ALT Pivoting Right: How Belief, Testimony, and Pressure Drive Sudden Political Shifts Neil Levy Abstract A number of high-profile people seem to have moved from the left to the right quite suddenly, and without appearing to move through intermediate positions. Often, they do not just go right; they go right and bananas: accepting bizarre conspiracy theories and other such beliefs. This paper argues that this phenomenon can be explained by a combination of psychological pressures and genuine reasons, with the person pivoting from left to right on the fulcrum provided by a belief to which they are strongly committed and on which their side initially splits. This account explains how people go bananas while remaining rational and remaining concerned with evidence. The evidence to which they respond is provided by testimony. The pivot belief provides them with reasons to place much heavier weight on the testimony of the right, their former opponents, than on their own former side.

ALT It's hard to get a sense of how common this phenomenon is. Here, I won't inquire into that question? Instead, I aim to explain why it happens when it does. Here are some examples. Nina Power, once a philosophy lecturer at the University of Roehampton, is the author of One Dimensional Woman (2009), which aims to elaborate a genuinely anti-capitalist feminism. By 2018, she was messaging a friend wondering 'what the real deal is with the Protocols [of the Elders of Zion]', claiming that 'the social disapproval for "racism" is a psyop to stop people realising that there *are* alien and fairy races', and that 'black and white were alien races and very different' (Turner 2025). Bret Weinstein, formerly a biology professor and self-identified liberal, is now an influential podcaster. He has used his platform to promote debunked Covid conspiracies, as well as the 'Great Reset' conspiracy theory, according to which elites aim to eliminate most people, and especially white people (Johnson 2024