I'm becoming increasingly disturbed by the adherence of certain admins and members of this forum to a dangerous and harmful cult, the cult of Social Justice. Although the cult has many faces it uses for recruitment of different subsets of the population (BLM, BAMN, intersectional feminism, antifa, etc.) the core ideology is the same. So I want to go through a thorough breakdown of why Social Justice is a cult, what its articles of faith are, and why I find the cult so disturbing.
From
Psychology Today:
There is a great deal of interest in “cults” which can take many forms: They may be religious or racial, political or mystical, self-help or pseudo-psychological, but they all have half a dozen recognizable characteristics:
- Powerful and exclusive dedication/devotion to an explicit person or creed.
- They use of “thought-reform” programmes to integrate, socialize, persuade and therefore control members.
- A well thought through recruitment, selection and socialization process.
- Attempts to maintain psychological and physical dependency among cult members.
- Cults insist on reprogramming the way people see the world.
- Consistent exploitation of group members specifically to advance the leaders goals.
- Cults nearly always go in for milieu control signals: a different,unfamiliar setting with different rules, terms, behaviour patterns.
- Ultimately using psychological and physical harm to cult members, their friends and relatives and possibly the community as a whole.
Most cults start their induction by trying to stop both individualistic and critical thinking like the army their job is the first to break you than remake you as one of them. This involves the introduction of a “sacred creed” that members may have to live by. Through open confession and subordination of the individual to the doctrine the cult ensures control and “purity”. Cults deliberately induce powerful emotions like fear, guilt but also pride. They tend to develop their own language, dress and signals which shows their specialness.
First, they demand that they sever all ties with people (family, friends) and organisations (schools, churches). This naturally makes them more dependent on the cult itself and helps create the person's new identity. They start again, wipe the slate clean. This rule is also found in extreme in Christian Monastic orders.
Second, the members are required to show immediate and unquestioning obedience to rules and regulations which maybe arbitrary, petty or pointless. The idea is to ensure allegiance and obedience. This strategy is used to "break-in" all army recruits. It is the very staff of boot camps.
Third, group members often have to do long hours of tedious work. It maybe drilling, begging for money, cooking, followed by compulsory reading, chanting or mediating. Recruits usually become physically, emotionally and mentally exhausted. Sleep deprivation is a good start. It's all part of the induction process.
Fourth, all groups need money to exist. Some are very much into money both as an end and as a means. This may, therefore, quickly involve recruits getting involved in illegal, or semi-legal activities. Groups that are state supported or those with a long history of operation may, however, be different. Members need to understand how, when and why money is required and to set about getting it quickly.
Fifth, groups make exit costs very high. Leaving is associated with failure, persecution and isolation. It is more than just a waste of time and effort. They make you feel as if nothing will ever be the same as you will be an outcast. It is made to sound a very unattractive, indeed impossible, option.
Extreme groups offer simple, clear messages in an increasingly complex world. Old certainties are crumbling; ethics even science is portrayed as having only relative truths. The world is corrupt, evil, unfair and very complex. So a group or leader who offers a "sensible, sane" explanation for the complex world, a secure group and personal salvation is very attractive. They come in many forms: politicians of the extreme left or right; religious leaders; romantic revolutionaries; persuasive writers; power-hungry individuals, brilliant orators; movie-star saviours...No one sees themselves as a cult-member. Cult is pejorative. Indeed even members of fairly extreme groups like Trappist monks or Amish farmers would never think of themselves as cult members. But they owe their survival to many of the principles outlined above.
So now that we've got those essential characteristics of a cult and cult member detailed, let me explain why I believe that Social Justice is a cult and that certain members of this forum are engaged in cultist behavior.
Powerful and exclusive dedication/devotion to an explicit person or creed.The creed of Social Justice boils down to: There exists an evil social force, called the "Patriarchy", which exerts pressure over all areas of everyone's lives. The Patriarchy is designed by and for the benefit of cisgender, white, heterosexual, able-bodied men and is generally perceived as being "right wing". To destroy the patriarchy, we must remove the people matching that description from positions of power, replacing them with people from the Progressive Stack (which is in essence the inverse of those characteristics: non-white, LGBT, disabled, etc.). The more characteristics of "oppression" you have, the more "power" you should have. The more characteristics of "Patriarchy" you have, the less power you should have.
The use of “thought-reform” programmes to integrate, socialize, persuade and therefore control members.The method here boils down to calling anyone who disagrees names (racist, homophobic, transphobic, Islamophobic, Nazi, etc.) and using those labels to dismiss anything that the person who now bears the labels says instead of engaging with their arguments or criticisms.
A thorough recruitment, selection and socialization process.The selection process is essentially the progressive stack. The recruitment process is an attempt to convince the victims of the cult that they are oppressed by Patriarchy by pointing to faulty or incomplete statistics, emotional but ultimately politically neutral episodes, or statistically anomalous incidents as if they represent the statistical norm. The socialization process is to integrate them into the cult by encouraging them to believe unsubstatiated claims of oppression and to view any negative thing that ever happened to them (no matter what the actual cause was) as a manifestation of the Patriarchy.
Attempts to maintain psychological and physical dependency among cult members.The methodology here boils down to: Without Social Justice, how will you ever defeat the oppression that is holding you down? However, there is no evidence of people being held down on anywhere near the scale that the cult claims. Most of the barriers to success that the adherents face are psychological rather than societal, and the reinforcement of these barriers by the cult ensures that the adherents can never actually rise above the psychological limitations they have placed on themselves because they will never try. The cult is responsible for the failure of its members to achieve their goals and then uses their failure to achieve their goals as evidence of Patriarchy.
Cults insist on reprogramming the way people see the world."Everyone and everything is problematic [and you have to point it all out]." --Laci Green, Anita Sarkeesian, and others. The label of problematic is used to reprogram the thoughts of the cultists by making any single thing that exists, and even many things that don't exist, indicators of Patriarchy instead of morally neutral characteristics of life.
Consistent exploitation of group members specifically to advance the leaders goals.Since Social Justice doesn't include one distinct leader, it contains a web of leadership, there isn't one definitive example, but there are many examples of this behavior from the demi-leaders:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tanz1IxVpVAhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8I0Wy58adMhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XW1dUvFDVzUCults nearly always go in for milieu control signals: a different,unfamiliar setting with different rules, terms, behaviour patterns.By labeling the objectively benign or well-meaning actions of people who are generally sympathetic to the causes of minorities as evil, the cult puts outsiders on edge and makes them want to join or at least appease the cultists because they are good people and don't wish to be evil or oppressive. This redefinition of the benign, positive, or neutral as inherently evil and oppressive changes the rules of the social discourse to the point of being an avenue of control.
Ultimately using psychological and physical harm to cult members, their friends and relatives and possibly the community as a whole.This is the part I am so concerned about. The cult is breaking apart families, turning people against those who have sworn to protect them like the police, and banishing civility and debate from the political discourse. I already went into more detail on this subject in my other threads so I'm not going to repeat myself here, I'm just going to link to those threads.
https://www.councilofexmuslims.com/index.php?topic=30947https://www.councilofexmuslims.com/index.php?topic=30685[The cult] demand that [members] sever all ties with people (family, friends) and organisations (schools, churches). The punishment for associating with "problematic" people (which is anyone who doesn't conform to the cult) is being labeled problematic. This serves to encourage isolation. The isolation is then further compounded by an unreasonable paranoia that "problematic" people are going to harm you in some way because they hate you for your identity, and the further up the progressive stack you are, the more you risk harm. This is, again, supported by faulty or inaccurate statistics or the representation of statistical anomalies as the statistical norm.
This naturally makes them more dependent on the cult itself and helps create the person's new identity. They start again, wipe the slate clean.The cult member's identity is redefined by their progressive stack position instead of by who they are as a human being. Your skin color, gender, or LGBT status are not who you are. They're certainly a part of your identity but they aren't your identity. Your identity is what you believe, what you think, and most importantly, what you do. You're hurting yourself if you insist on reducing yourself to nothing more than the conditions of your birth. You had no choice in those characteristics. It's just as harmful as defining your entire identity based on your zodiac sign. Your choices should be what defines you, not the ultimately arbitrary conditions of your birth. You had no choice in who your parents had sex with, you had no choice in what sperm cell fertilized the egg to create your gender, you had no choice in determining your sexuality, the country of your birth, or the relative symmetry of your facial features. So don't let those things define who you are.
The members are required to show immediate and unquestioning obedience to rules and regulations which may be arbitrary, petty or pointless. The idea is to ensure allegiance and obedience. Manspreading, manspaining, manterrupting, whitesplaining...the list goes on and on.
Group members often have to do long hours of tedious work. It maybe drilling, begging for money, cooking, followed by compulsory reading, chanting or mediating.Usually it's protesting or internet activism. Lots of chanting mantras, tho:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvRlJ_MzoIIRecruits usually become physically, emotionally and mentally exhausted.Take it from me, having your adrenaline system active over an extended period of time does all three, and that's exactly what's happening when you spend your entire life in fear of assault or fighting, when you fear danger around every corner or feel you must be constantly ready to fight the danger others face around that corner.
Members need to understand how, when and why money is required and to set about getting it quickly.Usually this is accomplished through fundraisers and crowd-funding sites.
[Cults] make exit costs very high. Leaving is associated with failure, persecution and isolation. It is more than just a waste of time and effort. They make you feel as if nothing will ever be the same as you will be an outcast. It is made to sound a very unattractive, indeed impossible, option.You'll get a lovely little label of your own, like race traitor, sexist, and I'm we will provided with some other examples as a rebuttal to this post. Failing that (or in addition to that), you'll be ostracized by the cult, as Laci Green has recently discovered. Fortunately, there is a world outside the cult filled with people who are much nicer than the cult believes them to be.
Topic: The Cult of Social Justice