quotes:
Ten warning signs of a potentially unsafe group/leader.
- Absolute authoritarianism without meaningful accountability.
- No tolerance for questions or critical inquiry.
- No meaningful financial disclosure regarding budget, expenses such as an independently audited financial statement.
- Unreasonable fear about the outside world, such as impending catastrophe, evil conspiracies and persecutions.
- There is no legitimate reason to leave, former followers are always wrong in leaving, negative or even evil.
- Former members often relate the same stories of abuse and reflect a similar pattern of grievances.
- There are records, books, news articles, or television programs that document the abuses of the group/leader.
- Followers feel they can never be "good enough".
- The group/leader is always right.
- The group/leader is the exclusive means of knowing "truth" or receiving validation, no other process of discovery is really acceptable or credible.
Ten warning signs regarding people involved in/with a potentially unsafe group/leader.
- Extreme obsessiveness regarding the group/leader resulting in the exclusion of almost every practical consideration.
- Individual identity, the group, the leader and/or God as distinct and separate categories of existence become increasingly blurred. Instead, in the follower's mind these identities become substantially and increasingly fused--as that person's involvement with the group/leader continues and deepens.
- Whenever the group/leader is criticized or questioned it is characterized as "persecution".
- Uncharacteristically stilted and seemingly programmed conversation and mannerisms, cloning of the group/leader in personal behavior.
- Dependency upon the group/leader for problem solving, solutions, and definitions without meaningful reflective thought. A seeming inability to think independently or analyze situations without group/leader involvement.
- Hyperactivity centered on the group/leader agenda, which seems to supercede any personal goals or individual interests.
- A dramatic loss of spontaneity and sense of humor.
- Increasing isolation from family and old friends unless they demonstrate an interest in the group/leader.
- Anything the group/leader does can be justified no matter how harsh or harmful.
- Former followers are at best-considered negative or worse evil and under bad influences. They can not be trusted and personal contact is avoided.
I suppose those who should realise that they're following a bad cult leader are the least likely to recognize it, even if they saw this.
S O
.
I see this play out amongst liberals and philo-Semites constantly.
ReplyDeleteWell, I voted SNP (as I always have). Still got a hopeless future, but at least we get to be allowed onto the battlefield to fight.
ReplyDeleteThe anti tory vote should have held up. But it didnt. Might be a bit harsh though, looking at the splits it broke down perfectly by age. 20% under 35 voting tory, 20% over 65 voting labour.
The world has changed again. It'll take a while to work out what the future may be.
I wasn't thinking of the English clown here. He's not much of a leader, more an accidental PM because of the failure of the establishment to do a decent job.
DeleteIt might be purposeful to check Farange with this list, but I don't know enough about him to do it myself.
The future seems so dark over here now. I can't think of a single way anything positive can be fought for and won.
DeleteEngland will support turkey in the ongoing games in the eastern med. It will become the political and diplomatic (intel) hub for anti-eu action funded from around the world. No reform on money laundering, indian, arab, russian dark money will flow in.
Its so dark.
The world is going mad in the opposite pattern of WWII. The crazy leaders came out of the woodwork after the Great Depression.
ReplyDeleteIt is my current opinion that the crazy leaders are already out of the woodwork and are likely to cause the next Great Depression. Probably through a fit of prolonged austerity in social programs to feed the defense programs (paranoia, don't you know...)
"I suppose those who should realise that they're following a bad cult leader are the least likely to recognize it, even if they saw this."
ReplyDeleteAnd those following a good cult leader . . . ?!
I suppose those who choose to follow typically think they made a good choice, and their leader is a good one.
DeleteAs socio-military minded individuals we understand that the difference between a religion and a cult is simply a matter of numbers. If it is a couple hundred people it is just a David Koresh and can be destroyed without little lasting public backlash. What if it is a group with 50,000 -100,000 followers i.e. Deerborn, Michigan? Then the Government tolerates it or goes the Saddam/Kurd Ottoman/Armenia route.
ReplyDeleteIf we compare these lists to the the historical Catholic Church/Pope up until changes after Napoleon, it fits like a hand in glove. Japan also had the worship of their Emperor which was fanatical. Are these examples not cults? Or are they simply different because you will be at war with half of the world or an entire country at the very least if you offend them?
Now people may jest the holistic-Christian world is relatively toothless at the moment but this is mainly artificially induced by economic and political incentives. If there was no economic or political incentive to be docile, imagine a Catholic world that is equally if not as combative as Islamic extremism. They simply cannot be stopped at least by mortal means.
This was about cult leaders, not cults in general.
DeleteReligion doesn't necessarily have any outstanding leader. You've missed the point.
I was a bit off topic. But the thing is, or rather what I should have probably stated more clearly was a point I was trying to make about what we consider to be a cult, thus by extension a cult leader. A heavily perspective oriented problem. The cult does not exist separately from the leadership, in many ways the leadership is the cult. This is mainly due the leader or leadership becoming a symbol. They are inherently inseparable. Much like how the local pastor defines the character and direction of the local parish so on so forth. Is the Pope a cult leader? Is Khomeini a cult leader? Is the Dalai Lama a cult leader? Why is it that the Wahhabi or even the M.B. not considered a violent cult despite their rhetoric and indirect facilitation?
DeleteThe simple answer is when you have that kind of power what the marxists like to call hegemony you set the narrative or "politically correct way of thinking" and label people as either mentally insane, a cult, criminal, misfit to de-legitimize/denounce them before resorting to the act of removing or butchering them. At that point the supposedly angels are on your side because you are doing so for the "better" good.
The most obvious example is how the right is being called nazis.
Another good current example is the insanity happening in Xin Jiang. China is systematically cleaning out an entire population under the pretense of countering cults? To replace it with a system that amounts to little more than Han supremacy. World silence is rather single issue, in regards to that they are Muslim. What if they were Scandinavian Catholics of white ethnicity? I suppose the reactions would be very different.
The same list such as the one above we use to screen as a warning for a cult applies on broad spectrum which nearly applies to nearly anyone. In the west, the inability to understand this is mainly a product of the culture which micro-fragments communities and families into individual consumers. I am simply taking this chance to bring our attention to this "human terrain", something that is constantly thrown out with the bathwater in lieu of more exciting talk about weapons, doctrine, or fitness.