The Left's Pathology: Bias and Irrationality

Campism is a political bias that pushes people to support any regime that opposes an adversary perceived as an absolute enemy, ignoring its own authoritarian traits. Social psychology explains it as a combination of binary thinking, tribalism and the reduction of cognitive dissonance.

There is a scene that repeats itself at demonstrations across half the world. A person with a rainbow flag waving next to another with a Palestinian flag. Someone who identifies as a feminist defending a theocratic regime. Latin American leftists justifying the lack of freedoms in Cuba. This is no accidental contradiction. It is a pattern that political psychology has been studying for decades.

## Binary thinking and political tribalism

The human mind tends to simplify. Dividing the world into good and evil is comfortable, quick and requires little cognitive effort. In politics, that simplification becomes Manichaeism: if one actor is absolute evil, any entity that opposes it automatically becomes the good. It does not matter what that entity actually is. Only its position relative to the enemy matters.

Social psychology calls this political tribalism. When a group's identity is built on rejection of an external enemy, loyalty to any rival of that enemy becomes a defensive mechanism. Confirmation bias does the rest: the new ally's atrocities are ignored or justified so as not to break the narrative.

## The negative halo effect and cognitive dissonance

Visceral hatred works as a filter. It clouds critical judgment and distorts logical perception. This is what is known as the negative halo effect: an intense aversion to a country, a figure or a company contaminates everything around it. Any criticism of your enemy's rival feels like a defense of your own enemy.

Accepting that both the regime you detest and its rival can be authoritarian requires complex analysis. It creates mental discomfort. To avoid it, the psyche simplifies the picture and backs one of the two sides. It is cognitive dissonance reduction applied to geopolitics. The result is hypocrisy by affinity: groups that define themselves as pogre defending theocratic or ultraconservative regimes simply because they share the same antagonist.

## Campism: the geopolitical name for the phenomenon

In international relations, this pattern has a specific name: campism. The term describes the tendency to align with any bloc that opposes the main adversary, without evaluating that bloc's values or practices. During the Cold War, campism led sectors of the Western left to justify the Soviet interventions in Hungary in 1956 or in Czechoslovakia in 1968.

The phenomenon does not distinguish between ideologies. It affects the pogre left and the conservative left alike. Hatred of the United States government has led people to justify, idealize and defend regimes such as the ayatollahs' in Iran, Hamas in Palestine or Castroism in Cuba. LGBT activists waving Arab nationalist flags in London or Seattle. Feminists defending the Iranian regime from Barcelona. Mexican leftists justifying Cuban tyranny from Mexico City.

## Why it happens and what feeds it

The mechanism is psychological before it is ideological. A political identity built on rejection of a common enemy generates selective confirmation bias. The new ally's differences in values are made invisible. The ideological contradiction is tolerated so as not to break the narrative of the main conflict.

There is an undeniable emotional component. Visceral aversion to an actor perceived as an absolute enemy triggers automatic responses that override rational analysis. The person does not evaluate the intrinsic nature of the regime they defend. They only evaluate its position relative to the enemy. It is a mental shortcut that saves effort, but it comes at a cost: ideological coherence is sacrificed on the altar of opposition to the adversary.

The underlying question is not which regime is worse. It is whether opposing an enemy justifies supporting any other. The answer, from political psychology, is that this shortcut has consequences. And that recognizing it is the first step towards not falling into it.