When I entered into adulthood, my morals were similar to what they currently are, but my political views were the opposite.
The core reasoning was the same. I wanted to protect the oppressed and vulnerable.
The churches, small schools, and family members who influenced me convinced me that the people in power were the oppressed.
They instilled me with a fear for people who they said were evil or dangerous. I didn't know that the "evil" was based on dogma, and the "dangerous" was caused by systemic issues perpetuated by those in power (poverty, mass-incarceration, red lining, punishment rather than affordable treatment).
I will say though, I disagree with you saying that you will not change your father-in-law's opinion. I have changed the opinions of people close to me through long-term, heartfelt conversation (not argument), and I've changed my opinion based on their insights as well.
Sharing deeply felt views on world issues, over a long period of time, and without the framing of political argument or a particular political identity, is much different from the short-term political exposure on social media in the studies you shared.
Dear Angela, I found this a thoughtful and humane piece, and I agree with much of the ethical instinct behind it. You are right, I think, to resist the contemporary habit of reducing a person entirely to their most visible political position, as though every human being were no more than a slogan wearing skin. I know I made that error myself more times than I like to admit.
That said, I think there is a structural issue your piece does not quite bring into focus, and for me, it changes the whole moral and political weight of the discussion. The question is not only how we remain human with people whose politics we find troubling, dangerous, or even morally abhorrent; it is also who profits from producing those politics at scale, who has built the machinery that keeps feeding people the same grievances, who owns the platforms through which those grievances circulate, and whose material interests are served when political difference becomes a permanent theatre of outrage.
In other words, I do not think we can discuss political polarisation today without discussing late-stage capitalism and the attention economy. We are not simply dealing with organic disagreement among citizens who have reached different conclusions after consulting different evidence. We are dealing with a media and platform environment in which conflict is monetised, indignation is rewarded, fear is made sticky, and reactionary positions are repeatedly laundered into mainstream visibility through controversy. The argument that begins as “we should be able to talk across differences” can very quickly become a cover for something much darker, because the far right has learned to exploit precisely that liberal and humanistic impulse. It demands infinite patience from others while building disciplined channels of propaganda, grievance, and recruitment.
But there is something else that cannot and should not be ignored, and that is that reactionary movements rarely begin by announcing the full brutality of their endgame. They begin by shifting the emotional weather. They normalise suspicion, then contempt, then dehumanisation. They dress hierarchy as tradition, cruelty as realism, paranoia as discernment, and domination as the restoration of natural order. By the time the most extreme positions become speakable in polite company, a long cultural preparation has already taken place, much of it funded, amplified, or indirectly subsidised by people who benefit when the working class is persuaded to fight horizontally rather than look upward.
The billionaire robber baron class has been central to this process. Some of it is direct funding, some of it is infrastructural, some of it is simply the result of platform ownership and algorithmic incentives, but the effect is remarkably consistent: attention is captured, resentment is intensified, and democratic imagination is narrowed until every conversation becomes another little battlefield in which the most vulnerable people are convinced that other vulnerable people are the real enemy. Migrants, queer people, trans people, feminists, academics, welfare recipients, public sector workers, unions, and racialised communities all become convenient figures of displacement, while the actual architecture of dispossession remains protected behind a haze of culture war.
This is why I would be cautious about treating political differences primarily as interpersonal problems. Of course, there are still conversations worth having, and of course, there are people who can be reached through patience, affection, and serious engagement. Yet there is a point at which “remaining open to dialogue” becomes an unpaid service offered to those who have professionalised bad faith. The decent person keeps making room at the table, while the reactionary influencer turns that room into content, proof of persecution, and another opportunity to move the acceptable range of discourse further toward their own position.
In occulture, this has been particularly visible, and perhaps especially poisonous. Esoteric communities already contain symbolic material that can be bent in reactionary directions: lineage, hierarchy, initiation, secrecy, elitism, transgression, sacred kingship, tradition, anti-modernity, the heroic individual against the herd, and the fantasy of belonging to a small group that sees what the sleeping masses cannot see... you name it. None of these themes are inherently fascist, obviously, and many can be handled with great subtlety, beauty, and liberatory force. Yet they are also easy to weaponise when filtered through the attention economy, where the most profitable persona is often the persecuted truth teller who claims to be saying what “they” do not want you to hear.
That has produced a familiar pattern. Some figures are funded directly, or at least materially supported by reactionary networks, while others simply understand where the current is flowing and swim with it. The capital savvy occultist, who may have once spoken in more ambiguous or even contradictory terms, begins to discover that anti woke provocation, masculinist posturing, trad aesthetics, conspiratorial innuendo, and ritualised contempt for liberal or left wing concerns all produce engagement. Engagement becomes followers, followers become subscribers, subscribers become courses, private groups, exclusive publications, conferences, special initiations, and eventually an online cult of personality that also functions as a piggybank.
The same pattern appears in parts of occult publishing. Controversy is marketed as bravery, reactionary material is sold as forbidden knowledge, and the old glamour of dangerous books becomes an alibi for distributing ideas whose political function is much less romantic than their packaging suggests. The question is rarely as simple as whether every author, publisher, or reader involved is consciously fascist. The more difficult question is how a market forms around transgression, how that market rewards escalation, and how the rhetoric of “free inquiry” can be used to launder positions that ultimately make the world more dangerous for those who already have the least power.
So my disagreement is not with your call for humanity, which I think is valuable and necessary. My concern is that humanity without political economy can leave us describing the wound while saying too little about the weapon. The person who has fallen into reactionary politics may indeed be frightened, lonely, economically battered, spiritually confused, or socially alienated, and it may be both morally and strategically wise to remember that. Yet the machinery that captured them is not confused in the same way. It is profitable, deliberate, adaptive, and very often backed by people whose class interests are served by keeping everyone else angry, suspicious, and exhausted.
For me, then, the task is double. We should remain capable of recognising the human being beneath the political position where that recognition is still possible, but we also need far sharper discernment about the systems that manufacture those positions, reward their repetition, and convert the resulting conflict into money and power. In occulture, especially, this means asking not only whether someone’s views are unpleasant or “problematic,” but also what economy of attention they serve, what audience they are cultivating, what resentments they are feeding, and who benefits when spiritual sovereignty is repackaged as a reactionary consumer identity.
I suppose my worry is that late-stage capitalism has learned to sell people their own alienation back to them as initiation, and the far right has been frighteningly effective at giving that alienation a mythic shape. That does not mean we abandon compassion, but it does mean compassion must be joined to structural analysis, otherwise we risk mistaking a manufactured political economy of grievance for a series of merely personal disagreements.
Hi , Angela . I'm from Brazil and here we face these questions too since the rise of Bolsonaro to power .
For me fascism is the bottonline . There's no way to have a rational dialogue with a fascist . For example, just last week a brand of detergent , of an industry owned by a bolsonarist , Ype , a guy who donated a million to Bolsonaro's campaign in 2022 , was forbidden because it was contaminated with a very perilous bacteria. What some bolsonarists did ? They started posting vídeos DRINKING THE DETERGENT ! How do you discuss politics with completely insane people like that. ? Since Reich published his The Mass Psychology of Fascism and Adorno and Horkheimer published The Authoritarian Personality , and also the works of Erich Fromm , that we know that indeed Fascism is a matter of character . Of bad character . The person has some hook with the ideologia, wether is racism, misoginy, homophobia, extreme individualism ( in tune with the now prevailing Neoliberal ideology. Neofascism is also extremely Neoliberal ) and so on . So how can you relate with someone like that ? On the spiritual path its well known that when enter the path one of the things that generally change is pur circle of relationships . Perhaps nowadays this is even more clear and evident .
Another topic would be , from an esoteric point of view. If there are spiritual forces / beings behind these poltical movements . Some call it " parapolitics" . Well , but that's a very complex topic in itself ....
So , summarizing, some people will drift away along the path , Thank God !
I will not share bread with people that actively want me dead. That includes a lot of people on the right. I don't think that's unreasonable. It's just common sense
True, I also wonder why or whether friends vote or support parties or campaigns that want to do me harm, or worse. Many have had to live with that from all sides. At the moment I tell myself they don't really grasp the implications of what they are supporting and when they do, they will wake up, tone it down or even offer some support. But it's worrying that otherwise good people have forgotten the principles of non violence... and I keep trying to wake them up. What is the alternate?
For me, maintaining relationships with people who support a political agenda that dehumanizes me feels self-hating. I end up trying to make excuses for them and why they would support someone advocating for my erasure. I’m a trans woman for context. I’m also person of color with, as I see it, some white privilege due to my proximity to whiteness—half-Asian, half-white American
Aww, I found your descriptions, reflections and sensitive nuancing incredibly moving and insightful Angela. Your writing has given me a lot to think about. Thank you for taking the time, to think deeply, and to share. In this age of 'soundbites and memes' often replacing and displacing genuine dialogue this is real service 🙏
When you have the figure head of a political party call disagreement with them treason and demonization of the other party, you dig deeper than the top soil I believe.
When the people of that party accept these statements and reflect them as their own you are looking at a level of betrayal of human nature.
The Republican Party portrays the Democrats as all Antifa which isn’t even a true organization and they claim anyone on the left is treasonous. So, in my opinion, as stated and with the adjoining article it would appear to be the right demonizing the left.
Just as the Democrat party portrays all Republicans as fascist Nazis and racists. Both blanket portrayals are clearly full of error and should be avoided.
And there is a valid reason for that. Let us not put on the same level a party that, certainly not perfect, has done good, and a party that wants a good demographic of people dead
Agreed, and when policies attack people based on gender, race, country of origin or religion then the association with Nazi policy is a sound representation.
It is quite obvious that people on all sides demonize at least one other side, sometimes many. Your own statement borders, probably not intentionally, on demonization.
😂😂😂 I post a factual article and all that comes back is speculation and border comments. Here is a full statement by Trump calling Democrats ‘demons’ just for being Democrats. I post opinion based off of factual documented facts, not conjecture.
My opinion is my own and I post documentation. I could personally care less what anyone else thinks about my opinion. I do not need any ‘yay’ votes or ‘nay’ votes.
Perhaps, not intentionally, you think I’m concerned with someone else’s opinion when I am truly not. Have a good day.
You are entitled to your opinion but I am not obliged to be concerned with or even care about it. I respect your right to your own personal opinion and I respect the right to mine. All else I consider irrelevant, even irrational.
And Democrats are certainly not perfect and have their own set of faults. If they were a perfect or better party, Trump wouldn’t have won. Sadly, I wish we had another option but for now we are stuck with one or the other.
Hello Angela, it is certainly a great disappointment to discover that someone close to you holds political views that are completely different from your own. In general, I agree with your stance: do not cut off the relationship entirely, but rather exercise greater caution within it. However, if we are all—at our core—part and expression of Universal Consciousness, we owe one another a fundamental respect, independent of opinions and actions (the intrinsic value of the Human Being as a Divine Spark). Let us not forget that we are upon the Game Board of Earth, journeying along our eternal spiritual path. Viciousness regarding earthly matters does not befit the practice of a true occultist. As Dion Fortune said: "The intensity of sensation is in proportion to the limitation of the consciousness." Many blessings to you.
I like the middle position expressed by Dr. Puca and her thoughts about this as a whole. I do, however, want to suggest that in my experience, I find that the "cutting people out" strategy is often less a principled stance but rather what the person making the decision needs at that moment for personal reasons. If someone is overwhelmed, dealing (or not dealing) with trauma, etc., sometimes separating from folks who are expressing stuff at the topsoil level that is traumatic/hurtful/too much -- sometimes that may be needed. The social media calls for cutting people out: an individual holding that stance as a principle can be different from an individual who makes such a decision out of a perhaps temporary necessity, not out of a principled position.
I especially liked Dr. Puca's reminding us that folks in a group with common symbologies, rituals, etc. do not therefore necessarily share political views. I was a Freemason for many years: doing the work was very meaningful, and of course there's the "no politics or religion discussed in Lodge" rule, but I never lost sight of the fact that my Brethren held widely different views on things and that the rituals and symbology would mean vastly different things to different Brethren: the goal wasn't to come to the same conclusions, but to learn how to be better in this world, and that would naturally take folks in different directions.
Angela this piece was amazing and i get why you see it the way you do.
In my case I always hold my political stuff in front of me, because the moment i start sharing it. I will alienate a lot of people and even lose a lot of assignments, not because my stands are extreme, but because of how many people are not able to see beyond certain angles.
I fall in between both, i prefer balance overall in things and what work well for a country itself, but also that there is no lack of sympathy and empathy for others, but that self preservation is also important, loving yourself is just as important as loving another. (The moments i do say certain things, more as a point of questioning and reflection, i get the response that i am from one side or from the other side)
I feel that a lot of what has been hiding in the collective shadow is coming out, because it got too full and things people always used to carry deep inside now in a state of global extreme stress is showing its full force while coming out on all different sides.
We need to get back to ourselves and also refind out that the only way to face the future is that we work together no matter the angle.
I have learned this though to move beyond my own ego's sake and its still quite hard when people become very passioned or opinionated (in a very rough sense). Ask questions and see where their truth lies. Many people see a kind of suffering in the world or their environment and they base the need from that to change, forgetting that if they see that kind of suffering the way to heal it is to face that suffering inside of them and help others around them with that through work or any other means.
But i do admit, i dislike endless discussions, i don't have the energy for it. (discussions drain the hell out of me)
This was a well thought out post and a dilemma that many face. Politics is a messy subject these days. It is not as black and white as democrat vs republican as there are so many shades of grey when it comes to ideology. I myself struggle with this idea, "How can I remain friends to people who support war and genocide, especially when those two are supported by both parties. Then how can I be friends with someone who supports a goverment agency killing Americans, or trampling on womens' rights , or civil rights as whole. It goes beyong a difference of opinion to a difference in moral character
Thank you Angela for this insightful post. It resonated with me as I had a very similar experience to you recently. A friend openly expressing political views that were in opposition to my own. This was a surprise to me and I felt uncomfortable as the views expressed would affect me personally in a detrimental way if the politics played out as this friend expressed and desired. Something in the relationship has now fractured. The timing of this was not great as we were on holiday in a small group bound together around a common interest. I will continue to break bread and steer away from politics in the hope that the joy and knowledge we share in our common interest, our hobby, remains above any political disagreements and affiliations.
Modern capitalism no longer merely trades in objects; it traffics in enchantments. The commodity has become a sigil, the brand a hypersigil, the screen a black mirror through which consensus reality is continuously conjured and reinforced. Thinkers like Jean Baudrillard and Guy Debord understood that we now inhabit a hall of manufactured reflections where symbols precede substance, and representation slowly devours the real. Politics becomes ritual theatre, identity becomes an invoked mask, and the masses participate willingly in vast consensual glamour-work woven from media, advertising, algorithms, and spectacle. The modern citizen no longer simply consumes products or ideas, but enters trance states composed of narratives, images, and emotionally charged simulations mistaken for reality itself.
Within such conditions, fascism reveals itself not only as a political structure, but as an egregore: a psychic formation fed through myth, fear, repetition, aesthetic intoxication, and collective emotional possession. Walter Benjamin perceived that fascism aestheticises power, transforming politics into initiatory spectacle — rallies as ritual, symbols as talismans, enemies as sacrificial constructs, belonging as ecstatic communion. Later figures like Mark Fisher and Slavoj Žižek traced how digital culture intensifies this process, creating algorithmic thoughtforms that feed upon outrage, tribal identity, and compulsive attention. Truth dissolves beneath emotionally satisfying realities, each sustained by repetition and psychic investment. The result is a civilisation increasingly governed not through direct force alone, but through symbolic sorcery — a hyperreal empire of signs in which people defend simulations with religious fervour while the machinery generating them remains largely unseen. (Ironically, this post dances to the Algol-Rhythm)
Your top soil vs inner layer analogy is spot on.
When I entered into adulthood, my morals were similar to what they currently are, but my political views were the opposite.
The core reasoning was the same. I wanted to protect the oppressed and vulnerable.
The churches, small schools, and family members who influenced me convinced me that the people in power were the oppressed.
They instilled me with a fear for people who they said were evil or dangerous. I didn't know that the "evil" was based on dogma, and the "dangerous" was caused by systemic issues perpetuated by those in power (poverty, mass-incarceration, red lining, punishment rather than affordable treatment).
I will say though, I disagree with you saying that you will not change your father-in-law's opinion. I have changed the opinions of people close to me through long-term, heartfelt conversation (not argument), and I've changed my opinion based on their insights as well.
Sharing deeply felt views on world issues, over a long period of time, and without the framing of political argument or a particular political identity, is much different from the short-term political exposure on social media in the studies you shared.
Dear Angela, I found this a thoughtful and humane piece, and I agree with much of the ethical instinct behind it. You are right, I think, to resist the contemporary habit of reducing a person entirely to their most visible political position, as though every human being were no more than a slogan wearing skin. I know I made that error myself more times than I like to admit.
That said, I think there is a structural issue your piece does not quite bring into focus, and for me, it changes the whole moral and political weight of the discussion. The question is not only how we remain human with people whose politics we find troubling, dangerous, or even morally abhorrent; it is also who profits from producing those politics at scale, who has built the machinery that keeps feeding people the same grievances, who owns the platforms through which those grievances circulate, and whose material interests are served when political difference becomes a permanent theatre of outrage.
In other words, I do not think we can discuss political polarisation today without discussing late-stage capitalism and the attention economy. We are not simply dealing with organic disagreement among citizens who have reached different conclusions after consulting different evidence. We are dealing with a media and platform environment in which conflict is monetised, indignation is rewarded, fear is made sticky, and reactionary positions are repeatedly laundered into mainstream visibility through controversy. The argument that begins as “we should be able to talk across differences” can very quickly become a cover for something much darker, because the far right has learned to exploit precisely that liberal and humanistic impulse. It demands infinite patience from others while building disciplined channels of propaganda, grievance, and recruitment.
But there is something else that cannot and should not be ignored, and that is that reactionary movements rarely begin by announcing the full brutality of their endgame. They begin by shifting the emotional weather. They normalise suspicion, then contempt, then dehumanisation. They dress hierarchy as tradition, cruelty as realism, paranoia as discernment, and domination as the restoration of natural order. By the time the most extreme positions become speakable in polite company, a long cultural preparation has already taken place, much of it funded, amplified, or indirectly subsidised by people who benefit when the working class is persuaded to fight horizontally rather than look upward.
The billionaire robber baron class has been central to this process. Some of it is direct funding, some of it is infrastructural, some of it is simply the result of platform ownership and algorithmic incentives, but the effect is remarkably consistent: attention is captured, resentment is intensified, and democratic imagination is narrowed until every conversation becomes another little battlefield in which the most vulnerable people are convinced that other vulnerable people are the real enemy. Migrants, queer people, trans people, feminists, academics, welfare recipients, public sector workers, unions, and racialised communities all become convenient figures of displacement, while the actual architecture of dispossession remains protected behind a haze of culture war.
This is why I would be cautious about treating political differences primarily as interpersonal problems. Of course, there are still conversations worth having, and of course, there are people who can be reached through patience, affection, and serious engagement. Yet there is a point at which “remaining open to dialogue” becomes an unpaid service offered to those who have professionalised bad faith. The decent person keeps making room at the table, while the reactionary influencer turns that room into content, proof of persecution, and another opportunity to move the acceptable range of discourse further toward their own position.
In occulture, this has been particularly visible, and perhaps especially poisonous. Esoteric communities already contain symbolic material that can be bent in reactionary directions: lineage, hierarchy, initiation, secrecy, elitism, transgression, sacred kingship, tradition, anti-modernity, the heroic individual against the herd, and the fantasy of belonging to a small group that sees what the sleeping masses cannot see... you name it. None of these themes are inherently fascist, obviously, and many can be handled with great subtlety, beauty, and liberatory force. Yet they are also easy to weaponise when filtered through the attention economy, where the most profitable persona is often the persecuted truth teller who claims to be saying what “they” do not want you to hear.
That has produced a familiar pattern. Some figures are funded directly, or at least materially supported by reactionary networks, while others simply understand where the current is flowing and swim with it. The capital savvy occultist, who may have once spoken in more ambiguous or even contradictory terms, begins to discover that anti woke provocation, masculinist posturing, trad aesthetics, conspiratorial innuendo, and ritualised contempt for liberal or left wing concerns all produce engagement. Engagement becomes followers, followers become subscribers, subscribers become courses, private groups, exclusive publications, conferences, special initiations, and eventually an online cult of personality that also functions as a piggybank.
The same pattern appears in parts of occult publishing. Controversy is marketed as bravery, reactionary material is sold as forbidden knowledge, and the old glamour of dangerous books becomes an alibi for distributing ideas whose political function is much less romantic than their packaging suggests. The question is rarely as simple as whether every author, publisher, or reader involved is consciously fascist. The more difficult question is how a market forms around transgression, how that market rewards escalation, and how the rhetoric of “free inquiry” can be used to launder positions that ultimately make the world more dangerous for those who already have the least power.
So my disagreement is not with your call for humanity, which I think is valuable and necessary. My concern is that humanity without political economy can leave us describing the wound while saying too little about the weapon. The person who has fallen into reactionary politics may indeed be frightened, lonely, economically battered, spiritually confused, or socially alienated, and it may be both morally and strategically wise to remember that. Yet the machinery that captured them is not confused in the same way. It is profitable, deliberate, adaptive, and very often backed by people whose class interests are served by keeping everyone else angry, suspicious, and exhausted.
For me, then, the task is double. We should remain capable of recognising the human being beneath the political position where that recognition is still possible, but we also need far sharper discernment about the systems that manufacture those positions, reward their repetition, and convert the resulting conflict into money and power. In occulture, especially, this means asking not only whether someone’s views are unpleasant or “problematic,” but also what economy of attention they serve, what audience they are cultivating, what resentments they are feeding, and who benefits when spiritual sovereignty is repackaged as a reactionary consumer identity.
I suppose my worry is that late-stage capitalism has learned to sell people their own alienation back to them as initiation, and the far right has been frighteningly effective at giving that alienation a mythic shape. That does not mean we abandon compassion, but it does mean compassion must be joined to structural analysis, otherwise we risk mistaking a manufactured political economy of grievance for a series of merely personal disagreements.
Hi , Angela . I'm from Brazil and here we face these questions too since the rise of Bolsonaro to power .
For me fascism is the bottonline . There's no way to have a rational dialogue with a fascist . For example, just last week a brand of detergent , of an industry owned by a bolsonarist , Ype , a guy who donated a million to Bolsonaro's campaign in 2022 , was forbidden because it was contaminated with a very perilous bacteria. What some bolsonarists did ? They started posting vídeos DRINKING THE DETERGENT ! How do you discuss politics with completely insane people like that. ? Since Reich published his The Mass Psychology of Fascism and Adorno and Horkheimer published The Authoritarian Personality , and also the works of Erich Fromm , that we know that indeed Fascism is a matter of character . Of bad character . The person has some hook with the ideologia, wether is racism, misoginy, homophobia, extreme individualism ( in tune with the now prevailing Neoliberal ideology. Neofascism is also extremely Neoliberal ) and so on . So how can you relate with someone like that ? On the spiritual path its well known that when enter the path one of the things that generally change is pur circle of relationships . Perhaps nowadays this is even more clear and evident .
Another topic would be , from an esoteric point of view. If there are spiritual forces / beings behind these poltical movements . Some call it " parapolitics" . Well , but that's a very complex topic in itself ....
So , summarizing, some people will drift away along the path , Thank God !
I will not share bread with people that actively want me dead. That includes a lot of people on the right. I don't think that's unreasonable. It's just common sense
True, I also wonder why or whether friends vote or support parties or campaigns that want to do me harm, or worse. Many have had to live with that from all sides. At the moment I tell myself they don't really grasp the implications of what they are supporting and when they do, they will wake up, tone it down or even offer some support. But it's worrying that otherwise good people have forgotten the principles of non violence... and I keep trying to wake them up. What is the alternate?
This is brilliant - thank you!!
For me, maintaining relationships with people who support a political agenda that dehumanizes me feels self-hating. I end up trying to make excuses for them and why they would support someone advocating for my erasure. I’m a trans woman for context. I’m also person of color with, as I see it, some white privilege due to my proximity to whiteness—half-Asian, half-white American
Aww, I found your descriptions, reflections and sensitive nuancing incredibly moving and insightful Angela. Your writing has given me a lot to think about. Thank you for taking the time, to think deeply, and to share. In this age of 'soundbites and memes' often replacing and displacing genuine dialogue this is real service 🙏
This is excellent, thank you. Sharing into my Discord community.
When you have the figure head of a political party call disagreement with them treason and demonization of the other party, you dig deeper than the top soil I believe.
When the people of that party accept these statements and reflect them as their own you are looking at a level of betrayal of human nature.
The threats are very real.
https://ffrf.org/news/releases/ffrf-warns-about-trump-counterterrorism-strategy-targeting-secular-americans/
The Republican Party portrays the Democrats as all Antifa which isn’t even a true organization and they claim anyone on the left is treasonous. So, in my opinion, as stated and with the adjoining article it would appear to be the right demonizing the left.
Just as the Democrat party portrays all Republicans as fascist Nazis and racists. Both blanket portrayals are clearly full of error and should be avoided.
Except a lot of republicans do share values with the nazis. Some of them are literally working towards the extinction of groups, like trans people
We can do "except..." all day. Plenty of Democrats and Republicans do this sort of behavior.
And there is a valid reason for that. Let us not put on the same level a party that, certainly not perfect, has done good, and a party that wants a good demographic of people dead
And the Republican Party has never done good?
Agreed, and when policies attack people based on gender, race, country of origin or religion then the association with Nazi policy is a sound representation.
It is quite obvious that people on all sides demonize at least one other side, sometimes many. Your own statement borders, probably not intentionally, on demonization.
😂😂😂 I post a factual article and all that comes back is speculation and border comments. Here is a full statement by Trump calling Democrats ‘demons’ just for being Democrats. I post opinion based off of factual documented facts, not conjecture.
https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/how-demonology-won-the-2024-election/
My opinion is my own and I post documentation. I could personally care less what anyone else thinks about my opinion. I do not need any ‘yay’ votes or ‘nay’ votes.
Perhaps, not intentionally, you think I’m concerned with someone else’s opinion when I am truly not. Have a good day.
You are entitled to your opinion but I am not obliged to be concerned with or even care about it. I respect your right to your own personal opinion and I respect the right to mine. All else I consider irrelevant, even irrational.
I agree the Trump does a lot of demonizing. Not doubtimg that at all. He does it all the time
And Democrats are certainly not perfect and have their own set of faults. If they were a perfect or better party, Trump wouldn’t have won. Sadly, I wish we had another option but for now we are stuck with one or the other.
Now that is something i can completely agree with you on!
Who's demonising who?
Beautifully, thoughtfully, intelligently written. An enriching read as I unwind on a Friday evening with wine. Thank you.
Hello Angela, it is certainly a great disappointment to discover that someone close to you holds political views that are completely different from your own. In general, I agree with your stance: do not cut off the relationship entirely, but rather exercise greater caution within it. However, if we are all—at our core—part and expression of Universal Consciousness, we owe one another a fundamental respect, independent of opinions and actions (the intrinsic value of the Human Being as a Divine Spark). Let us not forget that we are upon the Game Board of Earth, journeying along our eternal spiritual path. Viciousness regarding earthly matters does not befit the practice of a true occultist. As Dion Fortune said: "The intensity of sensation is in proportion to the limitation of the consciousness." Many blessings to you.
I like the middle position expressed by Dr. Puca and her thoughts about this as a whole. I do, however, want to suggest that in my experience, I find that the "cutting people out" strategy is often less a principled stance but rather what the person making the decision needs at that moment for personal reasons. If someone is overwhelmed, dealing (or not dealing) with trauma, etc., sometimes separating from folks who are expressing stuff at the topsoil level that is traumatic/hurtful/too much -- sometimes that may be needed. The social media calls for cutting people out: an individual holding that stance as a principle can be different from an individual who makes such a decision out of a perhaps temporary necessity, not out of a principled position.
I especially liked Dr. Puca's reminding us that folks in a group with common symbologies, rituals, etc. do not therefore necessarily share political views. I was a Freemason for many years: doing the work was very meaningful, and of course there's the "no politics or religion discussed in Lodge" rule, but I never lost sight of the fact that my Brethren held widely different views on things and that the rituals and symbology would mean vastly different things to different Brethren: the goal wasn't to come to the same conclusions, but to learn how to be better in this world, and that would naturally take folks in different directions.
Angela this piece was amazing and i get why you see it the way you do.
In my case I always hold my political stuff in front of me, because the moment i start sharing it. I will alienate a lot of people and even lose a lot of assignments, not because my stands are extreme, but because of how many people are not able to see beyond certain angles.
I fall in between both, i prefer balance overall in things and what work well for a country itself, but also that there is no lack of sympathy and empathy for others, but that self preservation is also important, loving yourself is just as important as loving another. (The moments i do say certain things, more as a point of questioning and reflection, i get the response that i am from one side or from the other side)
I feel that a lot of what has been hiding in the collective shadow is coming out, because it got too full and things people always used to carry deep inside now in a state of global extreme stress is showing its full force while coming out on all different sides.
We need to get back to ourselves and also refind out that the only way to face the future is that we work together no matter the angle.
I have learned this though to move beyond my own ego's sake and its still quite hard when people become very passioned or opinionated (in a very rough sense). Ask questions and see where their truth lies. Many people see a kind of suffering in the world or their environment and they base the need from that to change, forgetting that if they see that kind of suffering the way to heal it is to face that suffering inside of them and help others around them with that through work or any other means.
But i do admit, i dislike endless discussions, i don't have the energy for it. (discussions drain the hell out of me)
This was a well thought out post and a dilemma that many face. Politics is a messy subject these days. It is not as black and white as democrat vs republican as there are so many shades of grey when it comes to ideology. I myself struggle with this idea, "How can I remain friends to people who support war and genocide, especially when those two are supported by both parties. Then how can I be friends with someone who supports a goverment agency killing Americans, or trampling on womens' rights , or civil rights as whole. It goes beyong a difference of opinion to a difference in moral character
Thank you Angela for this insightful post. It resonated with me as I had a very similar experience to you recently. A friend openly expressing political views that were in opposition to my own. This was a surprise to me and I felt uncomfortable as the views expressed would affect me personally in a detrimental way if the politics played out as this friend expressed and desired. Something in the relationship has now fractured. The timing of this was not great as we were on holiday in a small group bound together around a common interest. I will continue to break bread and steer away from politics in the hope that the joy and knowledge we share in our common interest, our hobby, remains above any political disagreements and affiliations.
Modern capitalism no longer merely trades in objects; it traffics in enchantments. The commodity has become a sigil, the brand a hypersigil, the screen a black mirror through which consensus reality is continuously conjured and reinforced. Thinkers like Jean Baudrillard and Guy Debord understood that we now inhabit a hall of manufactured reflections where symbols precede substance, and representation slowly devours the real. Politics becomes ritual theatre, identity becomes an invoked mask, and the masses participate willingly in vast consensual glamour-work woven from media, advertising, algorithms, and spectacle. The modern citizen no longer simply consumes products or ideas, but enters trance states composed of narratives, images, and emotionally charged simulations mistaken for reality itself.
Within such conditions, fascism reveals itself not only as a political structure, but as an egregore: a psychic formation fed through myth, fear, repetition, aesthetic intoxication, and collective emotional possession. Walter Benjamin perceived that fascism aestheticises power, transforming politics into initiatory spectacle — rallies as ritual, symbols as talismans, enemies as sacrificial constructs, belonging as ecstatic communion. Later figures like Mark Fisher and Slavoj Žižek traced how digital culture intensifies this process, creating algorithmic thoughtforms that feed upon outrage, tribal identity, and compulsive attention. Truth dissolves beneath emotionally satisfying realities, each sustained by repetition and psychic investment. The result is a civilisation increasingly governed not through direct force alone, but through symbolic sorcery — a hyperreal empire of signs in which people defend simulations with religious fervour while the machinery generating them remains largely unseen. (Ironically, this post dances to the Algol-Rhythm)