Cults
No one in the history of the world has ever joined a cult. People join groups and organisations they think will help them, their friends and family, or the world.
Michael Shermer
When we think of brainwashing, menticide, and manipulating groups of people we tend to land on the phenomenon of cults. The term itself is somewhat of a psyop used to discredit a new religious movement so that it is not tolerated by society. Michael Shermer, founding publisher of Skeptic magazine, quips that the main difference between a religion and a cult is about a hundred years. Shermer’s colleague Pat Linse takes it even further that cults are groups that enable old men to have sex with young women that they would otherwise not have access to.
Robert Greene provided a list of rules for creating a cult in his controversial book “48 Laws of Power”. He says you should keep the messaging vague and simple. Visuals and sensational experiences should be emphasized instead of intellectualizing. You should use the structure of religion to organize the group and make sure no one else knows how you make your money (especially if it’s off their labour or resources). Finally, and perhaps most importantly, you need to develop a strong sense of us vs. them.
Shermer also compiled a list of diagnostic criteria for the classification of cults. Each item does not immediately denote that a given group is a cult but the present of multiple indicators makes a stronger argument. One cluster of indicators involves how the group sees their leader. Is the leader excessively venerated or worshipped? Are they seen as infallible? Are the leader’s opinions and pronouncements automatically correct?
Cults discourage dissent through punishment, usually social but sometimes physical as well. Questioning and doubting is too much of a threat to the organization so they are seen as problems that need to be squashed. Cults believe they have access to ultimate truth so skeptics are met with suspicion. This includes the truth about morality. The group believes they have the morality market cornered; that they know the way and they are therefore more virtuous than outsiders. This creates an “us vs. them” mentality that keeps members fairly isolated and segregated from outside groups.
He continues that in cults the ends justify the means. The purposes of the group are so important that adherents are able and willing to behave in ways outside of their normal moral parameters. Unethical behaviour in service of the group begins to feel ethical to the member.
Cults often have hidden agendas of which recruits are not made aware at the time of joining. I have known people who believed they were going to a political protest, and that was largely what it was, but later found out that some of the other attendants had brought weapons “in case things escalated”. If they were told that their fellow protesters were stocking up with guns they would not have attended in the first place.
There’s usually an inner circle that acts in ways that are kept from regular members. Usually there is some kind of financial or sexual impropriety in which only the leaders get to engage. The leadership deceives its membership in order to keep all embarrassing or disparaging information from spreading. This leads to many members getting exploited in some way. This also leads to a lack of accountability to other authority figures.
A key indicator of a cult is the intentional isolation of its members from their families and friends. The people who know you best are the most likely to shake you loose of any hypnotic spells you might be under, so cults want to keep them away from you. Cults would have you believe that your family doesn’t understand you like ‘we do’ and that they are holding you back from your true potential. So keep that in mind anytime a group tells you to shun your loved ones or that it is “dismantling the nuclear family”.
Ultimately what distinguishes a cult from a religion is whether it is fringe or mainstream and so much of our discussion on psyops involves this very distinction. Thomas Wolfe defines cults as “religions without political power.” A king to you might be a tyrant to me. Whether something is news or misinformation, science or pseudoscience, religion or cult depends on its level of mass acceptance and the cultural power of the one who is making the distinction. So to destroy an ascending idea you could underscore its weirdness or fringeness to discredit it. Of course whether or not an idea is globally accepted does not correlate with its validity or worth. This creates somewhat of a paradox as the people who conform with the dominant narrative are seen as independent free thinkers but if you align yourself with a fringe group you are in a cult.
So while cults are notorious for inflicting mind control on masses of people, it’s not always easy to differentiate what a cult is in relation to any group of people with a shared purpose or morality. Political parties are certainly guilty of creating an us vs. them mentality among their adherents. They often venerate leaders in uncomfortable ways (look no further than MAGA Republicans and how they deify President Trump or how democrats in New York exalted then Governor Andrew Cuomo by calling themselves “cuomosexuals”.) Political parties are increasingly encouraging their followers to reject friends and family who are on the other side. Dissent among political ranks is often discouraged. One could certainly make the argument that certain wings of the main political parties are cult-like.
Sports teams and their fanatics also function in ways similar to a cult. As are fans of musicians and movie stars. So really who is to say what is and isn’t a cult? Perhaps it’s more important to recognize the need we have for connection and community but that many of us find unique ways and diverse groups with which we strive to fit in. The word ‘cult’ serves as a pejorative towards any group that is not accepted by the majority or mainstream.
These distinctions matter. Whitehouse press secretary Karina Jean-Pierre recently proclaimed that anyone who did not agree with the majority, by definition, was ‘extreme’. Of course her job is to wordsmith every scenario in the Whitehouse’s favour but this view that minority opinions that the current regime doesn’t like are extreme is becoming more and more accepted, especially in an era in which a continual state of crisis is allowing powerful people to “inexorably restrict the range of permitted views, and expand pretexts for online silencing and deplatforming,” as pointed out by Glenn Greenwald.
That being said, I draw the line at sexual and financial exploitation as well as the targeted isolation from family and friends by an organization or movement. If your business opportunity requires me to refinance my house and get everyone of my friends to do the same so you can go to Saint-Tropez, I’m ok with calling it a cult. If your political movement wants me to denounce my family because they don’t have a righteous enough opinion on a given social issue, then you’re the one in a cult and I won’t have anything to do with it. A helpful heuristic is to ask, “can I criticize it?” and “can I leave?”. If the answer is no to either of these questions. Let’s go ahead and call that a cult.
False flags/Agent Provocateur
“The hard part of intellectual life is separating what’s true from what will get you liked.”
David Brooks
War is tricky. Even when you have the might you may not have the right to attack your enemy. If a country does not have the moral support of the global community it may not be worth their efforts even if objectively they are guaranteed a military victory. Look no further than today’s Russia for an example. Putin’s Russia has paid a steep price for its Ukrainian invasion whereas the United States invaded Iraq and Afghanistan in a not so dissimilar fashion with the blessing of most global elites. There are strategies that can be employed to build a narrative to gain international favour and sympathy, one of which is called the false flag operation.
In November of 1939 Russia found itself in tense relations with a bordering country, not unlike the current situation with Ukraine, however then it was with Finland. Russia and Finland had a non-aggression pact that was broken when the Russian border village of Mainila was shelled unexpectedly by an unknown force. The Russian government now had the rage of its people to justify launching a counterattack on Finland, starting what would be called “the Winter War”. It is now generally accepted, even by Russian historians, that it was actually Russia herself who had shelled Mainila, giving her a reason to break the non-aggression pact. Sound familiar?
The term false-flag originated in 16th century piracy. At times a ship with nefarious intentions would wave a flag of a friendly nation until it could get close enough to attack. Now the term is used for any covert operation that tries to shift blame to another actor, not the one who is actually responsible, usually to justify their own aggression that they had been scheming all along.
It’s hard to grasp military strategy as it involves so many people and moving parts but it becomes easier to imagine when we reduce it to individual behaviour. Many of us were taught not to start fights but to stick up for ourselves if someone else instigated. When kids are caught fighting by their parents or teachers their first claim is that someone else started it. If Johnny started it then I get to finish it while still claiming the moral high ground. In a psychological attack you try to attract sympathy towards yourself and put the responsibility for starting it on someone else. Then I can still pound someone’s face in AND claim self-defence.
False flags can help an individual or group orchestrate their political ends. When Charles Manson and his “family” committed their mass murders in California they wrote on the walls with blood the words “political piggie” and a Black power symbol trying to make it appear that the Black Panthers had started murdering rich, prominent white people, with hopes that it would start a race war. Helter Skelter.
There is another version of this strategy often involving what is called “an agent provocateur” who tries to get someone else to commit an illegal or immoral act in order to ruin their reputation. Law enforcement has been known to use this tactic. After 9/11 many young Arab and Muslim men who were deemed vulnerable to radicalization were targeted by FBI sting operations. Like Sami Osmakac who was mentally ill and struggling financially when undercover FBI agents approached him and encouraged him to make a bomb vest to attack a bar in Florida. It was the FBI who convinced him to do it, funded him, and provided him with what he thought was a suicide vest, only to then arrest him. In a more recent case, the plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer seemed to have involved more FBI agents than actual “bad guys.”
Agent provocateurs can be used in large gatherings as well. Some Black Lives Matters protesters have reported that all of a sudden a stack of bricks would just appear at one of their protests, suggesting that a provocateur was trying to turn a peaceful protest into a riot. Some believe that there were multiple FBI agents undercover, inciting violence in the January 6th debacle at the Capital. Sometimes it just takes one person to get the aggression started and the rest of the crowd just sort of catches the wave.
In politics it happens as well. Preparing for the 2022 mid-term elections which many are predicting will go poorly for the Democrats, there is evidence that the Democratic Party has been donating funds to far-right Republican candidates in a way to demonstrate how extreme the GOP has become. In a polarized world where each side is trying to show how extreme the other is becoming it makes sense to highlight the lunacy of your opponent. Though I wonder how the casual democratic donor feels about their donations directly supporting MAGA candidates. And even though Donald Trump was every left-wing pundit’s nightmare on paper I think the CNNs and MSNBCs of the world are salivating at the chance that Trump might take the oval office again. It’s great for their ratings at least.
There’s a history of promoting one’s adversary for the greater purpose of maintaining the very conflict that provides you with power but like many things, fiction teaches us this lesson more poignantly. In Orwell’s “1984” the three remaining powers keep themselves in perpetual conflict, occasionally changing allies with enemies almost randomly. The nationalism and fear that accompany the war keep the proles from ever realizing who is actually oppressing them. It’s like in pro-wrestling when two opponents foment so much “heat” and tension between them but in actuality this is all to increase PPV buys and ticket sales. When the true power owns both sides they can afford to promote the adversary in order to create and maintain tension and strife, as long as it’s diverted away from themselves.
In Italy during the Years of Lead in the late 1960s, there was a troubling increase in political terrorism coming from both left-wing, marxist radicals like the “Brigate Rossi” (Red Brigade) and right-wing neo-fascists groups like the Nuclei Armati Revoluzionari (NAR). Domestic terrorist attacks began to feel expected. In ‘78 a former prime minister was kidnapped and assassinated by the Red Brigade, two years later the NAR bombed a railway station in Bologna killing 85 people. Some historians argue that the Italian government at the time, with the support of NATO operations, was intentionally allowing or even encouraging the chaos in order to create a deep sense of insecurity, allowing for the government to assume a more authoritarian mandate. This was a deliberate psyop tactic, a “strategia della tensione” that makes the populus voluntarily give up rights and power to the established authority with the hopes of restoring order and security. I used to sell home security systems door to door and we would always remind our marks that most people don’t buy a security system until after they are broken into. The “stategy of tension” would be to encourage home burglars to target a neighbourhood right before you arrived with your conveniently placed solution.
As Rahm Emmanual infamously proclaimed, “never let a good crisis go to waste”, an authority can allow or even secretly cause chaos to ensue, leading people to believe they need less personal rights and freedoms, and more protection. Normal people wouldn’t forfeit their rights so easily if it weren’t for the sense of vulnerability and terror that they feel. Just look at the economic, political, and health crises that have happened in the world recently and ask yourself if we gained rights and freedoms or forfeited them?
Naomi Klein made a big splash a decade ago with her book, “Shock Doctrine” in which she introduces the concept of ‘disaster capitalism’. This is when governments and corporations take advantage of an environmental or political disaster by pushing policies they wouldn’t otherwise be able to pass. Arguments are made that the invasion of Iraq was only possible after the events of 9/11, or that the privatization of defence contracts in Afghanistan and the relief contracts after hurricane Katrina were “exciting market opportunities.” Covid-19 certainly seemed to create its own opportunities for tech companies and other disaster profiteers as Covid relief and policies added to wealth inequality, rather than fighting it, which reversed decades of incremental progress as reported by Amata Adarov on worldbank.org.
This psyop is ingenious when you think about it. What better way to establish yourself as a hero than to swoop in to save the day during a catastrophe, even if you had a hand in causing it in the first place? And what better way to to establish your adversary as the villain than to encourage or incite him towards being the worst version of himself? These tactics lead the way to amassing power whether it be in an intimate relationship or an intercontinental geopolitical plan to take over the world.
Thank you for reading so far. Here is the outline of the manuscript for the book so you can keep track of where you are.
Introduction
Defence against Psyops
What are PsyOps?
What makes us marks?
The power of narratives
Who is behind it?
Kayfabe
Psychological Operations
Propaganda
Diversion of hatred
Character assassination
Re-education
Cults(you are here)
False flags/agent provocateur
Totalitarian regimes
Menticide
Defence
Principled insubordination
The Culture Wars
Ideological possession
Cancel Culture
Postmodernism
Profanity
MAGAstan vs. WOKEistan
Religious Zealotry
Heroes and villains
The Defence
The 21st Century Hero
The Responsibility of Freedom of Speech
Ridicule and Humour
Parallel Polis
Art and doubt
The Information Wars
Political Polarization
Corporate Media
Big Tech and the Post-Truth World
Noise vs Signal
“Woke”Journalism
Hate Hoaxes and victimhood
Collective ADHD
Advertisers
Defence
News/Media Diet
Critical Consuming
Rhetoric
The Slow burn
The Psychological Wars
Bullying
Gaslighting
Shame and isolation
Social contagion/Moral Panic
Safetyism
Social Media and human downgrading
The Meaning Crisis
Defence
Know Thyself
Be Wise
Stoicism
Psychological Immunity
Antifragility
Be Kind
Live Well
Conclusion