I am collecting stories of people who escaped secular delusions, like sexism, misogyny, racism, antisemitism, transphobia, or even, just more generally, alt-right, anti-feminist or “anti-SJW’ worldviews. These are the kinds of delusions that trap atheists. And even when their victims are religious, the stories are still often the same, or similar enough that you will learn from hearing them all out, because when you do, you’ll see a pattern common to them all, merely instantiated with different particulars. And that pattern is your own path to recognizing you are being pipelined and steering clear, or are afflicted with a delusion already and need to get out, or indeed how to get out, and getting well.
Videos:
- Shaun • “White Men” (2018)
- Rashad Crenshaw • “Why I Left The Right” (2024)
- DarkMatter2525 • “Why I Stopped Being Anti-Woke” (2024)
- JimmyTheGiant • “How I Escaped the Alt-Right Pipeline” (2024)
- Genetically Modified Skeptic • “The Alt-Right Pipeline Almost Got Me” (2025)
- Adam Something • “How I Escaped The Alt-Right” (2021)
- Xanderhal • “How I Fell Down the Alt Right Pipeline and Escaped” (2020)
- Samantha • “Former Alt-Right Member Wants to Prevent Others” (2019)
- Dan Arrows • “How to Fall Down the Anti-SJW Rabbit Hole” (2019)
Articles:
- Justin Brown-Ramsey • “I Fell Down the Alt-Right Rabbit Hole” (2023)
- Katie McHugh • “Get Out While You Can” (2019)
- [ Anonymous ] • “I Became Part of the Alt-Right at Age 13” (2019)
- Teen Vogue • “How These Men Left the Manosphere — and Why Some May Never” (2024)
- Forbes • “Why Men Enter and Exit the ‘Manosphere’—By a Psychologist” (2024)
- What’s the Vibe • “How These Men Left the Manosphere” (2024)
- Studies in Conflict and Terrorism • “Exiting the Manosphere: Analysis of Narratives” (2023)
- Reddit • “Former Anti-Woke People, What Made You Change Your Views?” (2024)
If you find more examples worth adding to this list, please post them in comments. But note this list only covers secular (“political-cultural”) delusions (even when their victims are religious). If you know of good lists of testimonials from ex-Christians or ex-Muslims or other religions (or quasi-religions like flat earthism or lizard theory), please post links in comments, but not to the examples themselves but to lists of them (if there are any), and I’ll check them out and see if a cross-link here would be helpful. Because in my experience, they share all the same features (how they got trapped, what it was like to be in, what kept them from escaping, and what eventually led them out to safety and sanity).
But there is a reason I want this list here to focus on the solidly secular.
Every delusion is the same, differing only in its vanguard, the outer trappings. But when someone listens to “escaping religion” narratives, they blank on this, and think those concepts and experiences only apply to a “religion” and thus they remain vulnerable to all the same tactics and traps when they are not on their guard because it isn’t a religion. Because in today’s secularizing market its not being a religion gives it the false veneer of being authentic or credible. So you really need to hear these stories, the ones I just listed, because those are the ones that you can’t dismiss or misunderstand as “only about religion.”
And if you fear you may be trapped in a delusion, of any kind, I have a series of advice if you want to know how to find out for sure, and how to avoid its traps and escape:
- A Primer on Actually Doing Your Own Research
- The Scary Truth about Critical Thinking
- Three Common Tactics of Cranks, Liars, and Trolls
- A Vital Primer on Media Literacy
- Shaun Skills: How to Learn from Exemplary Cases
Likewise if you want to know where I think you should land and why:
- How Far Left Is Too Left?
- How the Right and the Left Nuked Atheism Plus
- The Left and Anti-Left Both Have Much Still to Learn
Because I wish a good mind to all, with a firm grip on reality, and back in charge of your soul.
⌘
P.S. I am also interested in accounts of people who went alt-right or anti-SJW and describe having been feminists or liberals or SJWs and why they switched—but only if they are serious. Just like I don’t want “preachers claiming they were atheists” like Lee Strobel, who were never really atheists or really all that intellectually so (but were just rolling in the cultural ruts of their parents or peers until they got captured by an ideology), I also don’t want accounts from anti-feminists or the like who were never really feminists or really all that intellectually versed in feminism (but were just rolling in the cultural ruts of their parents or peers until they got captured by an ideology). I am only interested in collecting accounts of persons who, in some way we can tell from their account, were a genuinely informed and intellectually committed liberal of some kind, and still went right. If you know of anything like that (essay or video), describe and link them in comments, too.
I don’t think one can talk about imprisonment of the mind in sects, anywhere on the spectrum of right to left, religious or atheistic or agnostic without reflecting on a world without the written world, perhaps just, trinkets, votives and symbolic pocketable tokens, where the youth of a community would often be sent forth, across the rivers and over the mountains to seek new pastures or hunting grounds.
They would obviously take with them a shaman, several young men, (likely gay men), skilled in flint making and infected into their brains edicts from the elders like, beware of leopards, always keep a fire burning at night, when you leave, have the gay men guard your families so your women will be safe, and have nothing to do with men with straight hair, if you find them you must avoid them or kill them.
These memes were the library of experience, right or wrong they the elderly couldn’t personally bring with them in the serious journey ahead of the explorers. If the explorers didn’t go forth, the community might die out for lack of resources. So memic transmission of the best knowledge they had, gave an evolutionary advantage to the early humans. It was infectious across the community and through generations infectious, quite stable and reliable.
Today, it’s an anachronism as we have books and computers well as rational steps in logic to check out things. But still, we have scientists and engineers who file back to Zindua and be the in the Ganges or Jewish scientists and logicians who fast on Yom Kiplur and won’t drive on the sabbath.
So what would we expect of atheists, well they might think Trump is the savior for America! It it’s menic and primitive and has nothing to do with rationality. They are trapped.
Not sure what to do with that comment. But I’ll leave it here.
You got most of the ones I’ve seen.
The one by the teenager is especially telling. He left because he saw that the arguments fucking sucked. Puncturing these bloviators and making them seem weak and uninformed can work.
It definitely works. Arguments by Egyptian and more broadly Arab liberals and secularists played a huge role in getting me out of Islamism which includes all these alt-right delusions and of Islam altogether.
It’s probably the second most effective tool after conservatives experiencing diverse environments where they deal with and share experiences with the groups of people they target (hence, why they hate large urban cities).
Thanks so much for the insight, Islam! From what I have seen, I agree wholly that your change has been by far for the best for your humanity and conduct.
I’m curious, if you don’t mind: Did you find that what he said was true, that it’s easy for the right-wing radical to sound extremely certain and confident and rational when they’re in their echo chamber and online, but the moment you have to interact with them in a mixed setting you realize very quickly that they actually have nothing but a pretty lame and easily debunked script?
Thanks a lot for your nice words!
I have been actively trying to be and do better since I got out in 2023 as I feel horrified and ashamed of what I used to believe.
As for the question, I will try to be as fair in answering it as possible:
They are split into three categories: the first one which is the vast majority of them fit that description perfectly.
The second one is somewhat better and they can at least have some form of discussion before they start to break.
The third one is rare which includes their minor and major “intellectuals” who are really aware of the arguments of the other side and are willing and eager to have a discussion on an empirical background. I have noticed that the last group are usually very smart people who start from these conclusions usually due to them being religious and use their sheer brain power to rationalize these conclusions empirically (not on purpose, they usually honestly do believe in these justifications and think they are logical).
I would like to one day record my own journey, even if anonymously.
Escaping conservative Islam (including Islamism as I was literally a Salafist for years) and Islam itself came with the nice features of also escaping homophobia, transphobia, anti-feminism and even mild antisemitism and mild misogyny, probably even among other delusions.