Right-Wing Psychedelia: Case Studies in Cultural Plasticity and Political Pluripotency

Introduction

Psychedelic experiences have long been associated with dispositional change, a perception rooted in the association between classical psychedelics and the social movements of the late 1960s and 1970s. Contemporary clinical and survey work has fuelled renewed enthusiasm, with studies reporting increases in openness, prosociality, nature relatedness and, in some datasets, lower authoritarianism among people with lifetime psychedelic experience. Against this background, media and some commentators have suggested that psychedelic therapy might produce broad societal benefits by shifting people toward more progressive or inclusive politics. Pace and colleagues set out to interrogate that assumption. Rather than accepting a unidirectional effect of psychedelics on political orientation, they propose and illustrate a competing model: psychedelics act as non-specific amplifiers of pre-existing psychological and social context, a phenomenon they term "political pluripotency." The paper aims to marshal historical, ethnographic and contemporary case material, alongside psychological mechanisms such as suggestibility and meaning-enhancement, to show that psychedelic experiences can be assimilated to conservative and authoritarian worldviews as well as liberal ones, depending on set and setting and broader structural forces. The authors frame this argument as important for both research design and public discourse about the social implications of the psychedelic renaissance.