Do You Feel Your Political Opponents Are Members Of A Cult?
Let’s see. First …
It is easy to identify a CULT; look for the following:
A group engaged in NON-THINK.
Specifically, this is a group comprised of “individuals” possessing no independent or questioning thoughts. The group’s expressed thinking is instead exclusively produced by the “cult leader.” The NON-THINKing group is usually motivated to NON-THINK by a cult leader with the following …
- A utopian goal, or …
- An ideology;
- To save the world, oppressed or …
- To act as a member of the chosen/special few.
The goal is to get everyone to think the same things and for the cult leader to control it.
Here’s how you create one:
(1) Define all thinking for the cult. (2) Seek out individuals that do not yet think for themselves. (3) Slavishly reward the cult members in RIGHT-THINK with …
- Praise, promotion, idolization, championing, financial rewards, professional rewards, social support, assignment of unique/special privileges;
(4) Correspondingly and mercilessly punish the WRONG-THINK of cult enemies with …
- Personal attacks, attacks on friends and family, shame, condemnation, censorship, canceling, de-platforming, denial or deprivation of privileges, deprivation of employment, social isolation, reprogramming, harm, and the threat of harm.
Notably, if the cult has to punish the WRONG-THINK of existing cult members, the cult has already lost them. For cults, extreme punishment is for enemies so that cult members do not even explore WRONG-THINK.
A cult requires that the independent thinking of cult members be proactively denied. In this way, members are made to be dysrational (unable to or intentionally rejecting reason) and thus subject to the cult leader’s total control.
Individual Isolation Further Enables Cults
The above steps are taken to create cults in public/group environments. In private or small-scale settings, the cult leader has yet another, more psychically destructive, tool. They may isolate the individual and engage in a total wave of psychological manipulation. Expect the cult leader to gaslight and otherwise emotionally harass the individual until the emerging cult follower has their SELF, that is, what they know or think they know, utterly undone. Yet, if the individual has reason, they possess a meaningful defense.
Authoritarianism is a poor man’s Cult
An authoritarian state is not a cult. Its members are not necessarily NON-THINKing. The authoritarian has control of the people because he controls the state with it’s police (i.e., enforcement) power. The authoritarian cannot hope to have a population that is wholly susceptible to NON-THINK. Whereas the cult can. The authoritarian must therefore use its police power to enforce RIGHT-THINK. However, the authoritarian system is sometimes led or started by a cult.
For example, the Nazis appeared to be a cult. However, Germany, more broadly, was an authoritarian state. Hitler plainly rejected rationality, thereby producing dysrationality in his adherents:
What should men appeal to for guidance once the intellect has been rejected? “We must distrust the intelligence and the conscience,” states Hitler, “and must place our trust in our instincts.” “Trust your instincts, your feelings, or whatever you like to call them,” says Hitler.
Peikoff, Leonard. The Cause of Hitler’s Germany (p. 49). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition
Thought experiments
Are families cults?
A cult? Probably not. Authoritarian or hostage takers/abusers? Too often.
Families are of limited group size, and they critically communicate family values to the child during childhood when the child is intellectually immature and needs some direction. This often takes the form of authoritarianism. However, parents eventually mature to learn not to do this, or the children leave with hostility.
Moreover, cultism is specifically about producing NON-THINKing behavior in cult members. This is antithetical to the natural role of a parent. Additionally, parents have a more enduring and rewarding role over their offspring than NON-THINKism–parenthood.
The Turpin Family — not a cult
“Multiple children were discovered bound, shackled and malnourished inside a California home after a teenage girl managed to escape the home and tell police that her 12 brothers and sisters were being held by her parents, authorities said Monday.” (NBC News – 1/5/2018)
What about governments?
A government is MOST UNLIKE A CULT when it is “a government of the people, by the people, for the people” — Lincoln Gettysburg Address. This is the American Constitutional system. Here the individual is supreme. The individual is also a problem-solver. Ideally, then, everyone thinks.
The CCP (Chinese Communist Party), by contrast, IS A CULT under Xi Jinping. China, broadly, is not. However, here the state is supreme, led by the cultish CCP, which thinks mostly for the people.
What about capitalism?
Free-market capitalism based upon customer value creation or merit IS PLAINLY NOT A CULT. Value creation is produced through problem-solving. Problem-solving requires free thinking.
Globalism and globalist capitalist variations?
Capitalism based upon metrics set by third parties, i.e., not the customer, IS CULTish. These groups seek to control the thinking of businesses.
and …
Surely religions are cults?
NO. Across the ages, religions have endeavored to control the thinking of their parishioners. The goal is always RIGHT-THINK, not NO-THINK, however. So, mainstream churches are (generally) not cults.
Religions have lost adherents. Why?
Other agendas to think about –
Radical environmentalism, social “justice,” diversity employment movement, the transgenderism movement, systemic white racism, and white supremacy?
