For those interested in understanding how QAnon and ExExec's MAGA cult took possession of friends and family,

consider that question and watch this vid about mental & emotional brainwashing as presented in Full Metal Jacket.

FMJ: Disconnection from personal history
- boot camp
- no old friends, no family
- insults on old identity
- repetion, chants

MAGA:
- media bubble / filter bubble
- disdain for 'normies'
- outviews attacked
- in-group reinforcement for repeating dogma, social media 'likes' & RTs

FMJ: Tear down the old identity
- change appearance
- group identity
- new self-identification

MAGA:
- MAGA gear
- "where we go 1 we go all"
- "red-pilled" indoctrination; old identity seen as weak, afraid; new one is supossedly strong and fearless

Vid: "we can even see indoctrination as equivalent to an exorcism: the unique individual needs to be ridiculed, discredited, made to seem undesirable, and then purged through a repetitive succession of rituals"

"this techinique of framing the individual & their history as corrupt, delusional, and unworthy is not only powerful...but is essential" to many brainwashing contexts.

The cult asserts: "only we can provide awakening, strength, truth, and virtue"

Vid: "In my view, real men - and real women - form their own personal opinions based on what they actually experience. They dont wait for some group or some institution to spoon feed them an oven-ready narrative complete with dumb slogans and contradictory codes of conduct."

Great thread on trauma. The indoctrination techniques of boot camp include physical, Mental & Emotional trauma - and the recruits are made to recite the training materials while under duress

For MAGA, rhetoric & passive media consumption induce M/E trauma https://twitter.com/jessabahx/status/1353138489605447681?s=20