How do I tell if my trainer or coach is caught up in Conspiracy Theories and a Right Wing Cult?

We live in a time when democracy is under threat. One of my priorities as an NLP Trainer has been to revisit the original socially responsible frame that the NLP developers took in the early 1970s, as John Grinder organised University trainings analysing American Imperialism and opposing the War in Vietnam. I believe there’s no point in us developing NLP trauma recovery processes while supporting the same political policies that actually create the mass traumas of genocide and war. In my book on Cognitive Clarity, I discussed the way that political repression and conspiracy theories have often worked hand in hand through history (for example in the way that Hitler generated a paranoia of Jewish people). I pointed out that all of us have been caught up in conspiracy theories at some time, and we need to constantly examine our opinions and what we accept as “facts” by checking for the cognitive distortions that human beings are naturally prone to. Even prominent social figures can get caught in the web of right wing conspiracy paranoia, and seem to be defending freedom while actually supporting tyranny. For example, in 2025, Elon Musk kept insisting that White South Africans were the victims of a genocide and needed rescuing by the US government, meanwhile ignoring the real UN and Aid Agency verified genocide in Gaza and the invasion of Ukraine, where he sided with the invading armies: his AI “Grok” challenged him, reporting that he had tried to alter the AI’s settings to make it align with his false claims.

As people gravitate into extreme right wing cults, like Donald Trump’s MAGA, they start to use the main talking points of the cult. Here are some of the most common tactics they may use:

  1. Use Emotive Insults: Statements of compassion for unfairly treated social groups, and of social concern are ridiculed as “woke”, as “social warrior” activity etc. Opposing views are made fun of, or exaggerated to absurdity, and those who hold them are called insulting names, instead of using their actual chosen names, titles and political positions. People who identify themselves as supporting a particular political party, for instance, may be dismissed as “keyboard warriors” or “woke” without actually acknowledging their real party or non-party political allegiances and positions. The term “woke mind virus” is Elon Musk’s latest such insult in 2025 (Lazić, 2025: p. 113). The idea is to dismiss an idea by labelling it negatively, so as not to have to explain what specifically distresses the person about this idea.
  2. Diversity is Fake: You are told to oppose any acknowledgements of diversity and social causation of people’s challenges, such as the challenges faced by LGBTQ+ people, by neurodivergent people (people diagnosed “autistic” etc), by people whose communities are survivors of colonialism and brutal political conquest. You are encouraged to ignore the most important political and social changes affecting the people you work with, viewing any discussion of those things as excuses for not “facing reality” and being in charge of your life. You are encouraged to see discussion of social differences and their effect on life chances as part of a dangerous attack by those underprivileged groups (especially gender and ethnic groups) on “normal” (white, heterosexual, male) society. The idea is that diversity doesn’t really involve any significant disadvantages for black people, women, gay people etc., and that noticing these social disadvantages will harm the goal of equal treatment. Actually, research shows that even people who claim to view all humans as equal respond at an unconscious level to categories in such a way as to give preferences to people who are white, male, heterosexual etc. rather than equally qualified others (Project Implicit, 2025). Without consciously countering this implicit bias, others are in fact continuously disadvantaged in our current society.
  3. “Do Your Own Research”: Advocacy of “doing your own research” actually redirects you to watching emotive videos and images of unclear origin rather than to peer reviewed research papers and university level studies. Real research itself may be ridiculed as if its very methodical nature made it not worth considering, and university study may be described as a fraud.
  4. Trust the Leader: You are also encouraged to trust individuals who have “seen the light” rather than actual research articles with evidence. These individuals may be people who have become famous as “influencers”, “politicians”, or “truth tellers” despite having no scientific credentials or despite having their previous scientific credentials withdrawn after a period of psychological confusion. Often their videos propose rapid fire claims that, once again, do not have written research to back them. The urge to give up on truth and “trust the strong leader” is a core element of fascism (Snyder, 2017, p. 65, 71).
  5. Distrust Experts: You are encouraged to distrust agencies which are set up by large groups of experts (for example medical associations), and by United Nations bodies, and instead referred to small groups of people who may not have expertise in the specific fields of science they are talking about at all, or who represent just one or two percent of the people in that field. These outliers are described as people who had the courage to speak out, and yet their claims, again, need not be backed by real research. You are told to hold their views as equally valid with the most thoroughly researched opinions, and told that giving them “equal time” to present their case is evidence of “free speech”.
  6. The Media are Fake: You are directed to trust unsubstantiated claims by people who are funded by wealthy business people or by governments that are themselves engaged in extreme repression and war crimes. On the other hand you will be told not to trust “mainstream media” even where the people referred to as “mainstream media” are local reporters, reporting directly from a specific political situation. The press are considered intrinsically dishonest – what Hitler called the Lügenpresse or “lying press” (Bolstad, 2023b).
  7. “I was just joking”: You may be referred to internet pages written under aliases, or may see your trainer posting their comments to such pages, thus implicitly linking their comments to other insults, where the actual organiser and producer of the insults evades being discovered. This tactic of “plausible deniability” (McIntosh, 2020, p. 151) is key to Donald Trump’s hate campaign, where he will say something considered outrageous, and later claim he was just joking, misquoted, or merely associated himself with someone else who said something by reposting a generally available “meme’. This is part of a campaign of deliberate hiding and corrupting of the truth (Bolstad, 2023b).

In my article on Jordan Peterson (Bolstad 2023a) I give specific examples of all these tactics. Peterson is an example of a person who presents as a motivational speaker and popular psychologist, and offers comments about world events which justify wars of invasion and comments on personal relationships which justify family violence.

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