requires more than debate. It requires both structural protection and emotional repair.
- Protective orders can physically separate a vulnerable elder from a manipulator, cutting the daily dopamine feed of outrage.
- Proxy influences —ideological friends, religious validators, radicalised relatives—must be recognised and neutralised, or they will keep the bubble intact.
- Rebuilding agency means starting small: letting the person choose tea or coffee, taking walks, anchoring them in embodied routines that reawaken autonomy.
- New belonging must be offered: community, culture, spirituality that affirms dignity without coercion.
Shaming or ridiculing only tightens the armour. Patience, gentle questioning, and above all, protection from the manipulator, allow the bubble to weaken over time.
Conclusion
Authoritarian movements thrive because they hijack desire, not just opinion. They turn fear into ecstasy, lies into sacraments, isolation into belonging.
Breaking their hold means recognising this: the fight is not only political but psycho-sexual. What is stolen must be replaced — not with lectures, but with structures of safety, experiences of care, and slow restoration of dignity. Only then can the authoritarian enjoyment lose its grip, and the person return to themselves.
