Cult Minded: Tracing The Link Between Conspiracies & Emotional Health

Cult Minded: Tracing The Link Between Conspiracies & Emotional Health

From the Heaven’s Gate tragedy to a sect that allegedly encouraged sex between kids and adults, a look into some utopian communities gone wrong.

When Jim Jones founded the Peoples Temple in Indiana in 1955, it appealed to many as a progressive organization advocating for civil rights, and operating homes for the elderly and those with mental health issues. Like previous progressive groups, Jones’s goal was to create an egalitarian utopian community. In 1965, Jones moved his family and the Peoples Temple to the Redwood Valley in California, based on recommendations from an article in Esquire suggesting places to survive a nuclear war. In 1974, the Peoples Temple leased land in Guyana, where the group would flee media scrutiny in the United States and set up an agricultural commune. By 1978, the population of “Jonestown” in Guyana had grown to around 900, but a few disillusioned members tipped off the American media of the armed compound in South America and rehearsals of mass suicide. In November 1978 Congressman Leo Ryan traveled to Jonestown where he, three journalists and one defector were shot and killed, before Jones ordered his followers to drink a cyanide-laced drink, resulting the loss of 909 lives.

QAnon was once a fringe phenomenon — the kind most people could safely ignore. But recently, it has gone mainstream. In 2020, QAnon supporters flooded social media with false information about Covid-19, the Black Lives Matter protests and the presidential election, and recruited legions of new believers to their ranks. A December poll by NPR and Ipsos found that 17 percent of Americans believed that the core falsehood of QAnon — that “a group of Satan-worshiping elites who run a child sex ring are trying to control our politics and media” — was true.

The Church of Scientology is a group of interconnected corporate entities and other organizations devoted to the practice, administration and dissemination of Scientology, which is variously defined as a cult, a business or a new religious movement.

In the year since the insurrection that reverberated around the world, Trump’s stranglehold on Republicans has seemingly become stronger, not weaker. Graham was soon back on the golf course with him; McCarthy was soon kissing the ring at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. Many leaders of the party have set about changing the narrative of the insurrection to portray it as a heroic last stand – a new “lost cause”.

Tracing the emotional pathway

Why did Leah Remani join a cult? She claims she was radicalized by her mother but also agrees that she bought into their concept of helping to make the World a better place. In her show she helps fellow ex-cult members reckon with calling their experiences a cult, just so it triggers their mind to understand that they were tricked, bamboozled, and manipulated by Scientology programming. They were betrayed not only by the leaders but felt empowered by their own self-serving belief of being a good person.

Everyone gets betrayed by a leader in cults because the loyalty is not to the person but to their supposed cause. David Karesh told Texas news via satellite that he really was waiting for a message from God which only seemed to become a heightened realization as more ATF and law enforcement ensued a stand-off. Donald Trump held a rally on January 6th directing the attendees to storm the capitol and to take back the country by force. Everyone in the World knows Joe Biden and Kamala Harris had a free and fair election as well as the two elections in the state of Georgia. His cause is to be a winner by any means necessary. He plays on the ignorance and American pride of his followers. He’s protected by the hungry media ecosystem that thrives on Conservative values.

Emotional health is important in studying cults and other subgroups like street gangs. Individual thought and comprehension of what is truthful and factual is where it begins, the cult is where you find community whether it be on Facebook, Reddit, Youtube, or Whatsapp and your behavior is the last to be radicalized. We would consider Cult 45 as an organized crime group since they plotted against specific political figures and carried out that plot. Their emotions depicted in live footage shown during the attack showed anger, hurt, confusion, and power. The real emotion that is driving them is fear. Fear is the ultimate driving factor. The question then begs, what is so scary?

Narrated by Tahyira Savanna

Produced by TREMG LLC

http://www.tremg.info​