One of the characteristics of all cults is that they try to isolate their followers from as much interaction with 'outsiders' as possible. They especially target one's connections to religious institutions. Personal faith is a person's last defense against false teachings.
Blogger InsanityBytes had an interesting article today concerning some Manosphere Red Pill cultists and their project to recruit unsuspecting Christian couples into their perverted philosophy. They do this---as many other cults do---by camouflaging their organizations, literature and so forth behind a veneer of being mainstream. But cutting off their disciples from the cultural mainstream is their ultimate intention.
Several bloggers on the political Left have noticed this same trend, though their Leftist outlook leaves them unable to understand the full ramifications of these trends among the Red Pill leaders. It's not simply a matter of converting from one belief to another. As the author of the project that InsanityBytes says: "There's pretty much zero literature out there now on the Truth about the natures of men and women from the Bible. Dalrock has pretty much exposed every pastor for pandering to and pedestalizing wives in marriage." In other words, they hold that all other churches are in some way corrupted, or converged, to use their terminology.
The point is that this cultish isolationism doesn't stop with organized religion. The Red Pill cultists have been kicked out of nearly every social venue on the Internet: Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, Youtube, Patreon, and many others. Now of course they claim this is censorship by these organizations (or by the Jews) who fear the 'truth' being revealed. The reality is that they've gotten themselves banned for continual violations of Terms of Use. Often this includes things like doxxing, spamming, harassment, etc.
In the most recent flap, Tim Treadstone, an especially obnoxious Red Pill troll who writes under the name Baked Alaska, was banned from Go Fund Me for trying to raise funds to organize a White Supremacist rally. Treadstone was quite indignant that the website owners should object to their resource being employed for such purposes. So Mr. Alaska was running around denouncing them and encouraging his disciples to boycott Go Fund Me in favor of WeSearchr, a Red Pill Cult front posing as a crowdsourcing site.
This is part of the cultish isolationist trend. More and more the Red Pill cultists are not only steering their followers away from Church and Family, but encouraging them to cut off social networking contacts as well. Gab, Hatreon, VOAT, RootBocks, are some of the other front-groups where cultists can interact among themselves; sort of a 'safe space' where 'unbelievers' don't challenge the Red Pill leaders' antisocial beliefs.
They have other front-groups as well: Castalia House and Infogalactic; both projects of Vox Day's to circumvent legitimate publishers. And no doubt many other such schemes are in the works.
Some may argue: yes, but in a free market, haven't the cultists as much right to compete for audiences as everybody else? The answer is: they have, but we have just as great a right---and a responsibility---to expose their scams for what they really are.
The whole flaw in the Red Pill's approach is what they call controlling the narrative. Many Conservatives erroneously believe this is a correct approach as well. The truth is that the 'narrative' is a myth. It's an idea imported from Cultural Marxism and based on their theory that facts are relative concepts. There are facts and there are falsehoods, and the truth doesn't need to be 'redefined' or 'spun'. Facts simply are facts and misinformation is not countered with contrary misinformation. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" is a proverb that rarely works out in actual practice.
Thanks for the mention, NightWind. It's a good post.
ReplyDeleteCS Lewis once wrote an essay called the Inner Ring, which kind of hit on the seductive nature of cults, that desire to be one of the few privileged ones who knows the top secret truth, a member of a special, elite club. I never understood that very well, but Red pills have managed to capture the essence quite well. That longing however, makes us really vulnerable, because we'll change our belief system, our concept of right and wrong, just to gain approval and status within the group. Charles Manson comes to mind and Jim Jones. They were charismatic,psychopaths,but I think that's one of the vulnerabilities they exploited in people, with tragic results.
I just continue to pray some of those guys find healing and that the broken ones who stumble on the red pills are not deceived.