Just because a political theory is patently ridiculous is no guarantee that it will fail to attract followers. Bring together an intuitive, deeply manipulative and powerfully charismatic individual with unsophisticated people who have been damaged by and driven away from everyone and everything they’ve ever loved and trusted, and the ensuing social chemistry will almost always generate a truly terrifying explosion of toxic behaviour

You need at least a Silver membership plan to access Insight articles.

Known principally for his political commentaries in The Dominion Post, The ODT, The Press and the late, lamented Independent, and for "No Left Turn", his 2007 history of the Left/Right struggle in New...