Refuse Political Allegiance

Against Political Self-Labelling

Are you a liberal, conservative, socialist, anarchist, right-wing, left-wing, centrist, libertarian, communist, progressive, reactionary, classical liberal, tankie, neolib, neocon, syndicalist, monarchist, federalist, mutualist, accelerationist, anti-fascist, paleo-con, eco-socialist, identitarian, post-leftist, nationalist, pan-Africanist, panarchist, technocrat, Marxist, Leninist, Maoist, MAGA supporter, Trotskyist, anarcho-primitivist, minarchist, anarcho-capitalist, civic nationalist, fascist, ethno-nationalist, theocrat, secularist, populist, globalist, anti-globalist, crypto-anarchist, or traditionalist?

I was one of those, sometimes a few at once. Now I think it’s the wrong way to go about things for atleast a couple of reasons.

1. A Renowned Problem

It’s a well-documented psychological phenomenon that affiliating with a group—even informally, or just “in spirit”—tends to erode one’s independent judgment. The identification gradually morphs into a kind of cognitive fusion until eventually you're not entirely sure whether you hold a position because you reasoned it through, or because everyone on your favorite podcast nodded vigorously when someone said it.

In the context of politics, the problem is significantly amplified. Unlike, say, a neighborhood book club, political organizations are structured around the pursuit and retention of power. This creates systematic incentives to promote loyalty and suppress dissent, even at the expense of truth or reason. The result is a kind of epistemic degradation: individuals become less concerned with whether a claim is true and more concerned with whether it advances the interests of “their side.”

2. A Peculiar Problem

Aside from the usual stuff, I suspect there’s a deeper—or at least weirder—issue. When people “pick a side” (or better: when a side is handed down to them by their parents) something strange starts to happen. People begin to believe that their morals come from their political ideology. That the ethical beliefs they hold aren’t just aligned with their political group, but are actually transmitted by the political movement itself.

It’s not “I believe in this party because it reflects my values.” It becomes “these are my values because this is what my party believes.” There’s a kind of moral inversion—where instead of using your ethics to judge politics, politics becomes the thing that tells you what’s ethical.

This is completely backwards.

Politics is supposed to be downstream from morality—not the other way around. A political movement is not supposed to produce your values but to reflect them.

The right order should be: first, work out what you think is good. Try to arrive at a coherent sense of what “goodness” even means to you. Then you adopt political positions that align with that definition.

3. Upsides from Refusing Political Allegiance

In general, I suspect that refusing political allegiance has some benefits:

1. It tends to make political discussions less vitriolic and more productive. You’re not defending a team—you’re engaging with ideas. In my experience that’s an upgrade.

2. During life we make many mistakes in things much simpler than politics. Refusing political allegiance makes it easier to walk away from bad political choices and stick with good ones, because you’re not emotionally tied to a party’s identity. You can actually change your mind based on evidence without feeling like a traitor.

3. You can pick and choose the good parts of different ideologies. Think free markets can do amazing things? Great—take a bite. Think inequality is a serious problem, and there’s solid evidence for a left-wing policy with reasonable trade-offs that might help? You can take a slice of that too. There’s no need to sign a loyalty oath to an entire worldview just to support one good idea. You can read widely and be willing to mix, match, or discard ideas based on how well they hold up under scrutiny.

4. It forces you to think about what morality actually is. When you’re not outsourcing your ethics to a party platform, you have to ask: where do my values come from? What do I actually believe? And since I suspect there is widespread moral confusion this seems like a plus.

Say “NO” to political allegiance

In any case I no longer declare a political affiliation. When people ask, I just say, “I try to support whatever increases human well-being and flourishing.”

This tends to fluster people a little. Sometimes they’ll follow up with, “Okay, but who did you vote for?” I think what they’re really asking is: please, just give me a label so I know what script to run. It's the mind reaching for a comfortable cognitive shortcut. Just tell me what team you're on, goddammit!

But that’s exactly what I’m trying to avoid. I don’t want to know what group you belong to, either. I want to start from your values—what you care about, what you think a good society looks like—and go from there. Any political position I hold is an empirical matter that is downstream from my moral position, and therefore open to revision. I find this approach leads to more charitable and interesting conversations.

4. Objections

a) Belonging to a group has real benefits—companionship, protection, a sense of identity. Humans are social creatures; we like having a tribe. There’s comfort in knowing someone has your back.

b) A more interesting objection is this: “Aren’t you just pushing the in-group problem one level down?” If you reject political parties and instead base everything on your moral framework, isn’t that just... choosing a different kind of party?

Point a) is just true, there are positives that come with political allegiance. As for b)—it’s a valid worry, but I don’t think that’s how it actually plays out. When conversations begin with values instead of team loyalty, something shifts. There is more common ground, less vitriol. It also sets up the right pathway for talking about politics—begin with values, then move to the evidence that supports your political stance.

Although there might be something I am missing since many (most?) smart people declare some sort of political allegiance. I suppose I just need the right empirical evidence to change my mind on this stance too.