Elliott Connie, a psychotherapist with two decades of clinical experience, says a viral political exchange within an Oklahoma family illustrates how the MAGA movement has bound its supporters through loyalty built on fear.

Connie hosts his own show, executive produced by Tiffany Haddish, which focuses on solution-focused behavioral therapy — an approach that helps people build on what is already working in their lives and take practical steps toward specific goals, rather than taking a broader look at their lives and mental health as a whole.

In a recent video, Connie highlighted "The Necessary Conversation," a popular video podcast in which two children hold a civil dialogue with their MAGA-supporting parents in Oklahoma about their political cognitive dissonance. Earlier in October, cult expert Dr. Steven Hassan also spoke with the family. That back-to-back attention from a cult specialist and a psychotherapist has made the family's kitchen-table exchanges an unlikely case study in how political loyalty gets examined.

According to Connie, much of the MAGA philosophy rests on fear "that is used to manipulate the voting public." That fear, he argued, helps construct an identity that keeps people loyal. In the clip he cited, mother Mary Lou Kultgen explains that she is probably voting Republican even though nearly all of her positions align with the Democrats. The single exception is her fear of boys playing in girls' sports.

"So if you're simply just voting on the ideals, then she would vote Democrat," Connie said. "But they have caused her to fear trans athletes. They've caused her to fear boys playing with girls, girls playing with boys. Now, I want to be clear. In all of sports, if you add up all of the trans athletes in sports, it is less than 1/10 of 1 percent."

Kultgen's other priorities include pulling out of the war in Iran, the release of the Jeffrey Epstein investigation files, universal healthcare and getting ICE out of communities. Despite that list, she planned to vote Republican. That gap between her own priorities and her planned ballot sits at the center of Connie's argument.

"So, clearly the issue of the war, the issue of the Epstein files, these are much bigger issues," Connie said. "But she's hanging her hat on this one thing that the machine of the MAGA cult has convinced her to fear. And that has formed her identity. And now asking her to vote for another candidate is like asking her to go against her identity."

That dynamic, Connie explained, is what makes it so difficult to deprogram people in the MAGA world.

"That's why it's so difficult to get people to vote based upon the morals of the candidate and the ideals of the candidate because they've done a really good job of helping them to form their identity as being a part of the party, or in MAGA's case, the cult. You have to realize that this is happening and then work to fight against it," Connie closed.

The full video is available on YouTube. This article originally appeared on Alternet.