#cults — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #cults, aggregated by home.social.
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It’s Getting Kind of Culty: Must-Read Books About Cults
These must-read books about cults include fictional takes on real cults, a survivor's memoir, and a look at the language of fanaticism.
https://bookriot.com/must-read-books-about-cults/ -
I've been saying for years that #SiliconValley operates as a massive #cult - but #PeterThiel (#Palentir) forgot the #1 rule of #cults: don't ever claim to be one.
But here we are faced with a #VentureCapital cult that wants to destroy #democracy, because they want all the power and money.
For how much #antigovernment rhetoric you get from these guys, they sure love colluding with #governments, #despots and #autocrats.
#PeterThiel's Anti-Human Plan Is Pure Evil
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Onphky37vik -
Idea for a story. Dude contacts counter-cult charity because he wants out. We eventually learn that he's a cult *leader* with thousands of fanatical followers.
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#ConspiracyTheorists #cults #Canada #Qanon
"THE RISE AND FALL OF THE QANON QUEEN OF CANADA
Romana Didulo became one of North America’s most dangerous conspiracy figures, leading followers who believed she could erase debt and cure cancer. By the time the government raided their compound, it was almost too late.
hen it was over in 2025, officials toured the dimly lit building in rural Saskatchewan. Tarps covered the windows and doors, blocking the sun. The air was so foul that an officer ran outside gagging.
For the previous two years, about 20 members of a group known as the Kingdom of Canada had been living inside the decommissioned school, claiming they had taken over the country. They operated under their own principles, issued their own laws, and threatened the surrounding village with 'publicly broadcast executions.' They slept in classrooms and, without running water, used five-gallon buckets as toilets.
Their leader — a woman known as the 'Queen of Canada' — had been sleeping in a primary classroom, where her purse and water jugs labeled with her name still sat. A hole had been cut through a concrete wall and concealed with a cabinet that opened like a secret door. On the other side was the queen’s private bathroom with an elaborate shower.
There were more tarps on the roof that covered stashes of firewood and fuel containers. The fire chief, Gene Perreault, who was there during the walk-through, tells me the piles puzzled investigators.
'Where these fire caches are, it makes absolutely no sense,' he says as we sit in the firehouse looking at photos of the caches. 'Maybe this was part of their last stand or some fucking thing.'
One theory, according to Perreault, was that the Kingdom had been planning to burn the building down, Waco-style, if the government intervened.
The queen was Romana Didulo. Born in the Philippines in 1974, she later claimed that her social class was the 'modern equivalent of [the] Royal Family' — a claim that hasn’t been confirmed. Like much of Didulo’s story, the details of her upbringing are fuzzy."
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That thing you've been wondering about for years that seems to have no answer? That niggling contradiction about reality that sometimes bubbles to the surface? That fact about the world that just doesn't make sense but everyone else seems ok with it? But there isn't anyone offering up alternative answers, so you just assume you're nuts and push it back down?
Go with that, see where it leads. Tug at it when you can. Be willing to test your most solid assumptions to try on another way.
That's where you'll find your answers. That's where you'll break out of the cult.
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*Yes I have, but I don't believe there's just one unified cult of "Spiralism," any more than there's a Gospel of QAnon
*I'm also a bit surprised that China can simply shut-down everybody's AI boyfriend and AI girlfriend, and the Chinese just shrug, instead of getting all Falun Gong about it #cults
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:e7adoz546m5uygs2k4f76dq6/post/3mskqjcjbys2d -
Olurinatti knows where it's at #iPhone #Apple #Cults #Android #OwnYourShit (https://www.youtube.com/@olurinatti) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUDHrPpO0GU
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Cult survivors fearful after inquiry accidentally shares email addresses
By Bec Symons and Jonathon KendallCult survivors say they have been left fearful after an "unacceptable privacy breach" where their identities were potentially shared with groups they have been hiding from.
#Cults #Government #StateandTerritoryGovernment #InformationTechnologyIndustry #BecSymons #JonathonKendall
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Cult inquiry recommends outlawing coercive control in groups
By Bec Symons and Jonathon KendallA Victorian inquiry into the recruitment methods and impacts of cults and organised fringe groups is recommending world-leading laws against group coercive control.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07-29/cult-inquiry-recommendations-victoria-fringe-groups/106971052
#Cults #ParliamentaryCommittees #StateandTerritoryGovernment #SocialProblems #BecSymons #JonathonKendall
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#TFG #Cults #LucasBean #QuestionsToAskTrumpSupporters
https://lucasbean.substack.com/p/anti-trump-cult-questions-141
Questions that create doubt without triggering defense:
When Trump promised X, what did you think would happen? How did that turn out?
Has he ever said something that surprised you or made you uncomfortable?
What would it take for you to change your mind about him? Is there anything?
Do you ever have moments where you wonder if any of this is working? -
Why Bek Condello left a doomsday church at 27
By Jackson Worthington and David MarcheseAuthor Bek Condello says she has not spoken to her friends or family inside the church since she decided to leave.
#Cults #Christianity #BookPublishingIndustry #JacksonWorthington #DavidMarchese
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#Tennessee #cults #churches #bookstores #drag #LGBTQI+
"THE DEMON NEXT DOOR
A growing number of charismatic Christians see themselves as waging a spiritual battle against the forces of Satan. Sometimes those forces are right across the street.
There were older and grander churches in Maryville, a college town in East Tennessee where you could barely drive a minute without passing a cross or a sign about Jesus. But when Mike and Andrea Brewer established the Well, in 2016, they understood themselves to be part of something more mystical and revolutionary than any existing denomination—a charismatic-Christian movement that has drawn millions of Americans with the promise of supernatural encounters with God and visions of cosmic battle.
By his own account, Mike had been an exhausted factory worker and a lapsed Pentecostal addicted to pornography when one night, at home and praying for a better life, he heard an unfamiliar voice calling out to him and believed that it was God. At church a few days later, he would write, he felt a 'tangible explosion' in his chest, followed by 'the purity and righteousness of God moving through me in waves.' He came to believe that a demon had exited his body and that the Holy Spirit had taken its place. He decided that God had chosen him for a divine assignment.
They went abroad as missionaries to India and Haiti, which only confirmed their emerging understanding of a universe with three distinct realms—the heavenly, the earthly, and the underworld, with the Earth being the realm of spiritual warfare. On one side, the Holy Spirit, angels, and believers comprised an army of God. On the other were the forces of Satan—legions of demons with names, ranks, and personalities that could inhabit people, geographical regions, and entire nations.
(. . .)
By the time the Brewers returned to Maryville, they saw themselves as hardened spiritual warriors. They founded the Well to continue the battle, joining an international network of churches and ministries called Global Awakening, which also had a seminary, where Andrea began studying demon history and hierarchies. When Mike asked God for their exact assignment, he told me when I visited in March, 'the Lord spoke so clearly. He said, ‘I’m giving you and the Well a mandate for the full eradication of witchcraft and demonic activity in the region.’'
And that was what led the Brewers to look across the street one day a few years later and determine that the central hub for demonic activity in the region was roughly 100 yards away. It was a bookstore called Southland.
(. . .)
Over the course of three decades in Maryville, Misosky had made Southland Books and Cafe into a local institution, a sprawling maze of old bookcases where people could find a leather-bound Mark Twain, a paperback Charles Bukowski, shelves of military history, and flyers for a local mah-jongg group.
Misosky had a bar downstairs where she hosted trivia nights, readings, all-ages punk shows, and fundraisers that sometimes involved drag performances. She occasionally provided space to the local Democratic Party. But none of that had drawn public protest until a new church moved in across the street.
(. . .)
Misosky had been born and raised in Maryville. She was 58, Catholic, and gay, and told me she was used to living among conservative Christians. Still, demonic came as a surprise. 'This is probably the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,' she remembered thinking after seeing the first video, not yet realizing that the church was part of the fastest-growing segment of Christianity in the country, or that the language she was hearing in the fall of 2022 was spreading across the Christian right and the wider political landscape.
(. . .)
Another version was the run-up to the January 6, 2021, insurrection, when prominent apostles and prophets held prayer rallies calling for 'the minutemen of the Kingdom' to rise up against demonic forces that they believed had stolen the 2020 election, after which many of their followers were among those who stormed the U.S. Capitol. Another version was what happened after the Brewers returned to Maryville."
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So don't just jump to the obvious, pre-packaged option. It's certainly *easier*. There's less dissonance there, too.
But curiosity also resolves dissonance. It's a consonant feeling, maybe the only time a lack of or contradiction of information causes a good feeling. Step into that, and out of the box.
It's a cycle. Question everything. Come up with answers. But don't settle there. Keep poking. Dig deeper. Keep open-ended the answers you do find.
Otherwise you're still just being run by your conditioning.
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#AbuseCulture #ReligiousTrauma #cults #atheism #exmo #exmormon #deconstruction
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One example of a false dichotomy capitalism offers is how it links itself to commerce.
Commerce, or trade, has ALWAYS existed, even before humanity did.
So pro-capitalists have a hard time letting go because they think they'll have to throw out the ability to buy and sell things, to run small businesses and such.
Anti-capitalists who haven't unpacked this lie get mad at small shops posting Etsy links or selling books they wrote. They get upset at anyone who makes a living in a world where you have to make a living or die. The worlds they imagine try to design unwieldy bartering systems that never address the underlying problems of power and the fact that anyone who abuses power will ALWAYS find a way into positions to amass it, no matter what system you design.
By working within the false framework, their alternatives are not very appealing and don't solve the real underlying issues, which isn't money or commerce itself, but a certain mentality who will always leverage what they have available to coerce and rule.
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#AbuseCulture #ReligiousTrauma #cults #atheism #exmo #exmormon #deconstruction
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This is the process I used to get where I have on capitalism and whiteness. Always stepping back and 🤔
As we deconstruct capitalism and western colonialism, don't spend too much time in the "just do the opposite" phase. That's a resting place.
There ARE better ways to run a society!
And I fully believe we don't know what those are yet.* But we can't figure that out while working strictly within the limiting framework given to us BY capitalism and whiteness!!!
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* Quick note without spiraling intoa whole different rant: I believe people who lived before us (or trying to survive alongside us) know at least some of the puzzle that humanity should learn from. But we're not going to be able to go back to exactly how it was unless billions of people die, and then the whole ring is valuable to the next colonizing culture rises up. Whatever better system comes, it'll have to be, to some extent, something new.
#AbuseCulture #ReligiousTrauma #cults #atheism #exmo #exmormon #deconstruction
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In fact, curiosity is a great example of what I'm talking about.
My cult framed doubt as the opposite of unquestioning faith. This is an example of the control technique called Black & White Thinking, or polarized thinking. We're trained to think in binaries. This quality is all good, while that quality is all bad.
So once I discover my group is bad, and faith is bad, I might start to think doubt is all good. I might lean into doubt as my new replacement value. We start to see some of the outlines of the skeptic community, and the toxic behaviors of a certain subset of atheist thought.
At first, doubt is my only choice. Because I'm still operating under cult conditioning!!! where it's either full-on faith or doubt as a service.
Doubt makes for a terrible value. It isn't a goal! Skepticism by itself doesn't LEAD anywhere. It can't be a destination! Eventually, all that can be debunked, is. Then what?
I can surely bring a balance of skepticism into my life to help me check the answers I come across. It's a nice tool for moving towards *something*.
But step outside the false dichotomy.
Curiosity IS a value. Never one promoted by my cult, though. Isn't that interesting? Why is that?
Because curiosity does lead places. Endlessly. It NEVER runs out. It's difficult, if not impossible, to ideologically control someone who is constantly practicing curiosity.
You can't hold unquestioning faith and curiosity at the same time. In fact, it wasn't doubt that got me out of the cult in the first place. It was curiosity.
So this is just one of hundreds of examples of how we can step outside the framework, the binaries our conditioning provided us. True free thought means always stepping back from what is "known," always wondering if if this or that foundational assumption needs to be revisited, retested, redefined, reassessed.
[ed: typos]
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#AbuseCulture #ReligiousTrauma #cults #atheism #exmo #exmormon #deconstruction
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The extreme opposite of a bad thing isn't necessarily a good thing.
This is only an extension of cultist / colonialist / capitalist conditioning.
I see this with people who have left cults. Their first instinct is to go all out opposite of what they were raised with.
We go through a similar process as we deconstruct wider society.
This phase is a bad place to land permanently, because you're still operating within the false, unhealthy framework that the conditioning offered you. It should only be a temporary step in the deconditioning process while you get your bearings and open up to be ways of thinking.
Look for balance and nuance. Never stop questioning, especially any new worldview you find yourself adopting.
Curiosity is a destination in itself, an ongoing value, a tool in the neverending process of understating reality and morality.
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#AbuseCulture #ReligiousTrauma
#cults #atheism #exmo #exmormon #deconstruction