When Cults Die

 

Will the Right Wing Media Cult die?

By now, it should. There is a riptide of evidence that their vote fraud claims, which they've been shrieking at the top of their lungs for weeks now, are thunderingly, crashingly, false.

It's a little bit like 1941, when the Jehovah's Witnesses claimed that the end of the world would take place. The date came, and went, and people realize that the end of the world hadn't happened.

Oops.

It happened again in 1975. The Jehovah's Witnesses again claimed the end of the world was at hand, and it didn't happen.

They claimed afterwards that the apocalypse happened "spiritually." (There's more to it than that, but I won't go into it.)

As a result, many people left the JW's forever. But interestingly, some remained in. In spite of overwhelming proof to the contrary! There are still Jehovah's Witnesses today, existing on the periphery of religion to feast upon the gullible.

Cults are remarkably hardy. In the case of the Seekers, a UFO cult which existed in the 1950's, it proved remarkably difficult to kill. The cult was led by a woman named Dorothy Martin, a.k.a. Sister Thedra, who said that the world was ending, and that Aliens would come and rescue the faithful on December 21st, 1954. Unbeknownst to them, a social psychologist named Leon Festinger had infiltrated the cult in order to study the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance. December 21st came and went, and many of the cult members were disillusioned. But Sister Thedra re-positioned the date to be Christmas Eve instead. A majority of the followers actually went along with this! But then Christmas Eve came and went, and still no Alien Rapture. More cult members left. But then, Sister Thedra proclaimed that the Apocalypse had been averted due to the strength of their faith. Remarkably, a significant number went along with this too! They were as exuberant as they had ever been, and even more fervent than before!

The cult didn't die until this remnant minority died off.

The frightening truth about cults is that they rarely die outright, unless its followers do. In most cases where a cult dies, they usually take nearly all the followers with it. In the 1970's, cult leader Jim Jones took all his followers to Bolivia in South America, and there made them all drink poisoned fruit juice. He preached, and his followers fervently believed, that a nuclear holocaust was eminent, and that by 1978 it would take place. Better to die fast than endure all that! It was errantly reported by at least one newspaper that Jones and his followers drank poisoned Kool-Aid. This is literally where we get the expression "drink the Kool-Aid" from.

The cult died when Jones and nearly all his followers did.

Suicide is one of the only oddly effective ways a cult can die. The Heaven's Gate cult killed itself off in 1997 with the arrival of comet Hale Bopp. In Kanungu, Uganda, The Movement For The Restoration Of The Ten Commandments Of God (MRTCG) persuaded some 300 members to commit suicide by self immolation or poison, including 73 children. The Order of the Solar Temples saw some 74 of its own members commit suicide between 1994 and 1997 in Switzerland, Canada and France.

It's no secret that cults usually die if their followers do. The Essenes, who are credited with writing the Dead Sea Scrolls, were celibate, and so died off because there were few children to carry on their creeds of faith. The Desert Fathers were an early group of Christian ascetics who died off for the same reason. The Shakers were a group of Quakers who also practiced celibacy. There are almost no Shakers left today. Only two Shakers were left in the entire world as of 2017.

And what of the Right Wing Media Cult? Will it go the way of the Seekers, with most of its followers dropping off?

I'm convinced that some of it may. After blasting utter falsehoods regarding election fraud for weeks, even months (if one includes the false claims prior to the election), it should be quite clear that the people who preached these lies are false preachers. Like the Seekers, and like the Jehovah's Witnesses, some of the flock should peel off, walk away, and never return. Hannity, Limbaugh, Ingram, Levin, and especially Art Jones should all have their careers utterly ruined. Or at least ended on any network with the word "news" in the title. But even if this wonderful outcome were to happen, people just don't change in light of irrefutable evidence easily! Like the Seekers, or the JW's, some will try to find any rationalization they can get their hands on to convince themselves that they weren't absolute suckers for five whole years - at minimum.

They will find some other false preacher. Some new Limbaugh or Hannity will come along to fill the void.

It's a little bit like when James Randi debunked Peter Popoff back in the 80's. People wrote to James Randi afterward, saying something like, "Thank you so much for exposing that awful Peter Popoff, Mr. Randi. You'll be happy to know I'm giving my money to Jerry Falwell now." To which Randi would say, "They're just bound and determined to throw their money away on something!"

This is the ultimate off-ramp! It is a chance for the extremism to be exiled from the Republican Party at long last, for Fox News to regain its integrity, and for sanity to be returned to our media, and our governing process.

And if not, then our only hope is to await the Technological Singularity and hope the robots will save us.

Eric

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