Is Donald Trump a cult leader?

[pbrower2a]

[color=rgba(2, 20, 31, 0.85)]Take It From a Former Moonie: Trump Is a Cult Leader
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ONLY I CAN FIX IT
[color=rgba(2, 20, 31, 0.85)][size=medium][font=Georgia, Times,][color=#6c6c6c][size=medium][font=Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif]It might seem an outrageous proposition to compare Donald Trump to a murderous cult leader. And yet there are alarming parallels.

On the afternoon of Nov. 18, 1978, Jim Jones called his followers to the central pavilion of Jonestown, a sprawling outpost in the jungles of Guyana, and ordered them to drink a lethal mixture of cyanide and fruit punch. Over 900 people perished that day, more than a third of them children. As he lay dying of a bullet wound to the head—a less painful way to go than cyanide and one that he probably orchestrated—Jones told his followers that it was “all the media’s fault. Don’t believe them.”    
Those words, uttered so long ago, sound disturbingly familiar as we approach the 41st anniversary of Jonestown. We have a president who regularly disparages and blames the media, calling it “fake,” “false,” and “phony,” and who calls journalists “enemies of the people”—epithets that seem especially frenzied in the wake of the whistleblower complaint and the launching of the House impeachment inquiry. It might seem an outrageous proposition to compare Donald Trump to a murderous cult leader. And yet there are alarming parallels. Like Jones and other cult leaders, Trump exhibits features of what psychologist Erich Fromm called “malignant narcissism”—bombastic grandiosity, a bottomless need for praise, lack of empathy, pathological lying, apparent sadism, and paranoia. In short, he fits the stereotypical psychological profile of a cult leader.

I have seen that profile up close. Over 40 years ago, while a junior in college, I was recruited into a destructive mind control cult, the Unification Church, popularly known as the Moonies after its leader, Sun Myung Moon. I rose rapidly through the ranks and was invited to attend meetings with Moon and his top aides, where we knelt and bowed to our leader Moon. Two years later, after three days straight of leading a fundraising team—selling flowers on street corners—I fell asleep at the wheel and woke up as I plowed into the back of an 18 wheeler. Fortunately, I survived. My family hired deprogrammers and, after five days, I realized I had been brainwashed.

Of all these tactics, the “us versus them” mindset is probably one of  the most effective. From the moment you are recruited into a cult, you are made to feel special, part of an “inside” group in opposition to unenlightened, unbelieving, dangerous “outsiders.” Playing on ancient human tribal tendencies, cult leaders extend this “us versus them” mindset outwards to an almost cosmic struggle.

Many campaigns—political, military, athletic—pivot around the idea of conflict between parties. Even in literature there is a hero and a villain. But cults take this human habit of viewing the world in binary terms and infuse it with a kind of all consuming passion, which they reinforce in the minds of followers using cliches, platitudes, lies, and endless repetitions. You come to believe that you are superior to the rest of the world. In fact, everyone who is not in the group is, at some level, in the words of the eminent psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, dispensable.
“As did LaRouche, Moon, and Jones, Trump sees a world teeming with enemies.”

In the Moonies, we were told that we were heavenly soldiers engaged in a great struggle to take the world back from the forces of Satan, which included godless Communism and human-centered Western democracy. Our ultimate goal was to replace these godless human-centered forms of government with a god-centered theocracy, under Moon’s leadership. 

Jones, a self-professed Marxist, told his followers—who were often poor, black, and disenfranchised—that the enemy was racism, capitalism, and the American government. He took his followers to the wilds of Guyana to escape the clutches of the U.S. government, which was evil and out to get him.

For Hubbard, the enemy was psychiatrists and governments, and also non-Scientologists. He used a racist term to describe the latter—wogs—and essentially argued that they were inferior to true believers. For LaRouche, it was a global conspiracy consisting of the Queen of England, Wall Street, Jews, and various intelligence agencies, such as the CIA. He and his followers wanted to defeat this evil cabal that was destroying the world, which only LaRouche could save.

Trump paints his enemies with a much broader brush. At rallies, he bounds on stage and tell his audiences how special they are—“I love you Indiana”—but it soon becomes clear that he has no “love” for anyone but Trump supporters. During his 2016 campaign, he would single out members of the audience—and even journalists—who he perceived as hostile and eject them, often to deafening cheers from his supporters. Shunning, humiliation, and ostracism are common methods for demonstrating who counts as “us,” and what needs to be done about “them.”

[url=https://www.thedailybeast.com/take-it-from-a-former-moonie-trump-is-a-cult-leader]https://www.thedailybeast.com/take-it-from-a-former-moonie-trump-is-a-cult-leader

[Eric the Green]

Trump is a cult leader and a fascist. And he has a 40% loyal following of cult believers.

Jason Stanley appeared on Amanpour and Company yesterday and outlined how the USA is becoming a fascist country as part of a larger world trend that includes such leaders as Bolsonaro, Modi, Putin, Orban, Duterte and so on. It's getting to be a long list, and many have been voted in democratically. Today Erdogen celebrated with older people in Turkey the restoration of the museum at Hagia Sophia to the status of a state-imposed religion in its right-wing culture war and its imposed fascist state, democratically elected by a deceived Turkish public by a small margin and facilitated by repression and demonizing.

The traits of fascism are focused on power, loyalty, demonization of "the other" (often defined as another race, nationality, ethnic group, religion, etc.), corruption of democracy, creation of chaos for political purposes, and loyalty to the leader rather than the interests of the people. Everything is defined in terms of the threats of the enemy, and a strongman is needed to represent "us" and protect us from the enemy. This is cultism, entertainment, reality show, and constant war as in 1984 against the enemy.

https://www.pbssocal.org/programs/amanpo...us-q8l4ww/





We like to pick on our favorite "American" Trumpist here, Classic Xer, and he obliges us with his posts that live up to our stereotype. I think he is a perfect representation of the trend toward fascism in the USA. "Fascism" can be an extreme label to pin on people to create polarization, but it can also be an accurate one. According to Classic Xer, the enemy is those who are not "American." But he does not define this term, and I conclude that what it refers to is opposition to criticism of the country. We have seen that since the sixties when critics of the Vietnam War were told to love it or leave it, and George Wallace ran against the critics screaming "stand up for America" across the country. Now we have a president who offered to "make America great again" and put "America First."

Trump has proceeded to routinely fire anyone in his administration who was not loyal enough to him and/or did not carry out policies of enabling corrupt business authority to abuse their power without the oversight that administrations provided through their agencies. Trump has stoked fears, prejudice and hatred of non-Americans, setting up concentration camps on the border, and now is bringing these security forces to cities run by "left-wing Democrats" in order to put down protests in the name of restoring law and order.

Jason Stanley points out that this invasion by unidentified security forces of our cities is not protecting law and order, but creating lawlessness. When police are shooting poor blacks on the street, that is not law and order, it is lawlessness and chaos. When new institutions set up to protect the state from enemies are used to demonize immigrants and repress protesters, this is lawlessness, not law and order.

Our USA has become a backward, helpless giant full of problems. We are loaded with an out-of-proportion prison population. Our health care system is the most expensive and least effective in the world. Our rate of infant mortality is worse than other developed countries. We have a culture of gun obsession that makes our country by far the leader in gun violence and crime among developed nations. We have systemic racism, racial profiling and police brutality. We are the country that most contributes to climate change. Inequality of opportunity has become instituted. Our democracy itself faces threats such as voter suppression and money domination. We have a dominant political philosophy of trickle-down Reaganomics that entirely handcuffs the effectiveness of our government to handle and implement solutions and challenge the power of those who abuse the people. Our current government is merely a group of loyalists to the fake president.

The Classic Xer types reply to this necessary critique and its call for solutions by labeling it un-American. Those who voice these concerns are called the "liberal culture" that is the enemy of "the American culture." This indicates that Classic Xer, and those like him, are fascists, because this "American culture" is simply the defense of the country as it is and opposition to those who criticize "America." "America" is the authority who must be protected against its "enemies" who criticize it. The "enemies" are anyone who voices dissent, who seeks solutions and who wants to advance our country forward. Classic Xer offers no other definition of this "American culture" except this repression of dissent and defense against "the other." The "other" is a combo of lazy welfare recipients, immigrants, non-whites and well-educated liberals.

I must admit that I also think the Republican Party as it exists today is illegitimate. But I want a truly democratic government and a new set of political parties rather than a monolithic Democratic Party to emerge from our 4T crisis that we are now in the middle of.

[pbrower2a]

(07-24-2020, 07:38 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Trump is a cult leader and a fascist. And he has a 40% loyal following of cult believers.

Jason Stanley appeared on Amanpour and Company yesterday and outlined how the USA is becoming a fascist country as part of a larger world trend that includes such leaders as Bolsonaro, Modi, Putin, Orban, Duterte and so on. It's getting to be a long list, and many have been voted in democratically. Today Erdogen celebrated with older people in Turkey the restoration of the museum at Hagia Sophia to the status of a state-imposed religion in its right-wing culture war and its imposed fascist state, democratically elected by a deceived Turkish public by a small margin and facilitated by repression and demonizing.

The traits of fascism are focused on power, loyalty, demonization of "the other" (often defined as another race, nationality, ethnic group, religion, etc.), corruption of democracy, creation of chaos for political purposes, and loyalty to the leader rather than the interests of the people. Everything is defined in terms of the threats of the enemy, and a strongman is needed to represent "us" and protect us from the enemy. This is cultism, entertainment, reality show, and constant war as in 1984 against the enemy.

https://www.pbssocal.org/programs/amanpo...us-q8l4ww/





We like to pick on our favorite "American" Trumpist here, Classic Xer, and he obliges us with his posts that live up to our stereotype. I think he is a perfect representation of the trend toward fascism in the USA. "Fascism" can be an extreme label to pin on people to create polarization, but it can also be an accurate one. According to Classic Xer, the enemy is those who are not "American." But he does not define this term, and I conclude that what it refers to is opposition to criticism of the country. We have seen that since the sixties when critics of the Vietnam War were told to love it or leave it, and George Wallace ran against the critics screaming "stand up for America" across the country. Now we have a president who offered to "make America great again" and put "America First."

I ordinarily challenge Classic X'er with the question, when he tries to claim that there is one set of ideological beliefs that define one as American and that everything else is not American... "What does it mean to be American?" So far as I can tell, he has not yet said what "American" means.   

Quote:Trump has proceeded to routinely fire anyone in his administration who was not loyal enough to him and/or did not carry out policies of enabling corrupt business authority to abuse their power without the oversight that administrations provided through their agencies. Trump has stoked fears, prejudice and hatred of non-Americans, setting up concentration camps on the border, and now is bringing these security forces to cities run by "left-wing Democrats" in order to put down protests in the name of restoring law and order.

Jason Stanley recognizes the similarity between mob bosses and dictators. Competence does not matter, and obedience is everything. Bad leaders depend heavily upon fear, without which they are helpless. Good leaders develop consensus among people who can get things done and get desirable results for people other than themselves. There's nothing subtle about Mafia style.
   

Quote:Jason Stanley points out that this invasion by unidentified security forces of our cities is not protecting law and order, but creating lawlessness. When police are shooting poor blacks on the street, that is not law and order, it is lawlessness and chaos. When new institutions set up to protect the state from enemies are used to demonize immigrants and repress protesters, this is lawlessness, not law and order.

Of course it is the chaos that a dictator uses as a pretext for a complete clampdown to bring genuine safety. 

Quote:Our USA has become a backward, helpless giant full of problems. We are loaded with an out-of-proportion prison population. Our health care system is the most expensive and least effective in the world. Our rate of infant mortality is worse than other developed countries. We have a culture of gun obsession that makes our country by far the leader in gun violence and crime among developed nations. We have systemic racism, racial profiling and police brutality. We are the country that most contributes to climate change. Inequality of opportunity has become instituted. Our democracy itself faces threats such as voter suppression and money domination. We have a dominant political philosophy of trickle-down Reaganomics that entirely handcuffs the effectiveness of our government to handle and implement solutions and challenge the power of those who abuse the people. Our current government is merely a group of loyalists to the fake president.

When Trump is gone, will such remain so?

OK, the economic elite uses poverty as a tool to ensure that wages be low and that workers be in abject fear. Is that necessary for economic success for us all or can we have something else?

Quote:The Classic Xer types reply to this necessary critique and its call for solutions by labeling it un-American. Those who voice these concerns are called the "liberal culture" that is the enemy of "the American culture." This indicates that Classic Xer, and those like him, are fascists, because this "American culture" is simply the defense of the country as it is and opposition to those who criticize "America." "America" is the authority who must be protected against its "enemies" who criticize it. The "enemies" are anyone who voices dissent, who seeks solutions and who wants to advance our country forward. Classic Xer offers no other definition of this "American culture" except this repression of dissent and defense against "the other." The "other" is a combo of lazy welfare recipients, immigrants, non-whites and well-educated liberals.

We liberals have been around for a long time, and we will be around long after Donald Trump. Sometimes it takes a critic to improve us. It would be a bad music teacher who allowed us to play music out of tune or to play wrong notes without correcting us. Trump has done things that 43 other Presidents (that's to avoid counting Cleveland twice) have never done not for a lack of imagination but instead out of contempt for old decencies in American life. 

Quote:I must admit that I also think the Republican Party as it exists today is illegitimate. But I want a truly democratic government and a new set of political parties rather than a monolithic Democratic Party to emerge from our 4T crisis that we are now in the middle of.

What happened when the Federalists died? The big-tent Democratic Party split because it was too unwieldy. What happened when the Whigs disintegrated? A few years later the Republican (Free Soil) Party formed. 

Maybe we end up splitting between Christian Democrats and Social Democrats. Maybe we end up with a political system with a structure more like that of Germany than like what we now have.

[beechnut79]

I don't think I would put Trump in the category of cult leader but Hitler and Mao definitely were, as they were worshipped as Gods. Putin is probably at least borderline. Even the free market is a false God in some people's minds. This can manifest as an irritation and then develop into something much bigger. We shall wait and see if Trump joins that exclusive group. But one could say the same when it comes to certain music and movie stars--Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, the Beatles.

Maybe many are not listening to our intuitions or something else, which is why they're reluctant to get out and vote. The gospel has been preached, and many have done so only to have their desired shot down. Clinton and Obama campaigned as true progressives but neither really put their campaign messages to practice once they assumed office.

Have often wished that I could remember my dreams from the last night to examine them and what they were saying. Dylan was pretty good at that and this is where a lot of his songs came from.

Current social malaise which I have referred to many times is because there's a seesaw back and forth, emotions versus action. On this the former is probably winning and may or may not be why a lot doesn't seem to be getting done. But YouTube tarot card readers are forecasting that many heads will roll when it comes to the events of January 6, 2021. However they tell us that it is going to take time yet many are frustrated that the PTB has pressed the pause button, apparently not worried about running around and finishing tasks.

What if us the general public released our grasp and just observed what's happening? What would that look like? Might it take the emotional charge out of a situation or a feeling?

[David Horn]

(04-09-2022, 03:29 PM)beechnut79 Wrote: I don't think I would put Trump in the category of cult leader but Hitler and Mao definitely were, as they were worshipped as Gods. Putin is probably at least borderline. Even the free market is a false God in some people's minds. This can manifest as an irritation and then develop into something much bigger. We shall wait and see if Trump joins that exclusive group. But one could say the same when it comes to certain music and movie stars--Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, the Beatles.

Maybe many are not listening to our intuitions or something else, which is why they're reluctant to get out and vote. The gospel has been preached, and many have done so only to have their desired shot down. Clinton and Obama campaigned as true progressives but neither really put their campaign messages to practice once they assumed office.

Have often wished that I could remember my dreams from the last night to examine them and what they were saying. Dylan was pretty good at that and this is where a lot of his songs came from.  

Current social malaise which I have referred to many times is because there's a seesaw back and forth, emotions versus action. On this the former is probably winning and may or may not be why a lot doesn't seem to be getting done. But YouTube tarot card readers are forecasting that many heads will roll when it comes to the events of January 6, 2021. However they tell us that it is going to take time yet many are frustrated that the PTB has pressed the pause button, apparently not worried about running around and finishing tasks.

What if us the general public released our grasp and just observed what's happening? What would that look like? Might it take the emotional charge out of a situation or a feeling?

If you have access to the NY Times, Maureen Dowd wrote a Sunday column addressing much of what you question.  In essence, she argued that we stopped being grounded and are now just trend followers.  Assuming she hit that out of the park, there may not be an easy way back from the mess we've created for ourselves.  If we have no core values, we have no core grounding.

[pbrower2a]

(04-09-2022, 03:29 PM)beechnut79 Wrote: I don't think I would put Trump in the category of cult leader but Hitler and Mao definitely were, as they were worshipped as Gods. Putin is probably at least borderline. Even the free market is a false God in some people's minds. This can manifest as an irritation and then develop into something much bigger. We shall wait and see if Trump joins that exclusive group. But one could say the same when it comes to certain music and movie stars--Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, the Beatles.

Trump has his cult. If he is not in the league with Hitler or Mao, arguably the two most horrific mass murderers of all time (the count for Stalin has been whittled down because much of his one-time count was found to be multiple-counting of victims, such as "bourgeois nationalists" and "enemies of the people" in different lists, so Stalin drops to a still-sordid #3), he has become a political equivalent of someone like L. Ron Hubbard or Sun Myung Moon, neither of who is undeniably linked to any deaths. 

I fault Trump for his criminal negligence in dealing with COVID-19 and his culpability in selling out democratic forces in Syria on behalf of his "good buddy" Vladimir Putin. Such are acts of state, which make him a large-scale killer. Yes, war is Hell, but it is not always easy to fix the blame, as its cause can be anything from a misunderstanding or accident to overt aggression.   

I question whether Donald Trump fully understands the harm that he has done -- especially the harm of creating a large mass of people who upon his political demise will fall for someone more ruthless, cunning, and adept at forming an authoritarian or even totalitarian movement that could establish the USA as an Evil Empire with great resources to do great horror where it is unwelcome. Others (like Rupert Murdoch, the Koch brothers, Karl Rove, and Newt Gingrich) have played dangerous roles in creating a Frankenstein monster..   
   

Quote:Maybe many are not listening to our intuitions or something else, which is why they're reluctant to get out and vote. The gospel has been preached, and many have done so only to have their desired shot down. Clinton and Obama campaigned as true progressives but neither really put their campaign messages to practice once they assumed office.

Something else has happened: the Hard Right has developed a network of political operatives and propaganda machines to offer fear, division,  and confusion. I am not going to say that they are behind the racist and religiously-bigoted people who parade at night with Tiki torches while shouting "Jews will not replace us!", let alone those who do bombings and shootings... or plotting to kidnap a State governor. The economic right has an undeniable agenda of ensuring that all but themselves live in fear and poverty on their behalf unless somehow privileged for serving the only people who ultimately matter -- themselves. In essence, no human suffering can ever be in excess if it brings forth some elite profit. Of course that is the ethos of every racket that has ever existed, including the slave trade. 

America has spiders in its soul, and we divest ourselves of those lest we be taken over and transformed into a great agency of repression, exploitation, aggression, and mass murder that one associates with tyranny. So what need we do? We need practice rational thought, and test strange new ideas against the realities that we know. Yes, I have heard voices telling me to commit crimes, and I have rejected those. We need to recognize the validity of traditions not our own so long as those are simply different. We need to recognize the distinction between Good and Evil and resist the seduction of Evil.  We need to recognize that objective truth, however inconvenient, is all that we can depend upon. We must reject any claim to someone possessing "higher" truth than objective reality; if that truth is simply counterintuitive it must introduce it as a refinement (that is how we have evolution and relativity) instead of a rejection of reality. If we are alcoholics or addicts -- then get rid of the bad habit. 

We need to become less dependent upon the Government and Big Business (both can be similarly obnoxious) for special favors.  Ideally we rely more upon small business as a solution for needs and opportunity. America became great because of small businesses incapable of supporting voracious, bloated bureaucracies.  Obviously nobody can deny that vehicle manufacturing, rail transport, energy extraction and distribution, scientific research, and the creation of high-quality entertainment, and much else can be a cottage industry anymore. Just contrast the (Soviet) socialist model that required the establishment of a bloated bureaucracy from the outset; that worked badly. 

(I have a thread on the business lifecycle, and in it I suggest that bureaucratization is the surest sign of impending demise of a firm. I am also convinced that large bureaucracies are one of the ways in which the elite of ownership buys off smart people who might otherwise gravitate to Marxism as a solution for economic injustice. So give smart people job titles with nebulous functions but enough pay so  they can live better than people who know what their contributions are, as in assembly-line work or meat-cutting, those smart people easily affording nice cars, with three-piece suits totally unsuited to physical toil, single-family housing, attractive spouses that they can ditch after their sex appeal vanishes, and college educations for their kids).         

Quote:Have often wished that I could remember my dreams from the last night to examine them and what they were saying. Dylan was pretty good at that and this is where a lot of his songs came from.  

Current social malaise which I have referred to many times is because there's a seesaw back and forth, emotions versus action. On this the former is probably winning and may or may not be why a lot doesn't seem to be getting done. But YouTube tarot card readers are forecasting that many heads will roll when it comes to the events of January 6, 2021. However they tell us that it is going to take time yet many are frustrated that the PTB has pressed the pause button, apparently not worried about running around and finishing tasks.

If one can see the effort to overthrow democracy by nullifying a free and fair election as itself evil, then one has a start. That is how Lenin's Bolsheviks took power in 1917 in Russia. Much of what went on in October/November 1917 in Russia or in January 2021 looks spontaneous, but only a fool could believe that either event was without coordination from outside the main theater. 

At least in 1942, when Americans perceived great danger of the destruction of democracy, the enemies were outside of America, easy to lampoon much like this:

  

It's not so clear this time. The danger is already in America, with people who hold democracy in contempt.

Quote:What if us the general public released our grasp and just observed what's happening? What would that look like? Might it take the emotional charge out of a situation or a feeling?

The current struggle is subtle.