YES!!! I've been trying to say this: It's time for you, yes YOU, to start taking cults SERIOUSLY. They're not a joke. The QAnon cult stormed the fucking capitol as more and more people talk about losing members of their family to Q. You need to stop joking and start learning! https://twitter.com/cnlester/status/1347513221192818689

Cults arent just a right-wing phenomenon either. As we saw recently, cultic behaviors and groups exist on the left as well. If we allow cultic behaviors to develop in our organizing it will disrupt and prevent us from organizing for the world we truly want. Anything can be a cult

We all made fun of that CultExpert guy for making a big deal of hypnosis force feminization videos on pornhub but there literally is a bimbo hypnosis cult which is just this guy and his harem of followers who stalk and harass anyone who tries to leave or have a life outside him

Yeah, cults can be absurd like that, the Q conspiracy cult is pretty absurd! but guess what, the people hurt by them and the dangers they pose to society are SERIOUSLY REAL and not feeling able to talk about your trauma because it sounds absurd is something cult survivors deal w/

Please read over the common cultic characteristics found at https://icsahome.com/articles/characteristics

It's not a checklist, or a scale, it's just common characteristics that help characterize the cult phenomenon. Cults arise can arise intentionally OR UNINTENTIONALLY/Emergently (more common)

When you're in a cult, you have what I call "cult think." This architecture of thinking where everything is understood through the lens of the cult ideology. You already know every single criticism and you have a practiced predetermined perfect defense against it.

That goes for internal and external criticism. You have a rebuttal and a reason for every single thing the cult does and they make perfect sense because of other cult ideas that uphold it. They all uphold each other and lean on each other so one belief reinforces another.

Even if you aren't explicitly told to cut contact with people outside the cult, it becomes exhausting and difficult to talk to them because your understandings of the world and good behavior are so disparate and you're constantly having to explain and defend the cult to them

Sick Dunks do not make people realize they're a cult it just reinforces the Us Versus Them worldview. And cult jokes just strengthen defenses against seeing the cult for what it is, because it's not like Those Stupid Ridiculous Cults people make fun of and don't even feel REAL

Believing aliens seeded the earth with life and are coming back to save us? That's absurd. Unlike "encouraging children to learn how to read is violence" (a belief of the cult I grew up in) which makes perfect sense because [other beliefs from the cult think architecture]

Furthermore, almost universally, cults and their controlling aspects are used to cover up domestic violence, (child) sexual assault, child abuse, and financial exploitation. You already know why rape jokes and child abuse jokes aren't funny. Cult jokes are rape jokes by proxy

Cults make you do reprehensible things and the Cult Think makes you feel like what you're doing is righteous, upstanding, moral, and the people you're doing it to are an active danger. Every thought in your head defends and justified these actions and beliefs from every angle

Who is susceptible to joining a cult? YOU are. You are not immune to falling into a cult. I guarantee it. The smartest people in the world still end up in cults (see: Aum Shinrikyo) Who is susceptible to starting a cult? That might even be you too, unintentionally. Yup.

The "leader" of a cult doesn't need to be a real living person. Cult members often enforce the cult upon each other and themselves without needing their leader to tell them to do it. "Q", or Trump, can be the leader of the cult Or a decentralized clump of de facto thought leaders

A cult can also be a pocket within a larger group or organization that is not quite so cultish. It's common for the majority of a cult's members to never encounter the really bad shit until they get invited to the Inner Ring of the Cult's most devout.

Perhaps the local branch of the cult is perfectly chill and normal until you hold an officer position and get involved at the regional or national level.

Perhaps the leader of a single department has grown a little cult just among the members of their department

How do you get out of a cult? People devote their lives to trying to figure it out and there's no clear answer. Some proposed methods of ""deprogramming"" are just as traumatizing, abusive, and controlling as the cult itself (given how often it's done by disapproving family)

When it comes to fascist cults like QAnon we should focus most of our efforts on deplatforming and suppression. More media literacy education. Critical thinking. Working to spread accurate, reliable, information and not participating in spreading misinformation and distortions.

But if you know someone personally who is in the cult? Do NOT cut them out. You are their lifeline out of the cult. Leaving the cult usually means burning bridges with your entire community and everyone and everything important in your life, for a world that hates you

I couldn't leave the cult until I knew I had plenty of friends and community outside the cult. And until that point, the world outside the cult was discordant with my entire life. Nobody understood a single life experience. I had no normal anecdotes. I couldn't socialize easily

I didn't know how to function and every single funny story from my life would be loaded with a thousand things that needed explaining to make sense which would ultimately just be upsetting and not amusing.

You want someone to burn every bridge for that AND have nobody?

Lifelines outside of the cult are crucial. If every time you talk all you do is criticize the cult, they'll just cut you out. It's like an abusive relationship in that way. But I don't know how you get them out past that. Sorry.

I think being clearly a good person, despite being outside and in contradiction to the cult, does a lot to untangle Cult Think. But for Conspiracy Cults I'm really not sure what to do. But we know that right wing conspiracy cults are spreading a literal deadly virus so...

It's not funny, is what I'm saying. Stop seeing it all through a smug pessimistic lens of irony and humor and sick dunks. Fucking stop and take this seriously. Enough playing Cassandra I-told-you-so and recognize cults as a legitimate, and actually unfortunately common, danger.

If that link was broken for you here it is again https://www.icsahome.com/articles/characteristics

Me: Don't make cult jokes

A bunch of immature children: decide to quote-tweet dunk parts of the thread and make jokes about it

Go log off and play cards against humanity or something fucking hell. You are making fun of someone's childhood trauma is that funny to you.

Since people keep bringing this up:

If your goal is to get someone OUT of a cult, then maintaining a relationship as a lifeline is important

If you are concerned about your own safety then fucking yes obviously cut them out I thought that was obvious