What unites the many who from, say, August 2016 to August 2026, believed the following:
- The environment is poisoned.
- Forced closures and lock-downs are essential.
- The police are evil.
- Male-to-female trans should play women’s sports.
- Millionaires should not exist.
- Hamas is justified.
- Jason Arday is inspiring.
The issues range widely — from environmentalism to viruses to law enforcement to sex and gender to economics to Middle Eastern politics to academic sociology.
Yet there is an identifiable demographic: Those who believed all of the above propositions, often fervently.
The weird thing is this: When meeting a new person who is a member of this demographic, if one learns their opinion that, say, in 2020 that Covid lockdowns were necessary (virus policy) and in 2023 that Hamas is justified (Middle Eastern religion and politics), then one can almost infallibly predict what their opinion was in July 2026 about Cambridge University’s Jason Arday (Awesome!).
So two questions: (1) What unites those varied beliefs into a package? (2) What communication mechanism causes all members of the demographic get the memo about what their opinion is on those issues?
It is one thing to tell a long story about declining philosophical trends and a shorter story about a generation’s power-play corruption of institutional standards. Is there still a residual to be explained — a psychological type predisposed and then primed to adopt this particular type of package?