Mother Bones
This is why if you have a neighbor, coworker, family member who is insistent on red-hat propagandizing, but seems "otherwise normal," they ARE.
But they have gone increasingly far down a SOCIALLY reinforced path of wacky and harmful irrationality.
The danger of labeling this membership a sign of "mental illness," is we will be unprepared for many "normal" and "nice" people we know to support and even engage in hateful and violent acts.
THIS is what is meant by the "banality of evil."
Mother Bones
I'd much rather share a camping tent with any number of mentally ill people who were not bigots, than someone leaning towards hate group status.
Mother Bones
Also while any individual bigot or misogynist may have specific mental health issues, so do those who are not bigoted or misogynist.
Plenty of people who would check out fine on a standardized assessment are bigots or misogynists. And plenty of people with all kinds of mental illnesses, injuries, and disabilities are non-hateful. (And victimized by bigots.)
Mental illness doesn't cause this kind of hate. It's a socially learned behavior arising from systemic values.
Mother Bones
The important thing to take from this is you can't effectively intervene with systemic issues at the individual level.
Social ills require social-systemic interventions. Individual interventions are not effective against social ills.
Also from twenty-plus years of practice I can tell you it's the individuals who are harmed by discriminatory / oppressive behaviors who seek treatment, not the perpetrators.
Mother Bones
I've said it before and I'll say it again: the hateful attitude and behaviors of right-wingers are NOT a mental illness. It is a SOCIAL ILL.
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