Critical Thinking on Cults & AntiCults
The anti-cult movement is made of people with varied ideological affiliations who attack & vilify minority religious & spiritual pursuits. They can hide their ideological affiliations and never be questioned for them as part of the “anti-cult movement”.
The anticult movement belief system is often made available to Exes of minority religions so they can “re-think” their involvement. Although brainwashing has been thoroughly debunked by science, the anti-cult movement seeks to promote this insidious belief, much to the detriment of Ex-Scientologists and others.
It uses pejorative terms such as “cult”, and stereotypes such as “brainwashed cult member” to dehumanize and marginalize members of minority religions.
To be sure, abuses have occured in minority religions. But have they occured to the extent that abuse has occured in the majority ones? Do members of ‘cults’ commit suicide more often than members of majority religions?
These are some of the questions we explore here at AlanzosBlog.
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.
You’ll often hear people make the argument that something done by one group is not morally equivalent to the same thing done by their enemy.
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.
Chris Shelton, the hysterical and abusive anticultist who runs a youtube channel devoted blind anti cultism, was finally suspended from Twitter yesterday.
One of the most hysterical & unscientific beliefs of AntiCultism is that “brainwashing” & “Mind Control” are at work whenever anyone becomes a member of a “cult”.
Celebrity anti-Scientology is a hell of a drug. Presenting all your trauma, over and over to a sympathetic audience on TV can create and maintain your whole self-identity for you. And it can get you all the status & fame you desire. But is it good for you?
I’ll hand this to Tony, whenever it is to his own advantage, he does make stabs at being intellectually honest. In this case, he published a response to his criticism of professor Hugh Urban and his stereotyping of all social scientists who study religion as “religious studies types”. Professor Hugh Urban is the Director of … Read more
It was on the night of 9-10 November, 1938, and named Kristallnacht from the shards of broken glass that littered the streets after the windows of Jewish-owned stores, buildings, and synagogues were smashed.
The following is a compilation of scientific studies which have thoroughly debunked the idea of brainwashing.
It’s strange for an Ex to accept these stereotypes about who they used to be. Yet Exes seem to do it – almost unthinkingly & obediently. When will they begin questioning these stereotypes?
The anticult movement is destructive to Ex-Scientologists & to any Ex of any minority religion slurred as a “cult”. It’s just belief. Not facts.
The “Father of Deprogramming” Ted Patrick was a devoted Christian who believed he was doing God’s work by kidnapping people & holding them in a room & browbeating them until they denounced their faith. In 1980, he served 1 year in prison and paid a $5000 fine for kidnapping and false imprisonment.
A review of the major problems with the brainwashing theory of recruitment and maintaining membership in a minority religion. By James T Richardson – 2006
A cult is a smaller culture inside the wider culture around it. It has different knowledge, skills & moral values, with a different narrative and different attitudes and acceptable behaviors.
There are some very common ways that you can become a hypocrite as an anti-Scientologist. After being an anti-Scientologist myself for so long, I have identified a few of those ways of thinking so that you can avoid being a hypocrite as an Anti-Scientologist.
A lot of the members of the anti-cult movement want their targeted minority religion to be destroyed for their own religious and ideological reasons.
There is a point at which this metaphor becomes an exercise in thought-stopping: A person accepts it as an explanation for why Scientologists do what they do in the way that Larry and other anti-Scientologists describe, and that’s all you need to know. It seems to explain everything when, in fact, it explains very little.
As an hysterical anti-Scientology troll, Tony Ortega is loving the present environment. It’s an environment where, once any accusation has been made, it must be true. Even the position of “I don’t know – I wasn’t there” means you are violating the accuser and raping them again. So, in this environment, Tony’s business of creating … Read more
Mainstream society can’t claim to have all the answers for everybody. If we claim to be a free society, why do we de-legitimize & dehumanize those who join our subcultures?
The question is, will Rachel Bernstein stick around ESMB and actually post something that is not in her own commercial interests?
