Anatomy Of Cultic Behavior

Using The Example Of Branch Covidianism

I came across this article at FR. I’ve chopped it up to shape it to a consistent narrative. It’s a useful reminder of what we’re up against and of the importance to our own humanity of resisting:

They Live Amongst Us: Anatomy of a Cult [Covidians]

Off-Guardian ^ | Nov. 24, 2021 | Dustin Broadbery

...

They will believe whatever they hear and do whatever they’re told. They have been groomed by something far more powerful than the truth, called ‘the science,’ and they will follow ‘it’ right off the edge of a cliff.

But that’s only half the story. ...

WASHING THE MORAL FABRIC

This unholy mess works because a new ideology has swept across the moral fabric. Unless you’re taking an experimental medical intervention fraught with danger, you’re dancing on the graves of all those who have died.

Riddling people with guilt takes away their power, and blind obedience to authority does the rest, as Milgram discovered in his landmark experiment.

This was the famous experiment that demonstrated that a large proportion of persons could be induced to obey an authority figure—even to the point of disobeying their own consciences and inflicting what they believed to be serious harm on others.

But the fact that humanity is in an abusive relationship with its governments, is only one part of the problem. There’s a long history of cults infiltrating polite society. ...

Where the New Normal departs from other cult archetypes is in the instruments of mass communication, in the hands of a few fanatics, that ... has created an apotheosis around COVID-19, glorifying it to the divine proportions of Christianity. It has long been understood that if you repeat a lie often enough it becomes consensus.

Also of great importance to these evangelists are the decades of behavioural studies by the most distinguished experts in the field of social psychology.

The US government has spent large amounts of money conducting social science studies calculated to psychologically manipulate the masses. 

Not everyone in the Asch Experiment conformed, but the reasons why many found solidarity with the group are well understood by the behavioural scientists, on the payroll of HM government, ...

And much of what is happening today in the rank and file of the New Normal, has the lessons of the Third Reich written all over it. If you’re still oblivious to the fact that you’re being indoctrinated into a cult, it’s probably because you’ve already been indoctrinated.

THE END IS NIGH

Cults are established on the back of major events, typically apocalyptic in nature. These biblical, extra-terrestrial, or, indeed, viral prophecies speak to an impending disaster and redemption. A tinderbox setting forces people together under the protection of communitarianism, and encourages the more zealous members to denounce, ridicule and intimidate anyone not acting in accordance with the group.

Hoaxes perpetrated by governments to whip up support or even hysteria are not as uncommon as we would like to think. The technique of manufacturing events claimed by authorities to be crises on a cataclysmic scale is not unknown.

Deindividuation, as it is known, turns these harmless groups into psychological crowds, and very often results in a mob mentality.

This is the phenomenon the Belgian psychologist Desmet has been studying with regard to the Covid Panic—the forming of individuals into a psychological crowd under the pressure of a hoax pandemic.

Our need to take refuge in the herd is, after all, hardcoded into our DNA, just as fear of social exclusion and a desire to cooperate are inherited evolutionary traits. Explaining why COVID began with social isolation. And why, after capitulating to every conceivable demand, we continue to be held to ransom, with the threat of further social isolation.

Despite the obvious abuse of power, people remain beholden to their captors, through some bizarre emotional bond, strengthened every time they are released, albeit temporarily, from their captivity.

The goal is to instill a sense of dependence on government for all major decisions.

HIERARCHIES

You can identify cults by their organisational structure. ... The problem isn’t so much that ‘we are all in this together’ It’s that "we" simply are not--it’s the cult nobility lording over the rest of us.

In this heightened state of emergency, however, people will not only accept more authority from those who are beyond the rules, they will emulate the prevailing authoritarian order, rather than become a victim of it. As Hannah Arendt discovered ..., ordinary people in search of purpose and direction, who are dutifully just following orders, have the potential to commit the most atrocious acts of evil.

Throughout COVID, these unpaid, unsolicited officers in the rank and file have spread the communicable indoctrination far wider than any bureaucrat. We are full to the rafters of morally superior COVID-vigilantes, condemning anyone for the mere suggestion that the earth, might in fact, orbit the sun.

...

In the end, people’s desire to reach unanimous agreement with the group, overrides their motivation for rational, ... decision making.

EXECUTIONERS OF THE NEW NORMAL

The habitual lies, backpedalling and science that buckles under the lightest of scrutiny, is no arbitrary event. People understand they’re being duped, but refuse to act on crucial information. Instead, they acclimate to the golden age of false narratives.

Isn’t this the situation so many of us—probably most of us—find ourselves in in our daily lives?

Encouraging people to act counterintuitively will, eventually cause them to abandon personal agency altogether, ...

That’s the theory—and the goal.

In one breath, Boris Johnson implores us to get vaccinated because of the risk versus the reward. In the next, he admits ‘the vaccine doesn’t protect against catching or passing on COVID.’ Meanwhile, his co-conspirator holds Christmas to ransom if people refuse a third shot, ...

...

ANATOMY OF A CULT

Cults are illusive by nature. ... This is achieved by compounding cult rituals into the everyday humdrum, ...

There are numerous tell-tale signs you may have accidentally joined a cult, from elbow bumps to muzzles, hand sanitizer to the 2-meter rule.

There is a long history of people’s superstitions being manipulated into performing irrational acts, if they can be demoralised to the point of despair. ...

...

Some have been infantilised by their government, others reassured by Big Bird and there are those who have sold their soul at the house of ill repute.

To say that it’s a mad, mad world, doesn’t do it justice.

OTHER CULTS YOU MAY HAVE JOINED

Against this frenzy of health persecution complex, other bizarre ideologies chip away at the social fabric. Membership to society hinges on your range of pronouns. The new cultural etiquette is wokeism. Your affinity with those who have swapped their sexual identity determines your social cachet, while your desire to find the nearest bucket, paints a target on your back.

Otherworldly social theories decouple mothers from giving birth, sexualise children, and encourage toddlers to trade their gender. At the root of all of this is a flagrant attack on humanity, on nature, on carbon-based lifeforms.

...

The end game to all of this is the spiritual requisition of the human soul and a day of reckoning for humanity.

...

On the other hand, the cult has revealed its more sinister aspects, thousands of legitimate voices from science and medicine are pushing back in opposition, and even the double vaccinated are waking up to the fact that their freedoms are in jeopardy every six months.

As a wise man once said, “first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they attack you, then you win.”