Political Psychology Links, 2/10/2026

Roohola Ramezani on the left and Iran;Claire Lehmann on moral panics; Alice Evans on Epstein; Noah Smith on parties captured by extremists

Roohola Ramezani writes,

The Left’s moral grammar can recognise injustice with impressive sophistication. Progressive discourse has become highly adept at identifying oppression, exclusion, and harm. But it is far less capable of understanding the basic conditions of political order. When it is confronted with a movement that does not present itself as a struggle for recognition, inclusion, or moral emancipation, the Left’s moral and analytical frameworks fail. This isn’t merely a failure to acknowledge oppression in Iran; it’s a failure to grasp that Iranians are rejecting an entire ideological system of rule. The revolt is misread not because its suffering is illegible, but because its political orientation falls outside the categories through which contemporary moral reasoning assigns meaning.

In Three Languages of Politics terms, the Iranian revolt does not compute along the oppressor-oppressed axis. It can be readily understood in terms of civilization-barbarism or liberty-coercion.

Claire Lehmann writes,

Economists Leeson and Russ write: “Similar to how contemporary Republican and Democrat candidates focus campaign activity in political battlegrounds during elections to attract the loyalty of undecided voters, historical Catholic and Protestant officials focused witch-trial activity in confessional battlegrounds during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation to attract the loyalty of undecided Christians.” In places where one faith dominated, such as Catholic Spain, witch trials didn’t happen (heretics were persecuted by the Inquisition instead). But where belief was contested in the borderlands between France and Germany, theatrical displays of moral authority became essential. The witch hunt was never really about rooting out evil, it was about signalling power and moral legitimacy.

Our conflicts today are for the most part no longer eschatological. Yet the mechanics of moral panics have not changed. They still emerge where authority is in flux, and they still serve as a means of asserting moral power and legitimacy. Today’s borderlands no longer exist between France and Germany. They exist online, in digital space. Platforms such as X, Reddit, Rumble, and YouTube function as modern zones of religious warfare, where rival moral sects compete for allegiance and loyalty. It is within these digital borderlands that contemporary panics erupt.

She sees the Epstein files as an empty moral panic. That is not a widespread view. For a voice on the other side, see Alice Evans.

Studying sexual abuse worldwide, I see a recurring pattern: where powerful fraternities leverage their institutional power to block accountability, violent predators walk free. Seldom seeing accountability, victims are often reluctant to invest years in stressful, adversarial court trials - only to be dismissed. Instead, they remain silent. I call this a “Despondency Trap”.

I find Evans persuasive. If prominent people cannot behave better, then they do not deserve to be treated as our betters.

Noah Smith writes,

There are several reasons why American politics is dominated by extremists. The well-known one is the closed-primary party system. Republicans win primaries not by aligning with the median voter, but by aligning with the median Republican voter — usually in an area that’s already right-leaning to begin with. The same is true of Democrats.

But that has been true for a while. The fundamental reason why American politics is more extremist-dominated than in the past is technological. Modern social media bypasses traditional hierarchies and institutions and gathers together communities of like-minded extremists who then create challenges to traditional institutions; it also provides these extremists a platform in which their emotionally charged messages are more likely to go viral than messages of positivity and reason.

The extremists on media would not be a problem,

But the people who dominate real-world politics are increasingly drawn from this pool of online extremists. I am talking not about elected politicians themselves, but about the activists who create and promulgate political ideologies, the think tankers who translate those ideologies into policy ideas, the lobbyists who promote those policy ideas to politicians, and the staffers politicians hire to decide which ideas to embrace, and how.

substacks referenced above: @

What do Epstein's Emails, the Catholic Church & Grooming Gangs have in Common?