Gustavo, you continue to be the best commentator in this area. I have two quibbles :

“The only thing that mattered was the contribution made to the whole as measured by the attention their ideas could command. Participants were treated as only a single dimension of their self — leaving little room for acknowledging what they were thinking, feeling. Instead of social perceiving as a means to facilitating collective decision making, there was a denial of the internal life that needs to be perceived.”

This is not correct, but it might be close enough. One of the big wins of the red religion was that it created space for surfacing and airing aspects of their internal life that had been rendered profane by the Blue Church [i.e., “unPC”]. A very common act in various red fora (virtual and RL) is an expression of relief and of “being heard” in a way that was/is not present/available in Blue territory.

However, while this is important — my sense is that the big deal is that this “space for surfacing” is not focused on the actual inner life of any given individual, but is a very specific and particular space. If you happen to have been wanting to express that there are only 2 genders, this space feels liberating. But if you want to express / explore something that isn’t part of the space, you will get very shut down. You can have any color car that you want, as long as it is black. [Note — the degree of freedom and relief that is felt by red members to be able to be free of “PC culture” should not be underestimated.]

Quibble two: “what gave the red insurgency coherence was the information infrastructure rather than any point of principle, value or feeling .”

Not the case. In fact, your point that “attention” was a point of coherence is true — but also (and deeply) the entire complex of values that can be coherent around “virtuous masculine tribalism” is also core. Red have picked up this powerful and strongly coherent tool that Blue has entirely abandoned. This is a double edged sword — tends to short term strength and mid-long term weakness.

Note — I’m going to bet that a winning CI is very significantly focused on relationship building — dyadic, triadic and 12n relationships in particular. This creates a meshwork that is able to do CI at a very high level.