purity spiral

plural purity spirals

1. The situation in which members of an ideological group become increasingly zealous and intolerant, eventually turning on other members.

   [T]he American right has been caught in a purity spiral — a form of vicious circle in which successive elites compete among each other over who is the “true conservative.”

   2016, Matthew Sheffield, Rise of the alt-right: How mainstream conservatives' obsession with purity fueled a new right-wing radicalism

   2 more examples

   This institutional slant has become most pronounced in universities, which have for several years gone through a 'purity spiral' as conservatives left the field, culminating in a sort of collective meltdown in the mid-2010s.

   2020, Ed West, Small Men on the Wrong Side of History

   Many of TST's critics did frame the issue in terms of purity and contamination. In a debate on Facebook, one critic responded to Greaves's essay on purity spirals, "There's an old saying I like 'If there's a Nazi sitting at the table and 10 other people sitting there talking to him, you got a table with 11 nazis.'"

   2020, Joseph P. Laycock, Speak of the Devil, page 74