Stephen Hassan Misrepresents the Science on “Brainwashing”
Does Stephen Hassan personally profit from his exit counseling & deprogramming business using the hysteria he creates around minority religions?
Social Science
Cult Expert, London School of Economics Social Science Professor Eileen Barker Submits Herself to the Gearty Grilling
Why do you think anti-cultists reject science so much? And when they call a social scientist a “shill” or a “quack”, where is their quantitative data that disputes their work? Nowhere.
Social Science: Brainwashing & The Persecution of Cults
If there is such a thing, an intellectually honest anticultist should understand the arguments from social science which won in court during the deprogramming hysteria in the 70’s & 80’s.
Cults of Anti-Cultism by Anton Shupe et al, 1980
This is a paper written in 1980 on the AntiCult Movement, as it existed when the authors estimated when it was 10 years old. Can you see any differences in the AntiCult Movement today? _______________________________________ … Read more
Adjusting to Mainstream Society After Scientology is Not “Recovery”
The recovery paradigm of Ex-Scientology sets up a whole bunch of things you think you need to “recover” from because you were in a cult.
Steven Hassan Makes Bizarre Claim for Why Moonie Brainwashing Didn’t Work Whenever Scientists Were in the Room
Social scientists like Eileen Barker traveled to Moonie recruitment seminars where brainwashing & mind control was claimed to be in use. They found that more than 90% of the people in those “brainwashing” seminars did not sign up to be a Moonie, and all were gone from the Moonies within 2 years.
Why Leah Remini Will Never Get Her Federal Investigation
I want a federal investigation of Scientology for the right reasons.
Two AntiCult Movement Evangelists Defend Their 40 Year Careers Trying to Scare People About ‘Cults’
Jon Atack and Steven Hassan have been the Jimmy Swaggart and Billy Graham of the Anti-Cult Movement for well neigh 40 years now, and I hear they’re just about ready to get some science to … Read more
Documentary “Deprogrammed” Now Streaming on Netflix
This documentary contains a very good discussion of the limits of power that people have over those who make religious and spiritual choices that others don’t like.
Pushing “All or Nothing” Thinking on Exes By Never-ins
Angry Gay Pope tells an Ex-Scientologist what to think about their time in Scientology. This time with a major cognitive distortion.
Getting Out of a Cult is Not Something You Recover From, It’s Something You’re Strengthened By
Worldviews are fragile things. Don’t look at them too closely – they may collapse on you. Ex-Cult members know this better than you do.
Brainwashing and the Cults: The Rise and Fall of a Theory
In the United States at the end of the 1970s, brainwashing emerged as a popular theoretical construct around which to understand what appeared to be a sudden rise of new and unfamiliar religious movements during … Read more
Chris Shelton Read One Book By Social Scientists And Now He Knows All About It
This is the level of thought that is acceptable by those who believe in the AntiCult Movement’s ideology about minority religions. This is not critical thinking – it’s the sociological equivalent of an AntiVaxer rant.
Can Chris Shelton The Critical Thinker At Large Distinguish Between a ‘Cult Recovery Paradigm’ and Therapy?
Is Chris Shelton The Critical Thinker at Large the Stuart Smalley of Celebrity Anti-Scientology?
The Unquestioning Arrogance of Anti-Cult Movement Ideologues
An ideologue is so certain of the ideology he has adopted, and the rightness of how he sees the world, that he can sneer at people, knowing how superior he is. It is a lazy way to go through life, intellectually, but if you surround yourself with people who also never question their assumptions, either, it’s easier to live that way. One of the best examples is Tony Ortega.
My Anti-Scientology Apostasy
Max Scheler said that an apostate was ‘engaged in a continuous chain of acts of revenge against his own spiritual past’. Can you be an anti-apostate Apostate?
The Social Construction of the Anti-Scientology/Anti-Cult Narrative
The more power that you assign to subversive techniques such as “mind control” the easier it is for Ex-members to explain their membership and participation in minority religious groups after they’ve re-entered the mainstream.
Embrace Your Inner Scientologist
To dismiss that part of your life, to wall it off as “delusional” or “crazy”, is to remain in a dissociative state – to continue living a fractured life.
Post Ex-Scientology
A Post-Ex has integrated the arguments, and “truths”, he made as a Scientologist with the arguments, and “truths”, he made as an Ex/Anti-Scientologist. He has seen the disconnects and the contradictions there, and repaired them. He no longer walks around with an opposite self inside him, with which he is at war.
The Capture Stories, Escape Stories, and Atrocity Stories of Anti-Scientologists
Sociologists who study the issues surrounding minority religions have identified 3 types of stories that form a socially-constructed narrative of a leave-taker’s experience inside their former group.