trumpism was (and still is) a Textbook Cult

[magicguido]

[Upthevibe]

1. magicguido...

Excellent post. Thank you....

[Moostache]

2. The entire GOP is a cult...enabled and enforced by their media

Fox
OANN

But also online, on the radio, on social media....its a constant. Separating them from other people, and from reality...just pathetic shit...yet they all drink it down like Po told them to for Heaven's Gate or Jim Jones did to the People's Temple or Koresh at Waco...Trump is simply those creatures writ large and using the power of media (old and new) and the gullibility of stupid people to create an absolutely toxic mess.

There is no way to 'reach out' to people who are literally dying of COVID and arguing with nurses that can't be true because the virus is a hoax!!! We have a serious de-nazification project in need of launching and yet, if you suggest that these people are brain washed somehow YOU are the kook or the loon or acting in bad faith...SMFH!

[cilla4progress]

3. Watched Ep. 1 of The Rise of the Nazis on PBS

last week (on rec from someone on this discussion board).

Many parallels, as you can imagine; very interesting - how the cult / fanatic dynamic works, and esp. at the outset - how it starts.

Germany was a liberal democracy only 3 years before Hitler rose to power!

https://www.pbs.org/show/rise-nazis/



Snip:

In 1930 Germany was a liberal democracy. Just four years later democracy is dead, Germany’s leader is a dictator and its government is in the hands of murderers. This series tells the story of how this happened. Leading historians and experts get inside the heads of some of the key players, whose political plotting, miscalculations and personal ambitions helped to destroy democracy and deliver control to Hitler.

Then there are those who were prepared to make a stand in order to try to stop the Nazis. With the intensity of a political thriller, the series sets out the plots and intrigues at the heart of the government, which transformed the Nazis from a fringe political group to the most powerful party in the Reichstag. It outlines the power struggles between prominent Nazis, which transformed Germany into a brutal police state that exercised state sponsored detainment and murder, allowing Hitler to go from being chancellor to all powerful Führer of the Third Reich. Powerful drama and stark use of archive brings an immediacy to this gripping and resonant story.

[Aussie105]

4. Cultism.

It's really easy to recognize it when it happens in other countries, in other cultures, and in other times.

In your own country, it is much harder seeing cultism happening and growing around you. And watching it's effects.

But the cult of Trump has led to the current poor response to the pandemic, and that is one of the main destructive features of cultism - the inability to react sanely and appropriately to a specific situation.

Jonestown - the followers of Jim Jones voluntarily drank the poisoned Kool-Aid (actually, it was Flavor-aid) and died, thinking the Mother Ship would come to collect them.
Trump cultists mingle in huge groups, no masks, no social distancing - with similar results.
Frankly, I don't see a difference.

America seems a fertile breeding ground for cultism, be it based on religion, the worship of money, or the worship of a single person.
No idea why.