Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug at Miscellany Room.

I don’t claim any expertise on social media algorithms, but I assume they are basically designed to maximize the number of clicks by applying heuristics like “people who clicked on X in the past were more likely than expected by chance to also click on Y” (I am sure there are others here who can correct me if I’m completely off the mark). If so, it’s telling that the YouTube algorithm started suggesting a lot more Right-wing crap after I began specifically looking for gender critical material. There’s a twist to the story, however. Recently (for reasons I hope are only too obvious) I have, once again, been watching a lot of material on the threats to liberal democracy from the MAGA crowd. And, what do you know, suddenly there’s noticeable uptick in TERF-bashing material in my suggestions!

As I have previously said, I have no doubt that this is largely due to the fact that Right-leaning sources tend to be the only ones willing to give a platform to anyone not 100% uncritical of gender ideology (just like Left-leaning sources tend to be the most welcoming platforms for material critical of Trump). Once again, we’re not in the luxurious position of having lots of attractive options to chose from, and sometimes you have to make a common cause with Stalin to defeat Hitler. But as I pointed out back then, some of the people on the gender critical “side” had already been saying things that made me uncomfortable (usually along the lines of “Trump may not be perfect, but…”), and many others have joined them since then.

It would be one thing if these people were consistently portraying Trump as the lesser of two evils (I would still think they were wrong, but “reasonable people can disagree” and all that), but in many cases their ethical standards seem to have been adjusted to the point where Trump is no longer considered an obvious “evil” at all. Once again, I think cognitive dissonance is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Even if you just make an entirely “pragmatic” decision to work with the MAGA crowd to stop the medical experimentation on children, the destruction of female-only spaces etc., you now have a stake in defending your choice (“if they really were that awful, a decent person like myself wouldn’t be working with them”). You also have a stake in keeping the alliance together, not antagonizing your new bedfellows etc., and, before you know it, you’re in a justification spiral pushing you ever further to the Right, until attempts to overturn an election, inciting a violent insurrection, sucking up to Putin, a lifetime of crime and corruption, grabbing women by the pussy, suggesting that the “Second Amendment People” take care of one’s political rival etc. are all within your standards of acceptable behavior.

I also suspect there’s a justification working in the opposite direction: We can’t defeat the Trumpist assault on liberal democracy alone, and the only realistic alternatives* are the same people who endorse medical experimentation on children as well as biological males in women’s toilets, changing rooms, sports, prisons, rape and domestic abuse shelters etc. But since the latter, at the very least, remain dedicated to basic democratic rules of the game, like accepting the outcome of elections, you decide to support them against the MAGA crowd, which, once again, means you have a stake in defending your choice: “if they really were that awful, a decent person like myself wouldn’t be voting for them”, so you start making excuses for the excesses of gender ideology, and, once again, you’re in a justification spiral pushing you ever further towards the (woke) left. Either way, liberal values, the respect for evidence and logic etc. lose.

*Obviously the American two-party system makes this problem a whole lot worse.