[littleoldme]

conformity

YouTube - The Asch Experiment

YouTube - The Asch Experiment

YouTube - The Power of Conformity

YouTube - The Power of Conformity

[littleoldme]

Bystander effect

YouTube - The Case Of Kitty Genovese - The Bystander Effect

YouTube - The Case Of Kitty Genovese - The Bystander Effect

[HappyOldGuy]

The book looks interesting. So thanks for that. It's the sort of thing I might pick up. But as far as your argument, you seem to be wanting to have your cake and eat it too. You recognize that these are forces that act on us every day in every aspect of our lives. And by professionals in politics and advertising who are vastly more competent than any cult leader. But you are still trying to carve out a niche for some sort of supervillain cult leader. And it just isn't there. A person who joins the mormon church is undergoing an experience fundamentally the same as one who joins the unification church, and not too terribly different than one who decides to reject religion and be an atheist. They are all making conscious choices that fulfill needs in their lives.

The difference between a Reverend Moon and an Obama is motives, not techniques.

[littleoldme]

Originally Posted by HappyOldGuy

The book looks interesting. So thanks for that. It's the sort of thing I might pick up.

My pleasure

I'm reading it myself at the moment and would be interested in your opinion on it.

Originally Posted by HappyOldGuy

But as far as your argument, you seem to be wanting to have your cake and eat it too. You recognize that these are forces that act on us every day in every aspect of our lives. And by professionals in politics and advertising who are vastly more competent than any cult leader.

For clarification, while I have never worked in advertising or politics I am fascinated by the application of psychoanalytic theory to advertising and political propaganda and am pretty good at decoding the underlying discourse therein. I've studied this stuff for years and it's one of the main reasons why I'm so interested when criminals apply the same strategies to achieve their nefarious aims.

Originally Posted by HappyOldGuy

But you are still trying to carve out a niche for some sort of supervillain cult leader. And it just isn't there.

Gotta disagree with you there. There are well documented examples of criminals who have used cultic methods as strategies within their criminal groups.

Obvious examples are Nazario Moreno González of La Familia Michoacana and of course Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo, http://www.francesfarmersrevenge.com.../constanzo.htm but there are others. Mexico in particular is known for its organised criminal groups who also operate as cults and sometimes as other entities too. These polymorphic entities are interesting to me for a number of reasons.

FWIW I think there is a new generation of organsied criminals who have learned cultic methods to commit very serious crimes with relative impunity. I should know as I've spent a ridiculous amount of my time researching one particular group who are operating internationally at this very moment.

[HappyOldGuy]

I'm pretty sure the Sicilian mobsters were doing mean things to the virgin mary long before any of those folks were born. Using symbolic acts to bind a group together (and sometimes to isolate them from the dominant culture) is not new. If you are running a gang, you will need these tools. Likewise, a cult. Likewise a mainstream religion or political group. The thing with a gang is that they will tend to use things that literally prevent people from leaving because of the atrocity or illegality of the acts.

[Nicko1]

Originally Posted by HappyOldGuy

I'm pretty sure the Sicilian mobsters were doing mean things to the virgin mary long before any of those folks were born. Using symbolic acts to bind a group together (and sometimes to isolate them from the dominant culture) is not new. If you are running a gang, you will need these tools. Likewise, a cult. Likewise a mainstream religion or political group. The thing with a gang is that they will tend to use things that literally prevent people from leaving because of the atrocity or illegality of the acts.

The mafia "burning a saint" thing is an excellent example. I think the distinction that many people are trying to make is between this kind of semi-traditional "cutting of ties" and more deliberate modern techniques that fall under the umbrella of "brainwashing". While I would agree that the process and effect are substantialy the same, the degree of awareness about what is going on has advanced.

I suppose the difference I see is how aware the leaders of the group are of the psychological effects of the "symbolic acts" that you describe. Are they engaged in a ritual that they themselves believe in, or are they cynicaly and deliberately manipulating their new members?

It may be a moot point. As I (and you) have said, the process and effect are identical.

[littleoldme]

Originally Posted by HappyOldGuy

I'm pretty sure the Sicilian mobsters were doing mean things to the virgin mary long before any of those folks were born. Using symbolic acts to bind a group together (and sometimes to isolate them from the dominant culture) is not new. If you are running a gang, you will need these tools. Likewise, a cult. Likewise a mainstream religion or political group. The thing with a gang is that they will tend to use things that literally prevent people from leaving because of the atrocity or illegality of the acts.

Just to clarify my position, I have in mind a cult that recruits young women to work in the sex industry and young men to work in terrible conditions in construction sites and factories.

It is effectively a cult run by criminals, many of whom are wanted in Romania for people trafficking and various other crimes such as membership of an organised criminal group, money laundering, tax evasion, sex offenses against minors and practicing medicine without a license.

The cult members believe that the world is going to end in 2012 and they are taught that it is pointless to collect material goods, to maintain relationships with friends and families or to devote oneself to anything other then the pursuit of spiritual enlightenment.

Spiritual enlightenment is achieved by performing "karma yoga" (unpaid community work) and giving all revenue to the cult.

The cult owns numerous porn sites and sex businesses (massage parlours, and exotic / lap dance agencies) where the younger, more attractive female members work. They work very enthusiastically as they believe that they are "burning karma" and gaining enlightenment by working in the sex industry.

I do not know exactly how many members they have but they claim to have 40,000.

This criminal group has close (including family) relationships with very serious organised criminal groups who have nothing to do with cults.

This relationship means that the nastiest and most violent actions can be delegated to the other groups leaving the cult looking more like a cult than a criminal group, when in fact it is both.

The actions you describe are but a small part of their activities. They convince their members that drinking the urine of sexual partners is essential to spiritual development. Most of the porn films they produce shows people peeing on each other and drinking urine.

They also make the girls they transport across international borders swear on the bible that they will not tell anyone about the sex work. They tell the girls that they will be cursed by God if they ever tell and the girls believe them.

Sometimes truth really is stranger then fiction and when you start looking at cults some of those strange truths become apparent.

It is fascinating and very, very depressing.

[littleoldme]

I could direct readers to some recent Romanian news stories regarding this group but they are definitely NSFW

This link is SFW and will give just a small insight into what happens to young women and even underage girls once they are cult members

http://misa-yoga2.blogspot.com/2009_08_01_archive.html

[HappyOldGuy]

I have personal connections to a cult where the head guru routinely has sex with the straight men in the group. Now you might suspect some form of "brainwashing" to convince these guys that this is all okay but I've corresponded some with folks who have left the cult and it's really not. The overwhelming impression is that they pretty much all "laid on their backs and thought of england" and went along for the benefits that they got from the group membership and the favor of the group leader. That's not to say he didn't manipulate them, his first encounters were all classic sexual predator manipulation, but even knowing what was going to happen they went back. It's not because he reprogrammed their brains. It's that he created a social mileau centered on himself, where he was the ultimate authority figure, and then used the natural human social behaviors towards authority figures to get what he wanted.

[littleoldme]

Originally Posted by HappyOldGuy

I have personal connections to a cult where the head guru routinely has sex with the straight men in the group. Now you might suspect some form of "brainwashing" to convince these guys that this is all okay but I've corresponded some with folks who have left the cult and it's really not. The overwhelming impression is that they pretty much all "laid on their backs and thought of england" and went along for the benefits that they got from the group membership and the favor of the group leader. That's not to say he didn't manipulate them, his first encounters were all classic sexual predator manipulation, but even knowing what was going to happen they went back. It's not because he reprogrammed their brains. It's that he created a social mileau centered on himself, where he was the ultimate authority figure, and then used the natural human social behaviors towards authority figures to get what he wanted.

Of course these things are complex.

You describe how "he created a social mileau centered on himself, where he was the ultimate authority figure, and then used the natural human social behaviors towards authority figures to get what he wanted". This is important as it is an incredibly efficient way of controlling people.

All the experiments I linked to in this thread illustrate why this is.

I think this is why the word "brainwashing" has been largely replaced by terms such as "coercive techniques".

The fact is that, if you treat people in a certain way and expose them to certain experiences (e.g. isolation from friends and family and immersion on a cult where guru is king - or queen) you can manipulate people into doing all kinds of things that, in usual circumstances, they would never do.

I have no problem with people saying that "brainwashing" does not exist, providing that they acknowledge the effectiveness of the abusive and manipulative techniques used by cults and other criminals.

Saying that people only do what they want to do is not good enough.

Also, IME of talking to survivors of abusive cults, the more intelligent of them are very unforgiving of themselves. They say stuff like "I knew what I was getting into" and only after a lot of therapy / counselling will acknowledge that they actually didn't know at all what they were getting into at all.