Cults

V

version

Well-known member
I'm surprised we haven't got a cults thread. There's one about music cults and one where Luke asks if there's ever been a purely online cult, but no general one.

Anyway, this is what prompted it. Some horrible Jonestown-esque thing in Kenya.

www.theguardian.com

Kenya cult death toll passes 300, with more exhumations planned

More than 600 people still missing, authorities say, amidd reports pastor ordered followers to starve themselves
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com

The death toll linked to a Kenyan pastor accused of ordering his followers to starve themselves to death to meet Jesus has passed 300, with the figure expected to increase as more exhumations are planned.

Authorities say the dead were members of the Good News international church, led by Paul Mackenzie, who is accused of ordering his followers to starve themselves and their children to death so they could go to heaven before the end of the world.
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shakahislop

shakahislop

Well-known member
someone tried gently recruit me into this after i unwittingly went into one of their delis for coffee in vermont. i ordered a coffee and then the dude lured me into a conversation talking about the 80s punk east village thing. we chatted for an hour or so and then he arranged a ride to the airport for me in one of the cult's vans, coz the bus i was going to get didn't exist. that was really handy. i had exactly the same haircut already as the haircut all the guys in the cult have, i genuinely thought i'd landed in some hipster outpost at first. the guy they got to drive the bus was a bit more open about some of their beliefs than the more guarded dude in the cafe, in particular a thing about needing to breed and raise a pure and uncorrupted group of children, who would be the only people to survive the imminent day of judgement. in the cafe there was this massive 60s-style mural about how the hippy revolution failed; the 60s seem to play a big role in their way of thinking about the world.

it was the day that kandahar and herat fell so i was a bit of a mess, i was on a bus through vermont reading about place after place falling and in a million paniced whatsapp conversations. i had to catch a little 8 seat plane to go to boston from this tiny little airstrip coz it was still the pandemic and it was the only way to get from vermont to massachusetts, that was a pretty intense day.

america for some reason seems to be fertile ground for cults. and fairly extreme (by UK standards) religious sects. i don't know loads about it, but there is a quite large bit of williamsburg which is mostly (?) populated by satmar hasidic jews. there's a certain level of tolerance for that here. land of the free and all that.

en.wikipedia.org

Twelve Tribes communities - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
V

version

Well-known member
shakahislop said:
america for some reason seems to be fertile ground for cults. and fairly extreme (by UK standards) religious sects.
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I was going to say you can't really picture a fire and brimstone preacher from the UK, but then I thought of Ian Paisley.
 
sufi

sufi

lala
this lot

sufi said:
I watched a documentary about the lighthouse cult the other night - a personal development cult where they spent hours each day on berating motivational group zoom calls which were all meticulously transcribed
so you'd have two people doing first drafts, two more going through and correcting typos and abbreviations, then finally the two drafts would be merged, so not only they keep a record of everything that anybody says but also they keep the cultees under extra pressure with all this work and scrutiny of each other's work - very impressive use of admin as a tool of oppression

www.thesun.ie

I joined 'self-help' course but it turned into nightmare and cost me over £100k

JEFF Leigh-Jones thought he was part of a “life coaching” group that would help to better himself and fulfil his dreams of travelling across the world. But within three years, the skipper, 34…
www.thesun.ie www.thesun.ie
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Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
version said:
I was going to say you can't really picture a fire and brimstone preacher from the UK, but then I thought of Ian Paisley.
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Yeah, it's easy to think "Well for all our faults, at least we don't have those kind of nutters over here", and then you read about some insanely homophobic DUP MP who's a literal young-earth creationist or whatever. NI does seem to be the last redoubt of this kind of extremism in the UK, to the extent that even the Catholics over there tend to look relatively sane by comparison.
 
sufi

sufi

lala
a former colleague just posted on Linkedin
"As a cult survivor it's so great to see other people making the connection between toxic, abusive workplaces and cult dynamics/coercive control techniques. There are so many similarities, especially the culture of fear and silence around speaking out about the abuses of workplaces and abusive managers/colleagues etc.
 
Leo

Leo

Well-known member
Have to admit Southern Death Cult was one of my favorite band names. But then again, I grew up on Blue Oyster Cult.

 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
MAGA has to be the biggest and most influential cult in recent times, no? Totally outstripping the Church of Scientology or the Moonies, for example.
 
V

version

Well-known member
Mr. Tea said:
MAGA has to be the biggest and most influential cult in recent times, no? Totally outstripping the Church of Scientology or the Moonies, for example.
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It's an interesting one because it has some of the characteristics of a cult, but the 'cultists' can leave whenever they want. There isn't any serious control of the members on Trump's part. He isn't making them do anything.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
version said:
It's an interesting one because it has some of the characteristics of a cult, but the 'cultists' can leave whenever they want. There isn't any serious control of the members on Trump's part. He isn't making them do anything.
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I suppose, but it has definite cult-like characteristics, in terms of absolute loyalty to a charismatic leader, denial of reality, broad range of largely imaginary enemies, etc. And while Trump isn't forcing them to donate, exactly, many are doing so voluntarily.
 
william_kent

william_kent

Well-known member
the sorely missed @other_life once revealed to us a sinister social media cult that one of our other overseas cousins was almost, allegedly, inducted into

BEYOND THE PAIN MATRIX

The practice, which has its precedents in early Christianity and modern esoteric religion, includes masturbating, collecting one’s semen — or “whyte stone” — in a cup, mixing it with water, and consuming its contents. Sources with past ties to the organization say this ritual, along with the idea of combining semen with menstrual blood to create an even more powerful elixir called “The Alchemical Philosopher’s Stone,” would become one of the core tenets of the organization they would build.
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day light army AKA TUMPLE

]

day light army AKA TUMPLE

trigger warnings galore
 
V

version

Well-known member
version said:
www.theguardian.com

‘Eunuch maker’ appears in London court on GBH charges

Marius Gustavson is accused of broadcasting castration footage on website in wide-ranging conspiracy
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com

All of the alleged victims are said to have been part of a society in which people willingly undergo extreme body modification... The practice is linked to a subculture where men become “nullos”, short for genital nullification, by having their penis and testicles removed.
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I dunno that this quite fits the bill, but expanding the thread to secret and underground societies and subcultures would be interesting too.
 
william_kent

william_kent

Well-known member
recent cults I have liked:

Nature Boy / Carbon Nation / Melanation : ex gay porn star sets up melanin "will free your soul" control apparatus


nature boy - in search of the cult leader

Larry Ray's Sarah Lawrence sex cult:


Stolen Youth trailer

( this story is unbelievable , ex-con convinces his daughter that he is ex-CIA, on release from prison he persuades her to allow him to crash in her dorm at an elite liberal arts college, then brainwashes her room mates into his depraved sex cult... but the thing I really couldn't believe was that he made millions by flipping domains bought on godaddy )
 
william_kent

william_kent

Well-known member
my introduction to nature boy was this crazy tin foil hat wearing lady's full length expose:


Nature Boy's weird & disturbing cult

if you can get past her presentation this is fascinating

my favourite scene: where the cult get deported from Costa Rica but the airline won't let them on the plane because of the pungent odours - these are people who never wash and they shit on trees because toilets are "dirty"
 
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