There is an endless danger in counting the enemies of your enemy as your friend. It’s seductive, but leads down dangerous moral pathways.

Radical groups have very well developed methods for suckering people, and the most effective is to appeal simultaneously to strong emotions and ego. If your sense of self-worth is connected to a cause, it will be difficult to dissuade you from it. No matter how much your rational self might want to remain skeptical, emotional self-defense mechanisms keep you in the path.

The more heinous the group you’re suckered into, the more delicate self-worth becomes. Guilt, combined with vanity, keep one on the path, because the personal costs would be too great. And so long as a distraction can be provided to dull the emotional turmoil, you will latch onto that to avoid confronting the inevitable, and soul-shattering, realization of your acceptance of evil.

The Soviets were good at this; so were the Nazis. The new fascists have learned their lessons well.