Estrangement Ideology – Part 45. Ideological Defenders

Boundary maintenance: How ideological defenders police discourse without debate.

This is the forty-fifth in a series of articles concerning Estrangement Ideology. Key concepts are introduced in Part 1. Tenets, Goals and Methods; Part 2. Transgressions, Moral Certitude and Traditional Values; and Part 3. The One-Sided Path to Redemption. Other parts can be found here.

Critics of Estrangement Ideology are often accused of misunderstanding, insensitivity or even complicity in harm. But what’s less often explored is how defenders of the narrative operate—not through sustained engagement or counter-argument but through strategic reframing, procedural insulation and rhetorical redirection. A recent series of comments from one reader illustrates this dynamic in real time.

This commentary builds on earlier articles including Part 4: The Therapist, Part 24: Estrangement Narratives as Propaganda, Part 34: Online Forum Psychological Profile and Part 39: Issendai: Shaping The Narrative. It also serves as a transition to upcoming explorations of the ideological drivers behind Estrangement Ideology and the group dynamics that dominate online estrangement spaces.

When Dialogue Becomes Defence

Over the course of publishing this series, I’ve welcomed disagreement—some thoughtful, some dismissive. But in certain responses, a particular pattern has emerged: the move not to engage in debate, but to steer the conversation back into familiar, ideologically sanctioned grooves.

As an example of this, a reader Randy McDonald has recently commented on multiple articles and while his tone remains civil, his approach provides a revealing example of what might be called ideological boundary maintenance. Over the course of a series of comments, it is obvious that his approach reflects a rhetorical posture that prioritises control over conversation and seeks to contain rather than explore dissent.

This is not a personal critique of Randy. It is an examination of the discursive methods that often emerge when ideological systems—like Estrangement Ideology—are challenged. These methods do not seek understanding or mutual clarification. Their goal is to reassert the limits of acceptable thought.

Randy’s rhetorical posture mirrors that of Issendai, the anonymous writer whose “Down the Rabbit Hole” series of articles has arguably had significant influence on the discourse found in online estrangement spaces. As discussed previously, Issendai’s work proposes a model of familial dysfunction in which any sign of disagreement or boundary-pushing by a parent is reframed as manipulation or emotional coercion. While Issendai does not engage directly in public debate, his or her texts function as boundary-setting mechanisms: they define who counts as “toxic”, who is permitted into relational space and what constitutes redemption—if it exists at all.

In a sense, where Issendai’s material provides several key elements of the ideological architecture, Randy’s comments exemplify its enforcement in real time. Issendai builds the frame—the language of harm, the justification for exclusion—and Randy can be seen to apply that frame to those who challenge it.

Reframing Critique as Moral Failure

In a discussion about how estrangement is sometimes justified on the basis of political or medical differences, I noted the growing tendency to pathologise disagreement—to treat divergent views not simply as wrong but as mentally destabilised or morally dangerous.

Rather than engage with this critique, Randy responded with a counter-assertion:

“At risk of being obvious, what if it is [destabilizing]? Estranged children who are upset that their parents will not get vaccinated or even take basic precautions against spreading COCID-19 even as said want to visit their grandchildren, who are upset that their parents are supporting terrible political causes, who are upset that their parents are advocating homophobia, who are upset about deep mysterious conspiracies—a lot of these parental beliefs are probably wrong, are deeply dysfunctional in practice, and are quite capable of causing harm.”

In this rhetorical pivot, instead of addressing whether the framing of disagreement as pathology might itself be harmful or ideological, the concern is turned into a test of the critic’s moral seriousness. The critic is now suspected of failing to take “harm” seriously enough. This isn’t engagement—it’s moral redirection. The original question is replaced with an implicit accusation: if you don’t share the dominant view, you must be permissive of danger.

Such tactics subtly shift the burden of proof. The concern is no longer about the ideological framing of estrangement, but about the critic’s ethical reliability. The structural analysis is quietly replaced with a moral indictment.

This move is particularly potent because it is not overtly hostile. It cloaks itself in the language of care and vigilance, as if merely safeguarding against harm. But its deeper function is to redefine the debate in moral terms that the critic cannot win without first accepting the ideology they are questioning.

Deploying Strawmen Through Harm Expansion

In another exchange, I questioned the logic behind the argument for “trial periods” for grandparents, as advised by Issendai and others in online estrangement spaces. My argument was that such conditional access often reflects a shift in the perceived nature of family—where intergenerational relationships are no longer presumed to be of right but must be earned through behavioural compliance, even in the absence of clear evidence of abuse.

In response, I noted that I was not suggesting that abusive individuals—such as a rapist father—should have automatic access to grandchildren. That was clearly an extreme and rare situation, offered to preclude the suggestion that I was minimising harm. However, Randy used that example not to acknowledge the qualification, but to expand the category of harm further:

“There are lots of less obvious harms than a rapist grandparent. There are, for instance, grandparents who pick favourites, or who go further than that and actively mistreat the grandchild for reasons outside of their control, for instance. There are grandparents who do not pay attention to the parents' legitimate requirements, or who go do far as to actively undermine their parenting. Etc.”

Rather than engage the point that extreme cases should not dictate universal policies, this reply leveraged the extreme example to pivot back into the ideology of expansive harm: that subtle harms, emotional dynamics or differences in parenting approach could all be construed as legitimate reasons for exclusion.

This rhetorical manoeuvre is especially common in spaces where therapeutic language has overtaken relational discourse. Under such frameworks, disagreement is not just a difference of opinion—it is a potential threat. Critics are cast not as thinkers offering alternative perspectives but as dangers to be managed or dismissed.

But this is precisely the mechanism of ideological insulation. The invocation of exceptional cases allows broad, ideologically driven practices—like conditional access, family estrangement or re-education—to pass without scrutiny. By moving the conversation from typical dynamics to worst-case scenarios—and then using those to justify an even broader expansion of what counts as harm—the defender avoids engaging with the actual argument while appearing morally invincible.

Issendai’s writing sets the tone for this approach. Her “sick systems” metaphor equates relational inconsistency or neediness with abusive dynamics, removing any room for complexity. Randy echoes this framing strategy—where high-stakes examples and emotionally loaded terms are used to frame all dissent as latent harm.

Defending Institutions Through Procedural Absolutism

A third example involves professional licensing and ideological enforcement. In referencing Jordan Peterson’s order by the College of Psychologists of Ontario to undergo “social media re-education”, I raised a concern shared by many: that professional bodies are beginning to exert ideological pressure not over clinical practice but over public speech and political commentary.

Randy replied with words to the effect of:

“That is not what happened… He violated the College’s code. He can comply or resign.”

Here, ideological overreach is reduced to a matter of bureaucratic compliance. The question of whether a professional body should regulate political speech is dismissed in favour of a procedural explanation: rules were broken; consequences follow. End of discussion.

This is procedural insulation—a common defence when institutions act in ways that may appear politically motivated. The assumption is that if the mechanism is official, it must be legitimate. But this ignores the very real possibility that the scope of professional regulation is expanding in ways that serve ideological conformity. When dissent from dominant values becomes cause for mandated “retraining”, the issue is no longer just compliance—it is the ideological capture of authority.

What is significant here is not just the content of the defence, but its tone. Randy’s response carries a finality that implies no legitimate question remains. This has the effect of shaming the critic into silence rather than inviting further exploration.

This mirrors the tone of boundary maintainers inspired by Issendai: those who refuse engagement unless the interlocutor first concedes the moral or psychological framework being asserted. It is not the argument that must be proven, but the critic that must be vetted.

What’s Actually Going On Here?

Across these interactions, a clear pattern emerges. The rhetorical strategies employed do not aim to clarify, expand or test competing ideas. Instead, they aim to protect an ideological framework from scrutiny by pre-emptively invalidating dissent, so that:

• Critique is reframed as moral deficiency

• Legitimate questions are met with worst-case scenarios

• Concerns about overreach are reframed as misunderstandings of process

These are not arguments in the classical sense. They are boundary-enforcing mechanisms that recast disagreement as either dangerous or naïve. The function of such responses is not to find common ground but to signal that the limits of acceptable thought have been reached.

And perhaps most tellingly, they demand that critics defend themselves against charges they did not make. In doing so, the original argument is buried beneath layers of defensiveness, reframing and suspicion.

Randy, in this sense, acts as a real-time boundary maintainer: not a theorist like Issendai, but a practitioner of the ideological script he or she helped solidify. He operates not as a challenger of ideas but as a guardian of moral frames—ensuring that no critique escapes the orbit of established righteousness.

Why This Matters

We are living in an era where institutional power increasingly overlaps with ideological alignment—across professions, family dynamics and public discourse. Estrangement Ideology thrives in this environment by embedding its logic in harm language, therapeutic framing and professional authority.

When critiques of this logic are met not with reasoned engagement but with procedural scolding or emotionally loaded hypotheticals, we are not having a conversation. We are witnessing the performance of ideological policing.

This matters because once the space for good-faith disagreement collapses, all that remains is compliance. The cost is not just to individuals who question dominant norms but to the cultural health of any community that claims to value openness, pluralism or dialogue.

To name these patterns is not to attack the people who use them. It is to expose the mechanics of a system that increasingly relies on rhetorical sleight-of-hand to defend itself from scrutiny. If we cannot distinguish disagreement from danger or exploration from transgression, then the ideology is no longer just a set of ideas. It has become a gatekeeper of thought.

Closing Note

This series does not exist to defend bad behaviour, deny harm or suggest that all perspectives are equally benign. It exists to challenge and expose the mechanisms of ideological absolutism—especially when it arrives cloaked in the language of safety, care and professional duty.

A healthy discourse requires space for disagreement. But when that space is continually narrowed—when disagreement is repackaged as complicity, danger or ignorance—we must pause and ask: what ideas are we protecting and at what cost?

Finally, I thank Randy McDonald for his comments. They provide a powerful illustration of the ways in which language can be used not only to rebut critique, but to subtly reframe and defuse it—often without ever engaging the central argument. That dynamic, more than any individual exchange, is the real subject of this piece.

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Author’s Note on Anticipated Responses

As with earlier articles in this series, I expect some readers—perhaps including those referenced here—to respond by reaffirming the moral importance of protecting others from harm, defending institutional norms as ideologically neutral, or suggesting that disagreement with such practices amounts to misunderstanding or overreaction. That in itself is not surprising. In fact, it reinforces a central claim of the article: that critiques of ideological framing are often recast as moral deficiencies or reframed through procedural justifications that obscure the ideological dynamics at work.

This article is not a denial of harm, nor an attack on professional standards or personal values. It’s a call to examine how harm is defined, how dissent is framed, and how the space for disagreement is often constrained not by direct argument, but by moral redirection and rhetorical containment.

In that spirit, I invite readers to consider not only what is said in response to this article and to others in the series—but how it is said, and what kinds of arguments are left untouched.

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Note: This article was developed with assistance of ChatGPT, used as a structured analysis and writing tool. All ideas, interpretations and final outputs were authored, verified and edited by me. The model was conditioned to reflect my reasoning, not to generate content independently.