I think people will say (sometimes with their dying breath) that they believe something because they so badly want it to be true and want to belong to “that” ideology. But deep down inside…and maybe they’re not always conscious of it…real belief is probably very rare. It simply doesn’t align with the behavior we see. It’s about power and being on the side that has the most players. The threateners and the ultra-vocals always strike me as the ones who really *don’t * believe and are either on a power trip or they appear to be talking themselves into it, as if repeating it over and over will somehow make it true. That’s how it looks to me, anyway.