Cult Development
Last edited Tue Nov 6, 2018, 02:19 PM - Edit history (1)
Edited to correct link.
No, not a scientific study of cults, though there's a good piece by Chris Hedges on alternet about this: https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-cult-of-trump-2/
No, this post is about a book I'm reading, Hunting Charles Manson, by Lis Wiehl. When I got home from the library, I noticed that the author is a Fox contributor. Nevertheless, I held my nose and jumped right in. I'm about 50 pages in, and it's pretty good. Writing is excellent, and Wiehl does a good job setting the scene for Manson's creation of his Family in the late 1960s. Nothing political (yet?), but a good true crime story/history of a unique person and a unique time in our relatively recent history.
Wiehl's descriptions of how Manson essentially created a cult has remarkable parallels to what his happening today. Creating a psychological dependence on the leader as savior in a world of fear and rage at "the other." Encouraging others to perpetrate violence - against anyone, anywhere, including, weirdly, other members of the cult, is critical. (Sound familiar?) Generating fear of the other, in this case the other being anyone not in the cult. And on and on.
There are comparable parallels - so far without the kool aid element - with Jim Jones just a few years after the Helter Skelter murders in 1969. Fear, unity among cult members, sole savior, utter devotion to the cult and its leader.
Will the current cult movement affecting damn near half of this country devolve into a death cult? Who know. But when you have trump followers who still support him while their businesses fail - I'm think of you, soybean farmers - you have to wonder what these people and others like them won't do to demonstrate devotion to the cult and its leader. I think it was the WAPO that came up with 17 violent attacks committed because of devotion to trump. How many white nationalist domestic terror attacks have to happen before these sorts of attack reach a critical mass where they can't be stopped without more drastic responses?
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