From Glenn Beck.com (April 17, 2022):
Covid-19 broke us.
People who were once reasonable began to call for the banishment of the unvaccinated from civil society. Death was divided by vaccine status and treated accordingly. Information was censored for “our own good.” Anyone who questioned the leader or fell out of line, was deemed as dangerous or literally accused of murder.
Steven Hassan developed the B.I.T.E model by, among other things, studying brainwashing in Maoist China. B.I.T.E stands for:
B — Behavior
I — Information
T — Thought and
E — Emotional controlB.I.T.E identifies patterns used by cults to manipulate their members.
There are fifty attributes to watch out for. Listen to some of these and compare them to your experience during the Covid-19 pandemic:
- Dictate where, how and with whom the member lives and associates or isolates
- Financial exploitation, manipulation or dependence
- Restrict leisure, entertainment and vacation time
- Permission is required for major decisions
- Rewards and punishments are used to modify behaviors, both positive and negative
- Discourage individualism, encourage group-think
- Impose rigid rules and regulations
- Instill dependency and obedience
- Deliberately withhold information
- Distort information to make it more acceptable
- Systematically lie
- Minimize or discourage access to non-cult sources of information, including:
- Internet, TV, radio, books, articles, newspapers, magazines, media
- Critical information
- Former members
- Keep members busy so they don’t have time to think and investigate
- Control through cell phone with texting, calls, internet tracking
- Compartmentalize information into Outsider vs. Insider doctrines
- Ensure that information is not freely accessible
- Control information at different levels and missions within group
- Allow only leadership to decide who needs to know what and when
- Encourage spying on other members
- Impose a buddy system to monitor and control member
- Report deviant thoughts, feelings and actions to leadership
- Ensure that individual behavior is monitored by group
- Extensive use of cult-generated information and propaganda, including newsletters, magazines, journals, audiotapes, videotapes, YouTube, movies and other media
- Require members to internalize the group’s doctrine as truth
- Adopting the group’s "map of reality" as reality
- Instill black and white thinking
- Decide between good vs. evil
- Organize people into us vs. them (insiders vs. outsiders)
- Use of loaded language and clichés that constrict knowledge, stop critical thoughts and reduce complexities into platitudinous buzz words (“Follow the science”)
- Rejection of rational analysis, critical thinking, constructive criticism
- Forbid critical questions about leader, doctrine or policy allowed
- Labeling alternative belief systems as illegitimate, evil or not useful
- Make the person feel that problems are always their own fault, never the fault of the leaders or the group
- Promote feelings of guilt or unworthiness, such as:
- Identity guilt
- You are not living up to your potential
- Your family is deficient
- Your past is suspect
- Your affiliations are unwise
- Your thoughts, feelings, actions are irrelevant or selfish
- Social guilt
- Historical guilt
- Shunning of those who leave; fear of being rejected by friends and family
- Ritualistic and sometimes public confession of sins
- Phobia indoctrination: inculcating irrational fears about leaving the group or questioning the leader’s authority
- No happiness or fulfillment possible outside of the group
- Terrible consequences if you leave: hell, demon possession, incurable diseases, accidents, suicide, insanity, 10,000 reincarnations, etc.
That is basically all of them except for rape, murder, torture and kidnapping. So that’s horrifying. But what’s even scarier, is that most of us went along with it, even just for a little while. As a nation, as a world, we are still going along with it in many ways.
Now, look at antiracism.
Antiracism requires blind obedience to leaders like Ibram X Kendi — who can arbitrarily assign or remove guilt based on his own perception. The work of being an antiracist never stops. There is always more internalized racism to uncover and implicit bias to reveal. [read more]
Other articles about cults:
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment