#high demand groups

[leavingthepcg]

Lifton's Eight Criteria helps to identify high control groups, or cults. The eight criteria include:

Milieu Control Perhaps the most important aspect of what makes a "high-demand group" is information and communication control. Members are often isolated from "outsiders", including outside sources not approved by leaders within the group, and family or friends that are not part of the group. Members are often made to "cut off" family and friends that are considered hostile toward the group.

Mystical Manipulation High-demand groups, particularly religious ones, will often use or manipulate events in order to further their message and bolster their doctrine. Examples of this are making prophecies or predictions that get repeatedly altered or forgotten about, or pointing to past predictions as being confirmed by a current event.

Demand for Purity Humans are flawed, and high demand groups exploit this fact by demanding perfection of their members. Sometimes, groups will even acknowledge that perfection is unachievable, but that individuals are perpetually at fault for being the only reason they cannot achieve it. This enhances feelings of guilt and shame, leading the member to feel as if the only way to improve themselves is to seek help from the group.

Confession High control groups exploit their members emotionally by having them "confess" supposed wrongdoings to another member or members. This makes the member vulnerable and constantly alert to their own and others' "sins". It is the promotion of hyper-policing of self and peers.

Sacred Science The group's ideology is held as the ultimate, capital-T "Truth"; it is the one standard by which all aspects of life must be measured. This often leads to science-denial, conspiracy-minded thinking, and isolating oneself based on the belief that others are unenlightened.

Loaded Language Members of cults will often reveal that they are a member of an in-group in the use of language. The group creates unique vocabulary, or changes/enhances the use of a term in order to create a doctrine of thought. This tactic helps to reform the member's thought process by embedding concepts into their minds that can be easily repeated and recognized through the repeated use of a simple phrase or word.

Doctrine Over Person Group belief is held as the ultimate "truth", trumping personal experience, beliefs, values, or reasoning. If the member feels or believes that something about the group is "off" or "untrue", they are taught to dismiss those thoughts and to internalize guilt about having "doubts".

Dispensing of Existence This describes the portion of thought control that creates an "us vs. them" attitude in the member. The member may be convinced that those outside the group are "sinful", "damned", "unenlightened", "ignorant", etc.

[whatisonthemoon]

Ten Years After Jonestown, the Battle Intensifies Over the Influence of ‘Alternative’ Religions (1988)

by Bob Sipchen - November 17, 1988 - Los Angeles Times

Eldridge Broussard Jr.’s face screwed into a grimace of such anger and pain that the unflappable Oprah Winfrey seemed unnerved. It hurts to be branded “the new Jimmy Jones” by a society eager to condemn what it doesn’t understand, the founder of the Ecclesia Athletic Assn. lamented on TV just a few days after his 8-year-old daughter had been beaten to death, apparently by Ecclesia members.

At issue were complex questions of whether the group he had formed to instill discipline in ghetto youth, and led from Watts to Oregon, had evolved into a dangerous cult. But Broussard couldn’t have found a less sympathetic audience than the group gathered around the TV in the bar of the Portland Holiday Inn.

There last month for the annual conference of the Chicago-based Cult Awareness Network were people whose kin had crumpled onto the body heaps at Jonestown, Guyana, 10 years ago, and people who believed they or family members had lost not their lives, but good chunks of them, to gurus and avatars less infamous but no less evil than Jim Jones.

One group’s cult is another’s “new religious movement,” though, and in the 10 years since Jonestown, a heated holy war of sorts has been mounting over the issues of how to define and contend with so-called cults.

The battle lines aren’t always well defined. Ongoing guerrilla actions between those who see themselves as crusaders against potential Jonestowns and those who see themselves as the persecuted members of outcast religious groups comprise the shifting legal and political fronts. On the outskirts of the ideological battleground is another loosely knit force that sees itself as the defender of a First Amendment besieged by vigilantes all too eager to kiss off the Constitution as they quash beliefs that don’t fit their narrow-minded criteria of what’s good and real. As one often-quoted definition has it: “A cult is a religion someone I don’t like belongs to.”

“It’s spiritual McCarthyism,” Lowell D. Streiker, a Northern California counselor, said of the cult awareness cause. To him, “the anti-cult network” is itself as a “cult of persecution,” cut from the same cloth as Colonial witch hunters and the Ku Klux Klan.

The key anti-cult groups, by most accounts, are CAN, a secular nondenominational group of 30 local affiliates; the Massachusetts-based American Family Foundation; the Interfaith Coalition of Concern About Cults and the Jewish Federation Council’s Commission on Cults and Missionaries.

Although they contend that their ranks continue to fill with the victims of cults or angry family members, they concede that the most significant rallying point came in the fall of 1978 when the leader of one alleged cult put a rattlesnake in an enemy’s mailbox and another led 912 people to their deaths.

Even though nothing so dramatic has happened since, cults have quietly been making inroads into the fabric of mainstream American life, and the effects are potentially as serious as the deaths at Jonestown, cult critics say.

With increased wealth and public relations acumen--with members clothed by Brooks Brothers rather than in saffron sheets--the 1,000 or more new cults that some estimate have sprung up in America since the ‘60s have become “a growth industry which is diversifying,” said Dr. Louis Jolyon West, director of UCLA’s Neuropsychiatric Institute. “They have made steady progress on all fronts.”

Uglier Connotations

In the broadest sense, Webster defines a cult as simply “a system of religious worship or ritual.” Even before Jonestown, though, the word had taken on broader and uglier connotations.

To make a distinction, critics use the term destructive cult, or totalist cult. The issue, they say, pivots on the methods groups use to recruit and hold together followers.

CAN describes a destructive cult as one that “uses systematic, manipulative techniques of thought reform or mind control to obtain followers and constrict their thoughts and actions. These techniques are imposed without the person’s knowledge and produce observable changes in the individual’s autonomy, thoughts and actions. . . .”

A 1985 conference on cults co-sponsored by the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute and the American Family Federation came up with this definition:

“A group or movement exhibiting a great or excessive devotion or dedication to some person, idea, or thing and employing unethically manipulative techniques of persuasion and control . . . designed to advance the goals of the group’s leaders, to the actual or possible detriment of members, their families, or the community.”

The “manipulative techniques” in question are what cult critics call mind control or brainwashing.

To critics of the critics, on the other hand, brainwashing amounts to hooey.

And both sides say the weight of evidence is on their side.

New Beliefs, Personalities

Cult critics often point to classic surveys on brainwashing, which catalogue methods which they say are routinely used by cults of every color, religious and secular, to manipulate unsuspecting people into adopting new beliefs, and often, in effect, new personalities.

Among the techniques are constant repetition of doctrine; application of intense peer pressure; manipulation of diet so that critical faculties are adversely affected; deprivation of sleep; lack of privacy and time for reflection; cutting ties with the recruits’ past life; reduction of outside stimulation and influences; skillful use of ritual to heighten mystical experience; and invention of a new vocabulary which narrows the range of experience and constructs a new reality for cult members.

Margaret Singer, a former professor of psychology at UC Berkeley, describes psychological problems that have been attributed to cultic experiences, ranging from the despair that comes from having suddenly abandoned ones previous values, norms and ideals to types of “induced psychopathy.” Other psychologists and lay observers list similar mental and emotional problems linked to the indoctrination and rituals of cults.

Sociologist Dick Anthony, author of the book “Spiritual Choices,” and former director of the UC Berkeley-affiliated Center for the Study of New Religions, argues the exact opposite position.

“There’s a large research literature published in mainstream journals on the mental health effects of new religions,” he said. “For the most part the effects seem to be positive in any way that’s measurable.”

He and other defenders of new religions discount so-called mind control techniques, or believe the term has been misappropriated by anti-cult activists.

“Coercive Persuasion is a bombastic redescription of familiar forms of influence which occur everyday and everywhere,” said Streiker. “Someone being converted to a demanding religious movement is no more or less brainwashed than children being exposed to commercials during kiddy programs which encourage them to eat empty calories or buy expensive toys.”

“An attempt to persuade someone of something is a process protected by our country’s First Amendment right of free speech and communication,” said attorney Jeremiah Gutman head of the New York City branch of the American Civil Liberties Union and an outspoken critic of the anti-cult groups. “What one person believes to be an irrefutable and obvious truth is someone else’s errant nonsense.”

‘Fraud and Manipulation’

But anti-cult spokespeople say they have no interest in a group’s beliefs. Their concern is when destructive cults use “fraud and manipulation,” to get people to arrive at those beliefs, whatever they may be. Because people are unaware of the issues, though, cults have insinuated themselves into areas of American life where they are influencing people who may not even know where the influence is coming from, they contend.

The political arena is the obvious example, anti-cult activists say.

Followers of the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh had a major impact on the small town government of Antelope, Ore., and Jim Jones had managed to thrust himself and his church into the most respectable Democratic party circles in San Francisco before the exodus to Guyana, for instance.

But recently the process has expanded, with the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church the leading example of a cult that is quietly gaining political clout, they say.

“What Jim Jones did to Democrats in San Francisco, Sun Myung Moon is doing to Republicans all across country now,” Kisser said.

Moon’s most obvious stab at mainstream legitimacy, critics say, was his purchase in 1982 of the Washington Times, a D.C. daily newspaper, and his financial nurturing of the paper’s magazine Insight--both of which have an official policy of complete editorial independence from the church.

In September, 1987, the conservative American Spectator magazine published an article titled “Can Buy Me Love: The Mooning of Conservative America,” in which managing editor Andrew Ferguson questioned the way the political right is lapping up Moon money, citing, among many examples, the $500,000 or more the late Terry Dolan’s National Conservative Alliance accepted in 1984. When the church got wind of the article, the Spectator received a call from the executive director of the Unification Church’s World Media Assn. warning that if it ran, the Times “would strike back and strike back severely,” Ferguson wrote in an addendum to the piece.

‘Everyone Speaks Korean’

Therapist Steven Hassan, a former “Moonie” and the author of the just-released book “Combatting Cult Mind Control,” estimates that the church now sponsors 200 businesses and “front organizations.”

Moon “has said he wants an automatic theocracy to rule the world,” explained Hassan, who, on Moon’s orders, engaged in a public fast for Nixon during Watergate and another fast at the U.N. to protest the withdrawal of troops from Korea. “He visualizes a world where everyone speaks Korean only, where all religion but his is abolished, where his organization chooses who will mate, and he and family and descendants rule in a heroic monarchy.”

Moon “is very much in support of the democratic system,” counters John Biermans , director of public affairs for the church. “His desire is for people to become God-centered people. Then democracy can fulfill its potential”

Besides, he said, “this is a pluralistic society, people of all faiths inject their beliefs into the system on every level . . . Using terms like ‘front groups’ and ‘insinuating,’ is just a way to attack something. It’s not even honest.”

Some observers dismiss concern about alleged Unificationist infiltration as self-serving hysteria whipped up by the anti-cultists.

“How much actual influence (the Unification Church) has seems questionable,” said David Bromley, a professor of sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, and the author of the 1981 book “Strange Gods, the Great American Cult Scare.”

Bromley estimates, for instance, that the church brings $200 million a year into the U.S. from abroad. But he sees no evidence that the money, much of it spent on all-expense-paid fact-finding tours and conferences for journalists, politicians and clergypeople, is money well-invested as far as political impact goes.

The church, he estimates, is losing about $50 million a year on its Washington Times newspaper and the ranks of Unificationists, and most other new religions, in America are thinning as well.

Veterans of the anti-cult front, however, say that the appearance that cults are fading is an illusion. “Like viruses, many of them mutate into new forms,” when under attack, West of UCLA said. And new types of cults are arising to fill the void, they say.

Cult critics point, for instance, to the rise of such groups as the est offshoot called Forum, and to Lifespring and Insight--all of which CAN characterizes as “human potential cults” and all of which are utilized in mainstream American business to promote productivity and motivation.

Observers such as Gordon Melton of the Institute for the Study of Religious Institutions in Santa Barbara explain that many of these New Age-type trainings have their roots in the old fashioned motivational pep talks and sales technique seminars that have been the staples of American business for decades.

But critics see the so-called “psychotechnologies” utilized by some of these groups as insidious. For one thing, they say, the meditation, confessional sharing, and guided imagery methods some of them use are more likely to make employees muzzy-headed than competitive.

Other critics say the trainings violate employee’s rights. Richard Watring, a personnel director for Budget Rent-a-Car, who has been charting the incorporation of “New Age” philosophies into business trainings, is concerned that employees are often compelled to take the courses and then required to adapt a new belief system which may be incompatible with their own religious convictions. As a Christian he finds such mental meddling inappropriate for corporations.

He and other cult critics are heartened by recent cases, still pending, in which employees, or former employees, have sued their employer for compelling them to take trainings they felt conflicted with their own religious beliefs.

Most observers scoring the action on the broader legal battlefield, however, call it a toss-up, and perceived victories for either side have often proved Pyrrhic.

Threats of Litigation

Richard Ofshe, a sociologist at UC Berkeley, fought three separate legal battles with the drug and alcohol rehabilitation organization Synanon over research he published on the group. Although he ultimately won the suits, he said the battle wound up costing the university $600,000. And evidence obtained in other lawsuits showed that Synanon had skillfully wielded threats of litigation to keep several other critical stories from being published or broadcast, he said.

Similarly, a recently released book “Cults and Consequences,” went unpublished for several years because insurers were wary of the litigious nature of some of the groups mentioned, said Rachel Andres, director of the Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles’ Commission on Cults and Missionaries and the book’s co-editor.

But the most interesting litigation of late involves either a former member who is suing the organization to which he or she belonged, or a current member of a new religious group who is suing a deprogrammer who attempted unsuccessfully to persuade the person to leave the group.

The most significant case, everyone agrees, is last month’s Molko decision by the California Supreme Court, which anti-cult groups have cheered as a major victory.

In that reversal of lower court decisions, the justices agreed that David Molko and another former member of the Unification Church could bring before a jury the claim that they were defrauded by recruiters who denied they had a church affiliation and then subjected the two to church mind control techniques, eventually converting them.

Mainstream religious organizations including the National Council on Churches, the American Baptist Churches in the USA and the California Ecumenical Council had filed briefs in support of the Unification Church, claiming that allowing lawsuits over proselytizing techniques could paralyze all religions.

“What they’re attacking is prayer, fasting and lectures,” said Biermans of the Unification Church. “The whole idea of brainwashing is unbelievably absurd. . . . If someone had really figured out a method of brainwashing, they could control the world.” The church plans to appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary. Paul Morantz, the attorney who was struck by the rattlesnake placed in his mailbox by the “Imperial Marines” of Synanon, gave pro-bono assistance to the plaintiffs in the Molko case.

“For me, it was a great decision for freedom of religion and to protect against the . . . use of coercive persuasion,” he said.

Morantz currently is defending Bent Corydon, author of the book “L. Ron Hubbard, Madman or Messiah” against a lawsuit by the Church of Scientology. He said he’s confident of how that case will turn out.

But he shares the belief of others on several sides of the multifaceted cult battle, in concluding that education rather than litigation should be the first defense of religious and intellectual liberty.

He’s not, however, optimistic.

“If anyone thinks they’re ever going to win this war, they’re wrong,” he said. “As long as we have human behavior, there will be sociopaths who will stand up and say ‘follow me.’ And there will always be searchers who will follow.”

Source: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-11-17-vw-257-story.html

[dahliaduvide]

Contemporary media coverage in the Washington Post.

"Rachel David, sole survivor from her family's suicide plunge from a downtown Salt Lake hotel balcony in 1978, says she still believes her father is God...she has continued to try to follow the suicide order..."

[feroluce]

I love the fact that the Silvermane Guards are essentially just a very devoted "We Love Gepard Landau" fanclub, and I desperately need for all of them to get into ship wars about it behind their Captain's back. The soldiers are all split into several factions:

Some of them ship him with Sampo 🛡💣 (enemies to lovers/hateship enjoyers; this does not necessarily mean they like Sampo- in fact it's more like most of them want to sic their Captain on him skzjsmdm)

Some of them ship him with Bronya 👑🛡 (knight and princess trope enjoyers and also a sorta-kinda "that is our mom and dad" type of deal; this faction gets riled up and ridiculously hypes Gepard up to Bronya every time she comes down to the frontlines mskdkxmd)

Some of them ship him with the trailblazer 🛡💫 (the smallest and newest faction, but steadily gaining!)

Some of them ship him with Pela ❄🛡 (workplace romance enjoyers; Gepard once charged out into the Fragmentum alone to save Pela from an expedition gone horribly wrong, and when this faction saw Gepard carrying Pela back princess style they threw a whole party)

Some of them ship him with Dunn 🛡🗡 (also workplace romance; Dunn is very flattered by this because yeah wrong Landau, but wow, the troops really think he's good enough to woo the Captain, what an honor)

And some of them ship themselves with the Captain 🛡❤ (yumejoshi enjoyers; this faction throws a massive group effort every Valentine's Day and are also all very supportive of each other)

The final faction is an odd one, because they're defined not by who they ship their beloved Captain Gepard with, but rather by who they don't ship him with. Their name is generally shortened to the A.B.S. Group- Anybody BUT Sampo 🚫💣 DKSZJJSMSOZ

[spicyliumang]

The second batch of Don Quixote cards came in the other day!!😭🩵🩵

[thateclecticbitch]

okay but for real shoutout to Jonny Sims for writing portrayals of cults and cult members and former cult members with such skillful and sympathetic tact and sensitivity, as a former cult member I genuinely appreciate it.

[stackslip]

tbh a lot of these old style cult experts are useless at best and flat out dangerous at worse, especially those active since the 80s and 90s. huge chance that they participated in at least one "deprogramming" aka kidnapping someone and holding them against their will and abusing them until they "went back to their families". considering how many cult victims in the 80s had embraced cults specifically due to issues with their parents + their family disregarding their autonomy as a rule you can imagine how that went. and of course some of them participated in conversion therapy, deeming the Gay Lifestyle to be a cult. of course they made money off that + appearing on tv too. there are some people who've done better work recently in trying to understand cults (especially those who see cults as a form of communal abuse and understand that a single charismatic leader is not necessary for a cult or high demand group to exist) without advocating for or participating in abuse of people they deem to be in cults!

[spiderfreedom]

I was reading this post about baeddel history a while back. baeddelism, if you're not aware, is a fringe tumblr ideology that asserts that the fear of feminine males is the root of all social injustice. i must emphasize that it is fringe because it is basically unknown outside of tumblr and is currently dead. (there are people who independently reinvent baeddel concepts, but that's not the same as being a baeddel in the baeddel community.)

there's a collage of attacks against trans men. some of it is based on taking the idea that trans men have "male privilege" extremely literally ("trans men are male socialized" - a fascinating statement requiring further study to, uh, substantiate). some of it is blatantly false ("trans men have no oppression"). but this one segment here, I think gets to an interesting idea:

i've written in a previous post about the myth that trans women are 'perfect sex objects', which is repeated by men who enjoy visiting transfem prostitutes and watching transfem porn, and by some radfems, who assert that trans women "enjoy" being in the sex industry on account of being hypersexual. I challenged this myth there, because it takes people's reasons for being in the sex industry at face value without considering that trauma can lead to hypersexuality as a coping mechanism. it also objectifies trans women as being hypersexual and 'naturally suited' to the sex industry.

this screenshot from the collage linked above shows support for my position - many (most?) trans women are not in fact loving having to go into the sex industry to make ends meet. the reasons here aren't even related to transition like getting surgery; the trans woman in question is facing homelessness and food insecurity.

now, this screenshot also shows an aspect of baeddel philosophy - the idea that trans women are suffering, and trans men are not, and trans men are taking advantage of a movement that trans women built, and using it for their own gains. in other words, a fear of being de-centered in a movement that was supposed to help them.

i don't believe that trans men are not suffering and i don't believe that trans men were uninvolved in the trans rights movement. i don't believe trans men are en masse doing porn because "it's hot"; like i think that's a non-existent strawman made up by the poster. i think there is some resentment towards trans men here that goes beyond "trans men are literally undistinguishable from cis men." part of it relates to another common attitude in the trans community, the idea that there is such a thing as "AFAB privilege."

but let's be charitable because i think there is something deeper here. baeddelism tapped into a fear many trans women had of being shut out of a movement that was supposed to center them.

i think there is actually some truth to the idea that the mainstream trans narrative is harming trans women in certain ways.

for example, I recently posted about how "he/him non-binary AMAB people" were registering for the grace hopper conference. the grace hopper conference was originally only for women, but recently expanded to "women and non-binary people." the intention appeared to be to exclude cis men (and trans men? unclear). however, a group of apparently malicious male actors took advantage of the fact there is no way to verify who is 'really' a "he/him non-binary AMAB" person and who's a cis man to register, taking up limited spots at the conference.

of course cis women were upset, and the post went around radblr with that focus, and I was also upset at that. but I think that trans women would naturally also be upset at this development. it is agreed upon by radfems and trans women that trans women experience most of the heinous violence they go through at the hands of men. it is understandable that trans women would want to go to a place that is safe from cis men, because that is the primary group of people that attacks them. but if there is no way to prevent malicious cis men from joining? then there is no way to provide this protection to trans women.

this is something I've also thought about in regards to things like trans women in prison. having someone who identified as male most of their life and committed a violent crime suddenly change their identification to "woman", be housed in a female prison, obviously poses severe risks to female people. but it poses risks to trans women as well. trans women on HRT experience a loss in strength - strengthwise, they are between cis men and cis men. a trans woman who takes HRT is therefore also at risk of physical violence from people like this.

many radfem's instinct is going to be something along the lines of "boohoo, you got what you wanted. you have been trying to prevent females from having our own spaces for over a decade. why should we care about you experiencing the same thing we have experienced?" this is understandable but misguided from a political perspective - because venting/catharsis is not politics. i think this is an opportunity to find common ground.

(also, my politic may be centered on female people, but i do believe that social justice for all groups is important and necessary. despite serious disagreements in the past, i have tremendous compassion for trans women as people who are gender non conforming, often suffer from severe dysphoria, experience misogyny if they pass, and experience homelessness at highly elevated rates. i don't want to throw them to the wolves, no matter how much I disagree with the mainstream NGO narrative.)

overly permissive self-identification also puts trans women at risk, both from malicious cis men, and from trans women who may have transitioned very late and seem to find no common ground with the community. an inability to police spaces means that transfems will have no way to protect their own from malicious posers or people who are technically transgender but have no true alliance to the community.

the solution, in some sense, requires some amount of policing. you cannot promise a man-free space to cis women or trans women or female/AFAB people or anyone without some way to say "hey, I don't think you belong here." we need to work towards what that level of boundary policing is. some prisons, for example, have case-by-case decisions of who is allowed to be transferred to women's prisons on the basis of the danger they pose to inmates. i don't know if that's the best idea, but it's a start. i think it's clear at this point that having no way to prevent men from joining men-free spaces does a disservice to cis women and trans women.

[exmojoe]

I hate living in a mormon dense area so much! Why can’t I live somewhere where no one knows what a mormon is??? People are talking about BYU and the honor code on a discussion board! Like bea I know we’re in a race and sexuality class, and I know the church is oppressive a hell but school is ~secular~ which means I did not come here to get into the rabbit hole of mormonism. I could ignore it…. I could…. But at the end of the day I can’t. I have to…..

[ghost-proofbaby]

I knew they'd sell out instantly so I'd never get them anyway, but seeing Ticketmaster charging like $400 for Sleep Token tickets still took a part of my soul 😭😞😭

oh i am begging all of you to NOT buy any resales for over $100. the closer it gets to your date, the lower the prices will go when resellers get desperate. ALSO the band has partaken in an option through the official sites they were selling tickets on (for me it was livenation! i'm not sure about other dates) where people cannot resale for more than what they paid. cheaper tickets are gonna pop up for sure, scalpers just know there's a hype around the band and are taking advantage.

$400+ for tickets that were $75 should be a fucking crime and i hope ticket scalpers burn in hell for that one 😭😭😭

[whatisonthemoon]

The Tragic History of Cults

▲ Pictured: Ricky Rodriguez, victim of sexual abuse and adopted son of David Berg, founder of the Children of God or the Family International (not to be confused with the DC-based The Fellowship or The Family)

Originally submitted to WIOTM on January 6, 2017 by “Frank Frivilous”

Watching the Children of God video last night I realized that the young boy whom the Messiah figure, David Berg selected to be his successor was obviously suffering from trauma. Judging from the other accounts, it may be safe to suggest that it included sexual abuse. The young man was extremely resentful and violent and eventually murdered his nanny and took his own life. The behavior he exhibited on the video was hauntingly familiar and could be attributed to a number of other apocalyptic cults. None of them seemed to have ended well. The Waco, Texas incident with the Branch Davidians comes to mind. Similar themes there including the wholesale loss of innocent lives. It’s interesting to note that the popular media is loath to remind the public about these events and in fact, misrepresented themselves when they reported the worst massacre in American history happened at a gay club in Orlando Florida. That dubious distinction actually belongs to the congregation of Jim Jones in Guyana. Whether you believe it was a mass suicide or not doesn’t alter the outcome. The leader compelled his followers to give up their lives for him. Not surprising when you delve into the essential teaching of these people. Obedience. Self sacrifice for the leader. Glorification of the leader. Never, ever, ever question the authority of the leader. Calculated veiled threats of violence toward anyone who questions the leaders authority. Have we seen this behavior exhibited by Hyung Jin Moon lately? He is claiming an inheritance from his father that may not even be represented in his fathers own teachings. Now he is even promoting his own son as a likely successor to his own outrageous claims. Where does it end? Is he also exhorting his followers to stock pile weapons? Is it a good idea to encourage him in these endeavors? I can’t help feeling that the followers have a moral responsibility to reject this nonsense before it goes too far. I think it’s time to sound the alarm and shine a spot light into the dark recesses of ALL the Moon family cults.

Frank F

Related links and notes 

We should have seen Tetsuya’s violent act coming

Note from this old WIOTM post: “David Berg, founder of the incestuous hippie Christian cult, a self-proclaimed prophet, regretted not having sex with own mother.”

From X-Family.org: 

At least seven women, including both his daughters, his daughter-in-law and two of his granddaughters, have publicly alleged that Berg sexually abused them when they were children.

In 1974, Berg's daughter-in-law Sarah Berg (who married Berg's son Paul when she was 15) alleged, in testimony to the New York Attorney General's Charity Frauds Bureau, statements on national television and in a deposition taken by New York attorney Aaron F. Klein, that Berg made sexual advances towards her, exposed himself to her and attempted to have intercourse with her "three or four years before my teens."

Berg's eldest daughter Deborah Davis has written a book in which she accuses her father of sexually molesting both her and her sister when they were children, and attempting to have sex with her as an adult.

Her sister Faith Berg corroborated these claims, but described them in a positive way. Sarah Berg also partially corroborated these claims, noting that: "David, at times, would try to get away with things with his own daughters and he tried it with me when I was a little girl, but I was too young to really know what was going on."

In a child-custody case in the United Kingdom, Berg's granddaughter Merry Berg testified that Berg sexually molested her when she was a young teenager.

Another of Berg's granddaughters, Joyanne Treadwell Berg, spoke on American television about being sexually abused by her grandfather.

Davida Kelley, the daughter of Sara Kelley (nanny for Berg's informally adopted son Ricky Rodriguez), accused Berg of molesting her in a June 2005 Rolling Stone article.

In the same article, a woman identified as Armendria alleged that Berg sexually abused her when she was 13 years old.

Ricky Rodriguez wrote an article on the website MovingOn.org in which he describes Berg's deviant sexual activity involving a number of women and children.

Ricky Rodriguez page on X-Family.org

[zealousfurykryptonite]

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[xiexiecaptain]

Been listening to a lot of Dr. Steven Hassan (expert on cults/authoritarian control tactics and licensed mental health practitioner) talk about coercive influence lately.

And a huge thing is sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation is a key factor in influencing peoples minds because when you are sleep deprived, your prefrontal cortex is highly impaired. This is important because this part of your brain is responsible for functions related to critical thinking, logical reasoning & reality testing, decision making, and emotional & behavioral regulation, among other things. This makes you much more suggestable to others' whole-cloth agendas and potentially coercive ideas.

According to the CDC, nearly 1/3 of American adults are chronically sleep deprived and the NIH reports nearly 40% of American adults have reported falling asleep during the day without meaning to. Roughly the same amounts (1 out of 3 and 1 out of 4 depending on the age group) of Canadian adults are chronically sleep deprived.

Getting enough sleep FOR YOU is a HUGE protective factor against people and groups influencing your thought patterns. (Sleep needs DO vary among individuals due to a number of factors but the average adult needs between 7-9 hours while teenagers ages 13-18 need 8-10 hours, again according to the CDC.) This "influence" could be something as intense and insidious as cult recruiters, but also something as "minor" as non-straightforward advertising, reactionary politics, or black-and-white thinking.

Getting enough sleep (as well as enough food and non-sleep rest) helps you think for yourself and practice critical thinking to your full potential! This protective factor cannot be understated. If a group/religious organization/company/etc you are in is consistently pushing to deny you adequate sleep, that is a RED FLAG.

For people interested in learning more I highly recommend Dr. Hassan's books including and his landmark Combatting Cult Mind Control: Guide to Protection, Rescue, and Recovery from Destructive Cults.

For people more multimedia-oriented, he has many many wonderful interviews he's done (found easily by searching his name on Youtube) about his personal experience being coerced into and rescued from a cult in his early 20s, and the analytical tool he developed called the BITE Model to help assess any kind of group or movement for various types of unethical/coercive influence factors! He also has a wonderful podcast that interviews people who have left cults/high control groups called "The Influence Continuum" that you can find pretty much anywhere you get your podcasts!

There's tons of free resources including his BITE Model and his Influence Continuum Model (which helps people place influencing factors on a scale from ethical to unethical) which can be found on his website freedomofmind.com)

[meaningtotellyou]

idk im just really super upset

[lnkedmyheart]

Not mmm and wendy stans going at it on twt and trying to drag other groups and singnie into the fight. Like...that vocal ranking thread is horseshit cause it literally called half of mmm average and put decent vocalists in weak. Like no offense I dont think wendy being considered competent is exactly a fucking compliment because a bunch of self absorbed fuckasses who couldnt hold a note to save their life act like they know anything about vocals and performance.

Like have you heard Wendy and mmm? You wanna tell me Wendy, Wheein, Solar and Hwasa aren't GOOD?

[oneknightlight]

People who started cosplaying during the thick of the pandemic, and people who got into fandom during the pandemic, and have never been to conventions really need a serious talk on convention etiquette. And I might be the guy who makes a post on it.