The alchemy linking “gender ideology,” left-wing authoritarianism, and political violence: Comment on Fedida et al

In a report commissioned by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Fedida et al. (2026) analyze data from an opt-in nonprobability sample to describe associations among a newly developed five-item Clinical Gender Affirmation Scale (CGAS), scores on the Brief Left-Wing Authoritarianism Scale, and respondents’ justification of politically charged violent acts. Their interpretation, however, is that “gender ideology,” embedded in clinical guidance, supplies authoritarian psychology with enemies, moral urgency, and rationales for coercion. This commentary argues that the data and analyses do not support this conclusion. First, CGAS measures a narrow cluster of attitudes toward social affirmation and support, not the clinical-institutional ideology attributed to it. Second, Fedida et al. (2026) invoke selection, mediation, and effect-modification theories without specifying or testing them. In particular, an “ideological accelerant” hypothesis requires an interaction between CGAS and authoritarianism, but no such interaction is estimated. Third, the estimated associations are difficult to interpret because the measures contain overlapping ideological and aggression-related content, while the violence items assess reactions to a politically selective set of hypothetical targets rather than a generalized disposition to tolerate political violence. Moreover, modeling CGAS and left-wing authoritarianism in separate regressions adjusted only for political identity does not show that either is associated with justification of violence independently of the other. In summary, Fedida et al. (2026) describe potentially interesting covariances but provide little evidence that “gender ideology” radicalizes people.