A recent study by a decidedly non-conservative academic organization aimed to determine the extent of thought diversity on the political left and right. It plotted answers to positions on eight high-profile issues that created blue and red clusters.

And to no one’s surprise who pays attention from the right or middle, the left has straight-jacketed itself into tightly packed blue dots on the far left of the spectrum, allowing precious little diversity of thought. The right has a spread-out array of dots encompassing maybe 10 times the area of the left, encompassing a big tent of views and voters.

The electoral consequences are shockingly obvious and must have left the clever Democratic operatives and party leaders (if there are any left) petrified about what the future holds, because history tells us that once a movement reaches the stage of a purity spiral, the odds of it pulling out without a crushing crisis are vanishingly small.

The study was conducted by two social psychology professors in England and published in the British Journal of Social Psychology. It mapped 396 participants using a method they called network modeling, covering attitudes on eight well-known, hot-button political issues, such as immigration, gun control, abortion, and gay marriage. They also utilized a validation group of 8,280 other individuals. The authors asked participants to identify their partisan affiliation as Democrat, Republican, or Independent. Then, they had them respond to each of the eight questions on a seven-point scale, ranging from 1 (maximum disagreement) to 7 (maximum agreement). This created 40 “nodes,” which were then plotted out in a stunning result.

The left has no diversity of thought. They are rigidly uniform. And the right is highly diversified. Among many eye-openers in this study is the revelation that it is the ossified, unbending left driving almost all of the division, not the media-driven narrative of MAGA and Trumpian social media. 

This fits with many personal experiences. I have never cut off a Democrat friend for voting for Hillary, Biden, or Harris or for calling President Trump a fascist. I was okay with disagreeing and arguing and even remaining friends, or at least being cordial. But I have been cut off by at least half a dozen Democrat friends simply for supporting Donald Trump or suggesting putting America First. Many people reading this are likely nodding in agreement at this dynamic. The study confirms these micro-experiences on a macro scale.

However, although not mentioned in the study, the results directly lead to the concept of a “purity spiral,” in which groups demand increasingly extreme displays of loyalty or ideological purity, leading to exclusion and ostracism, crushing all dissent and typically culminating in a feeding frenzy of violence.

This enforced purity groupthink has captured the American left and its political party for several years. Think of when U.S. Supreme Court Justice nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson was asked if she knew what a woman was, and she ducked it, saying, “I’m not a biologist.” She understood the rules. A wrong answer to this purity question could mean real consequences. She also knew that not answering would not cost her any Democratic votes because they also understood the tightening rules.

The same goes for that a man can get pregnant, that cross-dressing drag queen should be reading to kindergartners, that men should be allowed to compete in women’s sports if they think they’re a girl, that abortion should be up to the woman to the moment of birth; that Donald Trump is a fascist; that only white people can be racist; that more and more gun control is necessary; that the rich don’t pay their fair share; that America is systemically racist; and so on. No thought variation on these is allowed on the left.

Dr. Robert Malone, best known for being on the “wrong” side of the Covid purity tests (that is to say, the side of reality), wrote about purity spirals, moral outbidding, and the creation of mass formation psychosis. It’s a bit on the academic wonky side, but the gist is:

Virtue signaling → moral outbidding→ purity spiral.

Historical examples are numerous and always wind up in a horrific place when enforced on a national level:

The French Revolution was founded on the principles of liberty and equality. Still, within just a few years, it devolved into the Reign of Terror, where Robespierre and the far-left Jacobins enforced such rigid doctrinal purity that they were guillotining their allies.

Mao’s Cultural Revolution in China is another excellent example of how purity tests for the movement or party become more and more restrictive and coercive. It included the purge of all intellectuals because they might think independently, along with removing all perceived “enemies” of the revolution.

The Khmer Rouge in Cambodia demanded complete loyalty and conformity to the Khmer Rouge communist system beliefs, which ultimately led to the deaths of millions and the destruction of a generation.

The foreshadows of these are clear in the current leftist Democratic Party purity spiral, shown so clearly in the British study. The left was moving in this direction before Donald Trump got off the elevator in 2015. But there can be no doubt that he is the catalyst for considerably speeding up their ideological purity spiral while at the same time expanding the range of acceptable views on the Republican right. The reality likely setting in for thinking Democrats is that this combination now exists beyond Trump and likely represents as permanent a shift as exists in politics.

This portends a dark future for the left and perhaps a bright, extended period of Republican dominance — not the squishy Mitt Romney, Mitch McConnell kind, but rather the muscular Donald Trump, JD Vance, Ron DeSantis, Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth kind that puts Americans first and seeks to unify, not divide. 

Rod Thomson is a former daily newspaper reporter and columnist, Salem radio host and ABC TV commentator, and current Founder of The Thomson Group, a Florida-based political consulting firm. He has eight children and seven grandchildren and a rapacious hunger to fight for America for them. Follow him on Twitter at @Rod_Thomson. Email him at [email protected].