#cults — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #cults, aggregated by home.social.
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CW: Long post, topics Abuse Culture, epistemic injustice, and decolonizing the mind
RE: https://kolektiva.social/@emsenn/117190449681228809
To start fresh on a new side-tangent:
"Epistemic colonialism" is a great term!
It reminds me of another term that needs to catch on, "epistemic injustice," (epistemology being the philosophy of how to know truth), especially its subset, "testimonial injustice:" when some people are trusted over others simply because of their demographic or background.
We all do this to some extent. You've never met someone. They're on TV or in a courtroom or on social media. And they're telling some story about their experience or something they witnessed or a topic they've studied. And you immediately discount what they're saying without any conscious thought process.
You may have a "reason" to not believe them, but no evidence to back it up.
"They're hysterical."
"They don't know what they're talking about."
"They're uneducated."
"They're in it for the money or fame."
"They're faking."
"They just want attention."Hundreds of pat phrases (what cult researchers call "thought terminating cliches") that instantly stop your ability to receive information that could challenge your worldview.
But underlying the dismissal is a person who did nothing to earn your mistrust.
Meanwhile, the very powerful effect centers your own ego as a representative of systemic bias in favor of the existing structures of power.
Which you are a part of whether you like it or not. Whether you are aware or not. Whatever your ethnic background or color of your skin, you are some part of that power structure.
The process of decolonizing your mind starts with becoming aware of it. It is exactly the same as the growing awareness of a cult member right before they snap out of the spell. Before the walls of milieu control begin to weaken.
I've been through the process on a number of levels: from awakening out of Mormonism, to realizing the lies of my abuser, to unpacking whiteness programming in my mind. To understanding my complicated gender, to realizing my oppression as a woman, to deconstructing my internalized ableism, and more.
Awareness was the first step.
It's uncomfortable. It's easier to continue to exist in comfort through a simple dismissal of any the challenging information.
Meanwhile, the price is that you remain a tool of the cult or oppressor instead of breaking out.
And this applies to everyone. No one is immune to this manipulation. We've all been tools of the oppressor one way or another.
This is why now, wherever I can, I stop and listen to folks I haven't listened to in the past. I try really hard to understand what they're saying.
I don't always agree. I can't always wrap my head around it. I very often can't reconcile their testimony with my own experiences, values, or things I've heard from other people. Sometimes paradoxes or logical contradictions exist. That's just reality.
So I let it exist. It's not my job to force reality into a cohesive whole. Sometimes that's not possible.
But I *can* acknowledge that each person's perspective is a truth all on its own. I can sit with that truth and figure out what it has to teach me in that moment. The lesson doesn't have to be useful or actionable. I don't have to draw a conclusion or write a book about it.
I *especially* don't have to argue my own worldview and prove my contradicting worldview is the superior one. That's conditioning of the oppressor, whose culture made me into an enforcer of their power structure to keep those "beneath me" in line, to keep their messages from surfacing.
It's an act of rebellion to lift those voices. Whether I understand them or not. Whether I fully agree with them or not.
This isn't a solo. We are a chorus.
#AbuseCulture #decolonize #decolonization #ReligiousTrauma #antifa #cults
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an old one i made sometime back. i dont idolize this guy or his beliefs. just thought this would make a cool vaporwave and i like being creative
#vaporwave #vhs #vhsaesthetic #vaporwaveaesthetic #aesthetic #retro #glitch #glitchart #artist #artistsonmastodon #MarshallApplewhite #HeavensGate #90s #cults #cult
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#AI #cults #California #ClimateChange
"AI Is The Latest And Best-Financed Cult To Emerge From California
Had the historian of California, Mike Davis, lived long enough to take in the spectacle of the AI boom, he very well may have seen a through line to earlier hybrids of unvarnished hype, greed, military research, science fiction, and techno-millenarianism, all perduring elements of a unique California ecosystem that has evolved some of the nation’s more distinctive cultural formations. If you think Peter Thiel’s itinerant, closed-door lectures on the Antichrist, Elon Musk’s high-volume procreation, or Sam Altman’s fascination with Napoleon and his notion of founding a company like you’re founding a religion were each a bit unusual, you have not read the history of California’s Church of Scientology.
Scientology – which has the same number of letters as 'Singularity'- came into the world in the setting of a Pasadena club for Satan-worshipping libertines presided over by Caltech rocket scientist, sci-fi enthusiast and later founder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, John Parsons. As Davis tells the tale in his classic City of Quartz.
(. . .)
On the terrestrial level of reality, AI’s colonial dynamic is embodied in the surreptitious construction of enormously expensive, climate-damaging and resource-intensive data centers world-wide, often with disregard for strong local opposition. It is embodied in xAI’s Colossus data center outside Memphis, Tennessee, and another near Southaven, Mississippi, which both run on unpermitted and polluting gas turbines situated near poor Black communities. It is embodied in Musk’s vision of a cyborg and robot-filled future, which is now contractually tied to his corporate compensation, and anchored in what is planned to be the largest semiconductor factory in the world, Terafab, also powered 100% on natural gas. If Sam Altman expects AI to 'solve climate change' some day, he had better get to it, because everything that is being done to accelerate AI is turning up the heat on planet Earth.
Two macroeconomic factors are at play in the breakneck speed with which AI infrastructure has been financed and built out since the release of Chat GPT in November of 2022. They have little to do with the intrinsic commercial potential of AI-related products or services, nor any particular innovation in computer engineering. The first, to put it simply, is the availability of lots of money. More than ever before, giant pots of money are sloshing around the planet, motivated by historically low interest rates over a relatively long period to search out the Next Big Thing. This money is mostly exempt from national regimes of control or taxation, is managed outside the traditional banking system, and is therefore more free to move around. The second is the chronic and by now widely acknowledged slow-down of economic growth in the advanced economies, dating back nearly half a century. What the hype typically fails to register is that investors don’t seek out technology and AI firms because they are the best bets on future returns – they seek them out because they are the only bets around."
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Ah, yes, the pinnacle of modern journalism: an #article about #cults and #scams that itself feels like a scam to read! 🧐 Just enable JavaScript and cookies, and BAM! You're in a digital cult of your own making. 🤡✨
https://bookdna.com/best-books/nonfiction-about-cults-scams-and-schemes #modernjournalism #digitalcult #HackerNews #ngated -
My favorite nonfiction books about cults, scams, and schemes
https://bookdna.com/best-books/nonfiction-about-cults-scams-and-schemes
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A drone view shows followers of the Universal White Brotherhood, an esoteric society that combines Christianity and Indian mysticism set up by Bulgarian Peter Deunov, performing a dance-like ritual called "paneurhythmy" on Rila Mountain, Bulgaria. REUTERS/Spasiyana Sergieva
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The toxicity of religious crackpotism: "The posts were widely reposted on social media, triggering condemnation from Balinese residents who considered them disrespectful. Authorities tracked him down following public complaints, and he was arrested at a villa in Legian, a popular tourist spot near Kuta Beach."
#Indonesia #religion #legal #cults #civilization #laws #blasphemy
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/other/swiss-tourist-sentenced-to-a-year-in-jail-for-insulting-bali-s-sacred-day-of-silence/ar-AA2aymLY -
Faith, falsehood and biblical bullshit...
#religion #cults #religiousextremism #evangelicalpsychosis #delusion #religiousbeliefisamentalillness
https://amberbateman.substack.com/p/biblical-bullshit-lies-the-church -
Well, I am just fascinated with cults. I don't know why. I can't explain it, but books about cults almost always pull me right in. This has been sitting on my shelf since it released. I picked it up randomly and got sucked right in. I usually am not into celebrity memoirs, but add a cult? Count me in! Overall, 4.25 stars. It was a super quick read and had me at the edge of my seat, turning pages as quickly as possible.
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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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An Unbeliever’s View of the Jonestown Massacre
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5baPn6SAQA
#US #USA #USPol #USPoli #USPolitics #America #Propaganda #Capitalism #Socialism #SocialDemocracy #LandOfTheFree #Freedom #Liberty #Education #Brainwashed #Colonialism #Healthcare #Childcare #ParentalLeave #ImperialOverstretch #CriticalThinking #Cults #MindControl #Gerrymandering #FPTP #TwoPartySystem #RankedChoice #RankedChoiceVoting #PledgeOfAllegiance #QuestionAuthority #ChristianNationalism #AmericanExceptionalism
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https://nypost.com/2020/09/14/seagrams-heiress-clare-bronfman-tried-to-silence-nxivm-victims/
"Bronfman showed 'an astonishing lack of empathy for the financial struggles of others,' prosecutors said."
Billionaires are bred to have no heart, despite the fictional kind ones we see in things like Meet Joe Black.
#nxivm #cults #billionaires #rape #rapeculture #seagram #cdnpoli #canada #epstein #fascism #antifa #elbowsup #bcpoli #vancouver
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https://nypost.com/2020/09/14/seagrams-heiress-clare-bronfman-tried-to-silence-nxivm-victims/
"Bronfman showed 'an astonishing lack of empathy for the financial struggles of others,' prosecutors said."
Billionaires are bred to have no heart, despite the fictional kind ones we see in things like Meet Joe Black.
#nxivm #cults #billionaires #rape #rapeculture #seagram #cdnpoli #canada #epstein #fascism #antifa #elbowsup #bcpoli #vancouver
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https://nypost.com/2020/09/14/seagrams-heiress-clare-bronfman-tried-to-silence-nxivm-victims/
"Bronfman showed 'an astonishing lack of empathy for the financial struggles of others,' prosecutors said."
Billionaires are bred to have no heart, despite the fictional kind ones we see in things like Meet Joe Black.
#nxivm #cults #billionaires #rape #rapeculture #seagram #cdnpoli #canada #epstein #fascism #antifa #elbowsup #bcpoli #vancouver
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https://nypost.com/2020/09/14/seagrams-heiress-clare-bronfman-tried-to-silence-nxivm-victims/
"Bronfman showed 'an astonishing lack of empathy for the financial struggles of others,' prosecutors said."
Billionaires are bred to have no heart, despite the fictional kind ones we see in things like Meet Joe Black.
#nxivm #cults #billionaires #rape #rapeculture #seagram #cdnpoli #canada #epstein #fascism #antifa #elbowsup #bcpoli #vancouver
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Pastor arrested for molesting girl and calling her “the chosen one”
https://kfor.com/news/local/metro-pastor-arrested-for-molesting-girl-and-calling-her-the-chosen-one/
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March 11, 2024A WELL-TRAINED WIFE review: four stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐.
A WELL-TRAINED WIFE: MY ESCAPE FROM CHRISTIAN PATRIARCHY by Tia Levings (St. Martin’s Press/Macmillan, August 6, 2024) is a blunt and staggering account of a woman’s marriage, motherhood, escape, and recovery within the extreme (arguably now mainstream) religious right. You can call it dominionism, you can call it theonomy, you can call it Christian Nationalism: it often requires the sacrifice of women’s bodies to take over the land for Jesus. Levings decided waiting for a savior was a fool’s game: if anyone was going to save her and her children, Tia was that savior.
Thanks to Edelweiss Plus Above the Treeline and Macmillan for sending me this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.
Reading this memoir was like swimming through razorblades. It’s a book that should be on everyone’s radar right now, a first-person account of what a Duggar-esque life is like from the inside: having baby after baby until your health collapses, listening to radical misogynist teachers, and paying a fortune for their books and conferences when that money could be better used feeding your “full quiver.” Submitting to horrors which the church covers up when you go to them for help. Hearing that this slow, living death, is “God’s plan for your life,” and that if you just submit to your husband more, you’ll be blessed. Not that all of us lived. Some of us are dead.
Having come out of this movement myself in 2001, I recognized each teacher with pure horror as they made their way into this vulnerable young family. Mary Pride. The Pearls. The Ezzos. Doug Philips and Vision Forum, and Duggar guru and pervert Bill Gothard. And finally the “manly” patriarchy of Doug Wilson (Google “doug wilson patriarch,” but hold on to your lunch). Levings’s religious journey took her from Southern Baptist to Reformed Calvinist. It was a rocky road full of crazies.
Since Senator Katie Britt’s wackadoodle kitchen response to the State of the Union address (March 8, 2024) and Kelly Johnson1her professional website presence was scrubbed when her husband got the speakership (wife of Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House), appeared also speaking like a toddler on national television, Jess Piper of Blue Missouri popularized the term “fundie baby voice.” Levings explains that this baby voice comes from the book Fascinating Womanhood by Helen Andelin (1920-2009). The FW website ought to have the tagline “infantilizing women since 1963.”
Levings explains a lot of other things as well about the Quiverfull movement and Christian patriarchy that dovetail perfectly with my experiences and that of many other ex-Quiverfull women. The mental state that gets women into this cult, and also the revelation that wakes women up, are described in a way that outsiders can grasp. The book’s weakness: it mentions way too many twists and turns of the family’s beliefs than Levings can follow up with an explanation of how they played out, and it would be better to just leave out “home church” and “white supremacy” than to mention them in passing.
Reading in context:
A Christian critique of Christian nationalism by Tim Alberta, THE KINGDOM, THE POWER, AND THE GLORY: AMERICAN EVANGELICALS IN AN AGE OF EXTREMISM (HarperCollins, December 5, 2023), makes for good reading and excellent listening, Alberta narrates his audiobook well, and conducted dozens of illuminating interviews for the book.
If you prefer flame-throwing by an avowed atheist who is preparing for the worst after the January 6 insurrection, pick up PREPARING FOR WAR: THE EXTREMIST HISTORY OF WHITE CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM by Bradley Onishi (1517 Media, January 3, 2023). The history is astonishing; Barry Goldwater was telling Republicans to go to war for religious values in 1963, and we’ve forgotten some of the more frightening pronouncements of affable old Ronnie Reagan in the ’80s. Religious anti-democratic sentiments coupled with crazy conspiracy theories go way back. Onishi addresses the Quiverfull movement too; his highly reliable source is Vyckie Garrison.
An excellent companion read to this book: QUIVERFULL: INSIDE THE CHRISTIAN PATRIARCHY MOVEMENT by Kathryn Joyce. You can find out about the scandals that have befallen many patriarchal Christian teachers mentioned in QUIVERFULL in the final chapter of A WELL-TRAINED WIFE.
What I’m reading right now:
THE HONEY WITCH by Sidney J. Shields (Hachette, May 14, 2024).
#TiaLevings #AWellTrainedWife #Quiverfull #ChristianNationalism #ChristianDominionism #Theonomy #cults #SouthernBaptist #ReformedCalvinist #abuse #DomesticViolence #FascinatingWomanhood #FundyBabyVoice #JessPiper #TimAlberta #TheKingdomThePowerAndTheGlory #BradleyOnishi #PreparingForWar #VyckieGarrison #KathrynJoyce
https://jillsreads.com/a-well-trained-wife/
#abuse #AWellTrainedWife #BradleyOnishi #ChristianDominionism #ChristianNationalism #cults #DomesticViolence #FascinatingWomanhood #FundyBabyVoice #JessPiper #KathrynJoyce #PreparingForWar #Quiverfull #ReformedCalvinist #SouthernBaptist #TheKingdomThePowerAndTheGlory #Theonomy #TiaLevings #TimAlberta #VyckieGarrison
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Let's Talk About #Sects
Oct 2023
#Xenos / #DwellXenos was originally set up as a leaderless group that rejected the structures and trappings of mainstream #churches. Springing forth from the #JesusMovement of the late 1960s and early 1970s, it focused on meeting in people’s homes and embracing members from the youth #countercultures. So why does the #church’s own website admit to a history that involves #cult-like behavior?
