@cstross I've noticed that every ideology based around Us and Them thinking relies on that constant conflict, so the Us has to be forever shrinking as that standards of "purity" are pushed higher and higher, in search of new "weakness" to root out... These things tend to fall apart eventually if left to their own devices as there's just a few lonely bitter people left, but they cause a lot of misery on the way, and death if they get that kind of power.