Introduction
In recent times, many have become aware of the proliferation of the following in western societies: group classification, ways of knowing, identity-centered truth, increasingly wasteful redistribution schemes, loss of individual rights, increased taxation, and commitments made by incumbent parties to international organizations. What do they all have in common? They are all aspects of a society organizing itself on a collectivist understanding of human life.[1]
While ostensibly offered as solutions to pressing problems like “hate”, homelessness, inadequate infrastructure, and a stagnant economy and declining quality of life for the average citizen (particularly in Canada), the solutions never seem to convincingly demonstrate efficacy for their intended purpose. But is that really the case? I suggest that they all make progress toward a common purpose, collectivism itself, and that this supersedes the needs of the human being. Worse still, they organize all humans into a system with its own purpose and intentions which runs as a zombie process, but without being a coherent entity in and of itself.
We Need Clarity
I’ve spent time thinking about those of a collectivist perspective, and not necessarily by their own declaration, but as it being my opinion to allege of them. It began with those whom I have an intimate relationship, but broadened over time to those who react to politically-relevant utterances and appear to believe the things they say and speak in good faith. Despite my own cognitive biases, I tried to identify what common elements might exist amongst them because it had become difficult to ascertain not just the authenticity of the discourse, but whether they, in operating from what they believed to be authentic, had become unable to participate authentically (I’ve come to refer to this as initiation into cult collectivism).
I was curious about the qualities associated with “each side” of the supposed political divide as I had found that changes in culture over time had made radical statements and initiatives more popular, and it didn’t coincide with the qualities assumed of certain political dispositions.
Look, I get it, there seem to be leftist and rightist attitudes, sentiments, and ideas, and they seem to proliferate according to the political orientations of a given movement, but these are larger scale phenomena, and they tend to be whatever is most visible through politicians, political movements within organizations (that are overwhelmingly leftist), and the most politically radical activists whose feet are on the ground. But that’s not the personal experience we each have in our day to day lives. What I mean is, that isn’t the interpersonal experience we have in the most important social practices we engage in, which are one-on-one exchanges with the people of our personal lives. It is in these situations where we observe most intimately the personality and psyche of an individual alongside their political proclamations. It is here that things don’t match the common view, and where getting over our sociopolitical hangups offer the ripest ground for resolving conflicts and coming to agreement on what progress should mean for a healthy society.
Unfortunately, many of us are at the place of deciding whether those close to us can be trusted to take part in mediation of our points of contention, rather than the details of mediation themselves.
That said, it’s important to remind ourselves that we can still be willing to take an optimistic approach to life. At one point, I decided to ignore “politics”, so to speak. I don’t just mean the day-to-day current thing being forced down our throats, but even the ideas-side of things, which too seemed to be an endlessly unproductive battle. Politics in general serves little more than a means to capture attention, diminish meaningful productive drive, and bury everyone in a pit of dissatisfaction and despair. And hopefully, it was just the sensationalism at play; I assumed that the negative characteristics were particularly more visible to me out as I was actively seeking them out.[2]
Instead, I focused on technology, which is both fun and necessary to make life better for everyone. I had ambitious aspirations about using technology to improve the world while developing myself, building a career, and supporting a family.
But then, the COVID era began, with many defining features, such as snitch lines, and I felt I hadn’t done my part to help those close to me understand the potential dangers of failing to look at new and ongoing issues through multiple lenses. I felt like I had missed an opportunity to steer things in a better direction, if even just in demonstration among those in my immediate sociopolitical milieu, and that my simplified drive and focus had squandered the chance to avoid worsening the social conflicts that appeared to be worsening at an accelerating pace.[3]
Though grappling with guilt, I knew everyone is both a participant and not solely to blame. I hadn’t done all I could to try and stop the sociopolitical transformation of society, but I had at least tried with a reasonable effort when confronted with relevant situations. Nevertheless, if things were to ever get really bad, I wouldn’t know what effect I might have had.
As such, there’s a better position to take. In anticipation of future uncertainty affecting my children, I wrote a book on Collectivism. But why was it relevant, and what led me to believe I had anything important to say about the subject?
We Need Agency
In the midst of the continuous onslaught of political agitation, cult initiation, mind-numbing recreational excess, and institutionally-directed self-interpretation, we might wish to take a moment to consider what the future prospect of self-directed thought will look like. Many of us have children, and wonder whether they, and their peers, will have the tooling necessary to rely on themselves regardless of the nature of society, but particularly so in the face of institutions which might not be operating such as to respect their best interests.
How do we preserve agency in the midst of such concerns? Identifying the problem is one part of our strategy, and self-evident from the subject of this article. Another part is identifying the skills and modes of development which lead to endowing humans with those capabilities we deem valuable, but that is beyond the scope here. Our interest here is understanding why it’s important to push back on proposals which limit our agency, how to identify them, and what we need to know to give others a chance to think openly about these issues.
Offerings
Through my own attempt to work through those issues, I’ve come to focus on some areas of study and develop concepts that I believe are helpful for us to truly make progress and preserve essential aspects of the human condition in the midst of societies which continue to develop technologically.
Before getting into them too deeply, let’s reflect on some experiences many of us have plausibly gone through these past few years, which help us understand the nature of the issue, and what is missing in people’s understanding of it.
Relationships
What We Had and Lost
Our relationships are important to each of us. Even in the case of the hermit who has shunned every form of relation in favour of solitude, their characterization of themselves, their life, and perhaps even the task they are working through, is contextualized by the relationships they have engaged in—be they the ones they currently participate in, those that they wish to improve, or even a relationship with the divine, to the exclusion of others. Even those eschewing relationships altogether have chosen that path because of the relationships they have had. The fact of the matter is that, if you’re reading this article, you’ve likely experienced a disintegration in the nature of at least some of your relationships. It may have prompted you to consider new views, or to make decisions that you were previously apprehensive to make, and you’re now interested in what can be done to bring back the prospect of better relations in the future.
Many of us experienced a breakdown in the quality of communication throughout our lives, but especially with our family and friends. Institutions and political organizations are already something operating through the abstraction of an administrative body, and beholden to commitments which inform their purpose and continued viability, thus it’s natural to not keep the highest expectations for the relations that are formed through them. But once our personal relationships begin to break down, we are liable to enter into existential crises and ask big questions about our purpose and whether there is a viable prospect of a fulfilling life.
For most of us, the summit of tension and collapse of trust occurred in the past few years, but was it really something that began suddenly? Did those we related to believe the hype and suddenly take up a stance that was incompatible with the rest of us? Doubtful. I am sure most would agree that the rift began long ago and had even been, at one point, modest disagreements that were perfectly healthy to express and discuss. Was it that the nature of disagreement was doomed to fail? Or was there a form of radicalization at play that began to express itself in disagreements which wouldn’t have otherwise posed a problem for the relationship? All things considered equal, we should consider the latter for at least some of them.
How We Lost It
I argue that it’s not the fact of there being a disagreement which has become untenable, but that the use of our language has become incompatible as a consequence of cult radicalization—disparately idiosyncratic vis-a-vis esoteric vs exoteric use of language []. This proliferates a deepened attachment to a metaphysical perception which demands totalizing conformity as a prerequisite of the initiate to accept their peer. Unfortunately, the nature of a totalizing belief system is that the conformity is itself impossible, as it will never attain a state of uniformity, and such an end will inevitably be sought as the intuition of the initiate will never be satisfied.[4]
It may sound hyperbolic to state it as such, but if the theoretical predicate to one subject’s conception of collective is not so important, the concept itself not going to be persistently adhered to and will come to be released and forgotten. If we’re talking about a worldview about political society that is maintaining itself across time, it must necessarily become totalizing for a given subject, and if it’s shared by a significant set of people or personages revered or otherwise embedded in that subject’s life, then it catalyzes their certainty in pursuing passionate entrenchment yet further.
Where We Go
So what now? Do we just give up on those with whom we no longer have a healthy mode of communication? I am not one to give up hope, and I remain optimistic in the long term, but the immediate course of action is to understand how things went wrong, recognize the tooling that has induced and widened the rift, and develop the means to defuse dialectical bombs (no, you needn’t defuse them all) so we can maintain focus and clarity while passing on a potent arsenal of logic and reason to those with whom we are still able to communicate.
Perception
Collectivism
What is collectivism? Is it just a philosophy that people discover and read about? Is it the case that the logic of such a philosophy makes sense to some and not others, and that those who follow it, convinced by its logic, become the collectivists? Perhaps there’s some sort of a balance between individualist philosophy and collectivist philosophy that, through juxtaposition and deliberation, lead to the advancement of human thought and that this corresponds with development of society and technology—diversity of thought!
Though we can analyze a philosophy or ideology and make the case about whether or not it is “collectivist”, that is not my approach to understanding collectivism, nor do I believe that it’s useful in defusing the problem which has led to the breakdown of relationships and empowerment of the state to become increasingly authoritarian.
I believe collectivism has to be understood as the conceptual phenomenon plausibly perceived by the human mind. Why? Because humans aren’t orienting themselves according to the most provably correct doctrine, but through what occupies their mind, what is being focused upon, and how this affects them biophysiologically, which is to say the manner in which it informs how they feel. My book examines this, and the basic premise is that our minds are individuated by the nature of our biological embodiment, and constrained by its limits in spacetime. To perceive a collective is to cognize a change in the state of reality to a different potential permutation, to desire its attainment as a morally indicated endpoint. The semantics for the concept of collective are what we are most engaged in when we come into sociopolitical conflict and, for many, it’s the arguing of those details which comprises the waging of war for culture and politic. The details can be important, particularly for working through challenging junctions imposed by force bearing ramifications on the prospect of human freedom and liberty, but it’s important to get the basic understanding correct, because any notion that a collectivist mode of organizing society is wrong not because one might be better conducive to production or flourishing, but because adherence to the logic of a collectivist view of human life implies a position that is metaphysically distinct from human experience, which must be perceived as an individual.
To simplify, what all that means is that the proposition of a collective needs to be examined for its coherence and logical consistency. The concept of a collective is only coherent if the construct of the collective is meaningful. The collective, however, is not something tangible in the real world. It can be spoken of, referenced, and implied, but it can only exist in the mind of the subject, or as can be deduced through the application of force to other individuals whereby the configuration of their bodies and composition of utterances can be made to present the aesthetic of a collective. Beyond that, however, it is not something tangible and, thus, to compel all of mankind to its construction, and the moral objectives that can be deduced from its specification, is to doom all of mankind to its own destruction on the basis of reifying fantasy.
Still too abstract? It is abstract. The entire premise of collectivism always remains abstract, because every potential participant will always have their own perception of what it is, and what it means to be on the right side of its proposition.
But here lies the rub: if you are against collectivism, you’ll find that, in the events of your own life, the insistence upon it will yield an opportunity for you to best intervene in the following two forms:
1. Policy
2. A true-believing interlocutor
Please note, it’s not always worth your time to try and intervene. Activists are there to help you waste time, lose focus, lose hope, and make a fool of yourself to any who might notice. Rectifying the poor policies of a sinking ship be of little value once you take your last breath and are sucked into the void.[5]
For those situations that you deem worthy, however, you’ll find that advocacy for collectivism, in spite of a well-accepted understanding that it comprises a philosophy of prioritizing the “needs of the many” over that of the individual, will necessarily presume that the model of being indicated by the collective—the identity of the in-group, marginalized, or what have you—is somehow providing an authentic reference to actual people. This is false, as the uniqueness of any living being is infinitely intricate, and advocates of collectivism must write-off any exception that fits the superficial qualification of their model, which will always exist.
The model of collective is the rationale to dismiss any individual who does not accord with the view of the subject imposing the collective standard and, as the experience through one’s perceptual frame is the only aspect of existence for which a human can have faith as being real, collectivism is always dehumanizing. To be pointedly aware of this fundamental flaw will help you avoid a misstep when bombarded with colourful, complicated, and authoritative language which threatens to paint you as incompetent and unprincipled.
Cognizing the Collective
Collectives aren’t empathetic, altruistic, selfless, or charitable. What they are is self-destructive, self-deprecative, and anti-human. Most of all, to insist on adherence to a collective is, as an act by one who cognizes it, selfish and delusional.
To cognize the collective is to imply or elucidate a structure representing systemic state, correspondingly-indicated objects, and temporal potential. A demarcation of systemic state, and the greater scope of system that includes that which is within vs that which is without. A predicate of what can be within, and the meaning of a human’s placement; it is the judgment of verifying humanity. That its effects have not yet been expressed in natural order denotes its temporal potential.
The collective symbolizes a desire for change and the capacity to evaluate human beings. One cannot cognize the collective and not also conceive of their relation to it, as part of it, and as wishing to be transformed through it: wishing to be subject to a transformation of the environment informed by it, the context of which is adequately described by interpretation through its premises. Through championing what one has cognized, one accepts a structure of oneself, one’s life, and that of those indicated by the collective model (which, given that it is a collection of humans, implies all humans). Additionally, one accepts the possibility of change biasing one’s focus through the declaration of the collective. In championing the proposition of a collective, one distributes a weight of valence articulating a desire for progress along the dimension most relevant to whatever theory forms the basis of the collective, and conveys a form of resolution being sought.
It’s Just Society!
You’ll always hear activists say that collectivism is just the reality of living amongst other people, that individualism is the blatant and simplistic disregard for the presence of other beings, and that this is proven because we follow rules to live together.
That people accord with the laws of that land is a weak standard of what a collective is, because it’s basically coming into agreement that we follow one set of rules to protect property and sustain the ability for one pursue their affairs. But if that qualified “collectivism”, then there’d be no need for anyone to moan about anything beyond those laws and their equal application to the plurality of humans in a given jurisdiction. Once you bring an ideology, a material specification to classify of the body, and a basis for morality inferred from separation of types of humans, beyond the constraint of whether or not they are citizens of the country, then we put forward a theory of knowledge, content of mind, description of character and structure of morality for those within vs without. This becomes a test of who is sufficiently human. This is why dehumanization is a feature of collectivism.[6]
No Collective, Only Perceptual Frame
Cognized Collective Model (CCM)
The concept of a collective can never exist tangibly as a real, perceiving construct, but will instead be limited to exist as an abstract concept, and as the imagination of any individual who generates a reference to the concept of a collective as expressed in their own cognition.
To include anyone else in that moment of cognition is to project one’s own beliefs about the instance of perception and content of mind and assign it to that person, such that they can be conceived as one’s projected extension of self. There is not even the possibility of ascertaining that one’s projected manifestation of another could be accurate, as there is no verification of perception and no collective perception. It is entirely a ruse and cannot develop beyond that, but to champion it insists on my description.
To truly acknowledge the existence of another will always remain a challenge, regardless of whether one champions collectivism, or has clarity about the fact of them perceiving reality as an individual. At best, one can assume that others have a perception, the presence of an environment that exists independent of one’s perception and will, and that their perceptual frame is continuously engaged in, even if attempts to verify through correspondence are undertaken. As such, the fact of one being embedded in their perceptual frame means they can ultimately override any sense of constraint, should they choose to. That makes it one’s responsibility to perceive correctly, for themselves, but through this responsibility too comes one’s agency.[7]
Paradox of the Perceptual Frame
The Perceptual Frame refers not just to human embodiment but the human constraints to the experience and, most importantly, how to model this concept so we can correct the erroneous assumptions being made about human identity. That is to say, while the perceptual frame describes an instance of consciousness embodied in spacetime with volitionally directable focus and a faculty to process and abstract information, any attempt to reify an enumerated identity is itself an abstraction whose reference can be used to compel the elision and consideration of the actual instance of being. Referring to the model of Perceptual Frame is necessary to remind ourselves of our unique, individuated experience, and the manner in which we are able to act and acquire knowledge. Supposing that the Perceptual Frame applies to all other humans is the minimum act of faith necessary not only to extend dignity to our fellow interlocutors, but to maximize the potential to reasonably apply logic in our interactions. Any attempt to inform our view of another using an enumerated model of identity is necessarily fictitious, fantastical, and doomed to informing erroneous deductions.
The Perceptual Frame needs to be considered in the context of the SAFKT model, which is an acronym for the fundamental conditions of human experience: Senses, Abstraction, Finitude, Kill/Knowledge of death, Time/Temporality. It is against this contextual understanding that we paradoxically find both the means to best mitigate the limitations of human observation as well as the susceptibility to delusion. The latter of these, our susceptibility to delusion, is what primes cult behaviour which, through proliferation, is the fundamental basis of collectivism.
Consequences
Operating through the human Perceptual Frame, with its intrinsic capabilities that differentiate it from the other organisms we know and love, is the ease at which we can entrench and complicate our delusions. To best illustrate this, it’s helpful to contextualize it with the phenomenon of cult formation. A cult is not a material object, and though organizations and clubs that can be deemed to be cults may have documented pledges and related literature, a cult is ultimately a concept to understand the group dynamics humans are liable to engage in.
Cult initiation occurs linguistically, inviting people into community where they perform activities as praxis. The praxis is the activism, often as an activity already meaningful to them. Performing the activity induces you into crises bound to the cause of the collective. All initiates are committed to solving the objectives of the collective, and these objectives form the cult specification.
The proposition to instantiate the cult occurs as the syntactic propagation of delusion from the initiator. The initiating subject, conceiving the potential reflection of the delusion, cognizes a difference between those who accord with the expression, and those who do not (those of and not of the collective). This will always remain the case, regardless of the degree to which the collective is formalized.
Commitment to and participation with the collective varies greatly, but the point at which we evaluate it is in its potential to compel the conformity of others. The collective is not recreational. It’s not merely a group activity, and not just symbolic. As the logic of a collective pursues resolution, its relevance and coherence can only be maintained insofar as it can be insisted upon for a moral purpose. This means that if its premises are adopted by the state, its objectives become the purpose of the citizen and, in the most charitable case, a proxy of one’s humanity. In a more extreme case, it becomes a test of who is truly human.
End of part 1
Emmanuel Rajinder Buckshi a telecom engineer in Canada who is optimistic about the prospect of solving many difficult problems through technology. I scrutinize defenses of collectivism and look shrewdly upon the risk of runaway authoritarianism inherent in administering systems of governance.
He is long time musician and former guitar teacher, and believes an appreciation for music as a demonstration of the logical brilliance in nature provides a good starting point for people that are ready to work out differences of opinion in good faith.
He is the author of the new book Tyranny of We: The Selfishness of Collectivism. He posts on X https://x.com/RBuckshi. His book can be purchased
Aoife. Collectivism Is Just Interaction with the Community Really. X, 2026.
Blum, Lawrence. “I’m Not a Racist, but…”: The Moral Quandary of Race. Cornell University Press, 2002.
Buckshi, Emmanuel Rajinder. Tyranny of We: The Selfishness of Collectivism. 2026. https://www.amazon.com/Tyranny-Collectivism-Emmanuel-Rajinder-Buckshi/dp/1067783725.
Coughlin, Stephen. The Narrative Arc. Political Warfare Briefing, Unconstrained Analytics, 2020.
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Coughlin, Stephen. Truth Bombs Are Actions in the Blast Zone. X (Twitter), 2025.
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FrostWave. All Society Is Collectivist. X, 2026.
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Gaudry, Adam, and Danielle Lorenz. “Indigenization as Inclusion, Reconciliation, and Decolonization: Navigating the Different Visions for Indigenizing the Canadian Academy.” AlterNative 14, no. 3 (2018): 218–27. https://doi.org/10.1177/1177180118785382.
Haslam, Nick. “Concept Creep: Psychology’s Expanding Concepts of Harm and Pathology.” Psychological Inquiry 27, no. 1 (2016): 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2016.1082418.
Iao. Every State or Society Is Collectivist by Definition. X, 2026.
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Lindsay, James. The Current Thing Did Not Take Place. New Discourses Podcast, 2023. https://newdiscourses.com/2023/11/current-thing-did-not-take-place/.
OECD. Revenue Statistics 2025 — Canada. OECD Publishing, 2025. https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/reports/2025/12/revenue-statistics-2025-country-notes_3708be73/canada_3aa043fb/795aaca9-en.pdf.
Pardy, Bruce. “Meet the New ‘Human Rights’ — Where You Are Forced by Law to Use ‘Reasonable’ Pronouns.” National Post, June 19, 2017. https://nationalpost.com/opinion/bruce-pardy-meet-the-new-human-rights-where-you-are-forced-by-law-to-use-reasonable-pronouns-like-ze-and-zer.
Pardy, Bruce. “Racial Discounts for Violent Criminals Was Inevitable in Equity-Obsessed Canada.” National Post, March 22, 2026. https://nationalpost.com/opinion/bruce-pardy-racial-discounts-for-violent-criminals-was-inevitable-in-equity-obsessed-canada.
Pirro, Andrea L. P. “Far Right: The Significance of an Umbrella Concept.” Nations and Nationalism 29, no. 1 (2023): 101–12. https://doi.org/10.1111/nana.12860.
Shiao, Jiannbin, and Ashley Woody. “The Meaning of ‘Racism’.” Sociological Perspectives 64, no. 4 (2021): 495–517. https://doi.org/10.1177/0731121420964239.
Strauss, Leo. Persecution and the Art of Writing. Free Press, 1952.
University of Winnipeg. Indigenous Course Requirement. Institutional policy, 2016. https://www.uwinnipeg.ca/indigenous/indigenous-course-requirement/.
Willing, Jon. “City’s Call Centre Log Provides Snapshot of Ottawans’ Top Irritants.” Ottawa Citizen, January 20, 2021. https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/citys-call-centre-log-provides-snapshot-of-ottawans-top-irritants.
[1]Adam Gaudry and Danielle Lorenz, “Indigenization as Inclusion, Reconciliation, and Decolonization: Navigating the Different Visions for Indigenizing the Canadian Academy,” AlterNative 14, no. 3 (2018): 218–27, https://doi.org/10.1177/1177180118785382; University of Winnipeg, Indigenous Course Requirement, Institutional policy, 2016, https://www.uwinnipeg.ca/indigenous/indigenous-course-requirement/; Bruce Pardy, “Meet the New ‘Human Rights’ — Where You Are Forced by Law to Use ‘Reasonable’ Pronouns,” National Post, June 19, 2017, https://nationalpost.com/opinion/bruce-pardy-meet-the-new-human-rights-where-you-are-forced-by-law-to-use-reasonable-pronouns-like-ze-and-zer; Bruce Pardy, “Racial Discounts for Violent Criminals Was Inevitable in Equity-Obsessed Canada,” National Post, March 22, 2026, https://nationalpost.com/opinion/bruce-pardy-racial-discounts-for-violent-criminals-was-inevitable-in-equity-obsessed-canada; OECD, Revenue Statistics 2025 — Canada (OECD Publishing, 2025), https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/reports/2025/12/revenue-statistics-2025-country-notes_3708be73/canada_3aa043fb/795aaca9-en.pdf.
[2]James Lindsay, The Current Thing Did Not Take Place, New Discourses Podcast, 2023, https://newdiscourses.com/2023/11/current-thing-did-not-take-place/.
[3]Jon Willing, “City’s Call Centre Log Provides Snapshot of Ottawans’ Top Irritants,” Ottawa Citizen, January 20, 2021, https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/citys-call-centre-log-provides-snapshot-of-ottawans-top-irritants.
[4]Lawrence Blum, “I’m Not a Racist, but…”: The Moral Quandary of Race (Cornell University Press, 2002); Nick Haslam, “Concept Creep: Psychology’s Expanding Concepts of Harm and Pathology,” Psychological Inquiry 27, no. 1 (2016): 1–17, https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2016.1082418; Jiannbin Shiao and Ashley Woody, “The Meaning of ‘Racism’,” Sociological Perspectives 64, no. 4 (2021): 495–517, https://doi.org/10.1177/0731121420964239; Andrea L. P. Pirro, “Far Right: The Significance of an Umbrella Concept,” Nations and Nationalism 29, no. 1 (2023): 101–12, https://doi.org/10.1111/nana.12860; Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing (Free Press, 1952).
[5]Stephen Coughlin, The Narrative Arc, Political Warfare Briefing, Unconstrained Analytics, 2020,
; Stephen Coughlin, Truth Bombs Are Actions in the Blast Zone, X (Twitter), 2025,
.
[6]Iao, Every State or Society Is Collectivist by Definition, X, 2026,
; FrostWave, All Society Is Collectivist, X, 2026,
; Aoife, Collectivism Is Just Interaction with the Community Really, X, 2026,
.
[7]Emmanuel Rajinder Buckshi, Tyranny of We: The Selfishness of Collectivism (2026), https://www.amazon.com/Tyranny-Collectivism-Emmanuel-Rajinder-Buckshi/dp/1067783725.
Nicely done.