Cults are totalitarian States in microcosm

Shyam

 

The totalitarian dictator and megalomaniacal psychopath, Adolf Hitler, claimed that:  

'The great strength of the totalitarian State is that it forces those who fear it to imitate it.'

In reality, Hitler's statement was a typical lie; for it would be far more accurate to say that one of the reality-inverting effects of totalitarianism, is that (to casual observers) it can make its most determined, and courageous, opponents appear to be imitating it.

It is my published opinion that all reality-inverting cults are totalitarian (or totalistic) States in microcosm. The self-appointed leaders of cults have steadfastly pretended absolute moral and intellectual authority whilst pursuing various hidden criminal objectives (fraudulent, and/or sexual, and/or violent, etc.). Cults comprise groups, and/or sub-groups, of previously-diverse individuals bonded by their unconscious acceptance of the self-gratifying, but wholly imaginary, scenario that they alone represent a positive or protective force of purity and absolute righteousness derived from their leadership's exclusive access to a superior or superhuman knowledge, and that they alone oppose a negative or adversarial force of impurity and absolute evil. Whilst this two-dimensional, or dualistic, narrative remains the adherents' model of reality, they are, in effect, constrained to modify their individual personalities and behaviour accordingly. The only real differences between reality-inverting cults have been the exact criminal motives and mental state of their leaders, and the length of time they have survived before they faced a well-informed and determined challenge. For obvious reasons, many observers have failed to concentrate on the universal identifying characteristics of the cult phenomenon. Instead, they have focused on, and categorized, cultic groups only by the severity of their ultimate crimes. There are even academics who have denied the existence of the cult phenomenon (and/or down-played the menace it represents) and who have illogically categorized criminogenic cultic groups alongside traditional religious movements. Thus, enabling these (apparently objective) academics falsely to label free-thinking individuals challenging the authenticity of various cultic groups, as 'fanatics', 'anti-cultists' and 'alarmists.' 

 

In Britain, a highly-convincing, and highly-dangerous, group of useful idiots (sociologists at the London School of Economics), have run a charity called 'INFORM.' This has been the only organization to have received UK government funding to collect and disperse data about the cult phenomenon. In brief, the founder of 'INFORM,' Prof. Eileen Barker, has built her entire academic career on the demonstrably-false premises that co-ordinated devious techniques of social, psychological and physical persuasion (designed to shut down individuals' critical, and evaluative, faculties without their fully-informed consent) do not exist, and that it is impossible to castrate human minds by persuading ill-informed individuals unconsciously to accept a divisive fiction as fact and, thus effectively, constrain ill-informed individuals to modify their personalities and behaviour accordingly.  However, this specious line of thinking places Prof. Barker, and her LSE followers, at odds with the very government and tax-payers who have funded her reality-denying activities; for Britain is currently at war with a group known as 'al-Qaeda' (the 'Base' or 'Foundation') which, although generally-decribed as a 'global, militant, islamist terrorist organization,' has actually exhibited the identifying characteristics of a reality-inverting, totalistic cult. Having said that, the 'New Global Terrorism' is currently the most destructive result of totalism, but it is not its only destructive result.

Despite his recent assassination, the delusional-reality of Osama Bin Laden's surviving followers self-evidently remains controlled by the fictitious, dualistic scenario that the USA and her allies represent a negative, adversarial force of impurity and absolute evil, and that 'al-Qaeda' represents a positive, protective force purity and absolute righteousness. This unoriginal 'us versus them' story is what has been used, and what will continue to be used, as the false justification for indiscriminate mass-murder around the world. The fanatical core-adherents of 'al-Qaeda' have been dissociated from external reality and reformed into expendable combatants, furthering the hidden criminal objectives of their leaders, completely dependent on a collective, paranoid delusion of absolute moral and intellectual supremacy fundamental to their individual self-esteem/identity and related psychological function.

The world is now debating whether it was lawful for the US military to have summarily executed Osama bin Laden? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-13318372 . The elected leadership of the USA has justified the killing of Osama bin Laden as 'an act committed as part of an armed conflict with al-Qaeda.' Thus the US government has classified 'al-Qaeda' as as a de facto State in microcosm. Presumably, the elected leadership of the USA also saw Osama bin Laden as a de facto totalitarian dictator and megalomaniacal psychopath.

 

David Brear (copyright 2011)