So many media outlets are now calling Trump and his base a “cult of personality.” They point to the blind devotion of his followers and their willingness to accept any bad behavior, excuse any scandal, and shrug off endless instances of lies, economic hardships, and even civil rights violations perpetrated by this administration.

As I have pointed out, the Cult of Trump is a real phenomenon, complete with controls that are easily classified through my BITE Model of Authoritarian Control^® and other models of manipulation, such as Lifton’s Eight Criteria For Thought Reform.

But the “cult of personality” factor isn’t the whole story, and doesn’t explain what will happen when Trump’s career inevitably ends, or even why his base follows him.

In this week’s article, It’s Not Just a Cult of Personality, I describe in detail why focusing on only Trump and his personality hides the networks that recruit, shape, and steer his base, and why his followers are not just one cult, but a network of groups, each devoted to Trump because he is the current best vehicle for furthering their own agenda. It’s an article you’ll want to read and share with anyone who wants to understand what is happening in our political sphere today.

For my Friday Livestream, I will be talking with my guest, psychiatrist Ravi Chandra MD, whom I have interviewed before, about his activism in the American Psychiatric Association, about his efforts to get mental health professionals to be willing to lead on issues that concern people’s well-being! The APA shut down its listserv for members, stifling information sharing among them. Information Control!

And if you missed last week’s livestreams, you can see them here:

Inside the 'COVID-Conscious' Lesbian Bar Controversy: Cult Dynamics?

Cult Expert Answers YOUR Current Questions about Trump & Politics

On this week’s episode of my Cults, Culture & Coercion podcast Is It Dementia, Alzheimer’s, or Medication Side Effects?, I spoke with my guest Germaine Odenheimer, MD, about the danger of assuming that Trump has dementia without actual medical clinical evidence. We outline possible causes of the president’s behavior and discuss the dangers of labeling early behaviors and “locking in” a diagnosis without proper evidence. If you have a loved one who is an older adult, you’ll want to watch this one.

Catch the full episode here: Listen on Apple | Spotify | Watch on YouTube

You can also read my accompanying Substack article about our conversation here.

Next week’s episode will feature author, filmmaker, actor, and director Ben McKenzie, whose documentary, EVERYONE IS LYING TO YOU FOR MONEY, based on his New York Times bestselling book, Easy Money, chronicles his investigation into the murky world of cryptocurrency and fraud. This is really worthwhile!

We are delighted to announce that we have now gotten a Registered Trademark for the BITE Model of BITE Model of Authoritarian Control^®!

Remember, check with legitimate state election officials that you are registered and request a mail-in ballot if you wish. Be sure that your neighbors and everyone you know is registered to vote and able to do so! We must defeat MAGA in the coming elections!

As always, please let us know what you think about these pieces or what you’d like to see us discuss in the future. Thanks so much!

These days there are too many people on social media proclaiming Trump has dementia when she says that all the facts are not available. In this interview, we didn’t focus on Donald Trump. This topic demands an expert knowing all the facts and doing her due diligence before tracking down a correct diagnosis.

Dementia misdiagnosis changes what happens to a person next: the medications they take, the independence they keep, and the care their family chooses. A woman in her sixties, a bank clerk, spent three or four years losing her thinking skills. She quit work and stopped driving. Her son prepared to move her into a nursing home, and her latest diagnosis was Alzheimer’s disease. He asked for one more opinion.

The second opinion came from my guest on Cults, Culture & Coercion, Germaine Odenheimer, M.D. Dr. Odenheimer is a geriatric neurologist and professor emeritus at the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine. She retired from academic medicine in 2017, keeps her medical license, and advocates for people with dementia and their caregivers. She also cared for her own mother, who had dementia. We first spoke in 2022 about her fight against a false Alzheimer’s cure, in our earlier conversation⁵. This time we talked about the dementia misdiagnosis problems she has seen across her career.

Why Dementia Misdiagnosis Belongs on a Podcast About Coercion

Dr. Odenheimer and I are colleagues in the Program in Psychiatry and the Law, a forensic think associated with Harvard Medical School. Like myself, she values truth telling and integrity. This commitment can get us both in conflict with others in our respective fields. In my practice, former members of high-control groups often arrive carrying a misdiagnosis of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, when the symptoms trace back to undue influence. The DSM-5, the diagnostic manual of the American Psychiatric Association, even lists “identity disturbance due to prolonged and intense coercive persuasion”³.

My BITE Model of Authoritarian Control™ describes four categories of control a group exerts: Behavior, Information, Thought, and Emotions. A clinician who never asks about group involvement cannot see them. Medical care follows a similar pattern. A doctor treats a symptom, a label sticks, and nobody asks whether something else explains it.

Medical authority sits on the spectrum of influence like any other authority. Healthy influence explains its reasoning, invites questions, and welcomes a second opinion. Undue influence, the use of pressure or deception to override a person’s judgment, discourages questions. I am not comparing doctors to cult leaders. I am pointing to one shared habit worth watching: refusing to consider another explanation.

Delirium Looks Like Dementia

Delirium is a sudden state of confusion caused by a medical problem. Dr. Odenheimer says doctors often misdiagnose it, which makes it a frequent source of dementia misdiagnosis. Inattention separates it from dementia¹. She asks patients to repeat a string of unrelated numbers, and a person who cannot repeat at least five digits raises her suspicion of delirium. One patient with dementia and severe memory loss repeated nine.

Common causes include urinary tract infection, a medication, kidney failure, and dehydration, she explained. Dementia raises the risk of delirium, so a person with dementia is more vulnerable to it¹. She has watched this unfold in emergency rooms. A longtime patient arrives confused and agitated, and a doctor blames the dementia. “No, this isn’t their dementia,” she tells them. “This is delirium on top of their dementia.” In theory, treating the infection or stopping the medication reverses the delirium. The distinction matters, yet in her words, “people are not making it. Doctors are not making it.” 

I teach the mind-body connection, and I had not considered a urinary tract infection or constipation as a cause of cognitive change.

Ten Medications and a Wrong Diagnosis

Back to the bank clerk. Her slurred speech and unsteady gait did not fit Alzheimer’s disease. Dr. Odenheimer reviewed her medication list and found about ten psychotropic drugs, medications acting on the mind and affecting cognition. “I don’t know how she could even walk,” she told me. The patient’s psychiatrist insisted she needed everyone. Dr. Odenheimer found a second psychiatrist who worked with her to withdraw nearly all of them. Three months later, the woman “came back steady, stable, non-slurred speech, and normal cognition, completely normal.” Overmedication had produced a dementia misdiagnosis.

The woman’s medications had not changed in years, which puzzled Dr. Odenheimer at first. Delirium from a drug usually follows a new prescription, but this woman’s kidney function had declined, so her body no longer cleared the same drugs as before. “The more drugs you’re on, the more likely you’re going to have some cognitive impairment,” Dr. Odenheimer said.

The story did not end there. The woman later urged everyone she met to quit their medications, had a psychotic break, and returned to a psychiatric hospital. Dr. Odenheimer told her some of the stopped medications might have been necessary. The team settled on a low dose of one antipsychotic, and she lived independently for five more years. Do not stop a prescribed medication on your own. Work with a psychopharmacological psychiatrist, a psychiatrist who specializes in how psychiatric drugs affect the mind and body.

A Second Opinion When Experts Double Down

A mother in Greece once contacted me about her son, who had belonged to an Indian guru cult. He was found in his apartment naked, meditating, and refusing food and water. Hospitals had held him  for years, misdiagnosing schizo-affective disorder. I flew over. He was so heavily medicated that I was unable to hold a conversation. I met his two eminent psychiatrists, and both insisted they had made no mistake. I had no authority to change his treatment.

Back in the United States, I described the case to Dr. Louis Jolyon West, who founded and directed the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute and studied Chinese Communist coercive persuasion⁶. He examined the young man, agreed he was overmedicated, and arranged a transfer to McLean Hospital in Massachusetts. Doctors there lowered his medication under supervision to test whether cult involvement explained his condition. I held an intervention with former members on the hospital grounds. He came off all of his medication and returned to Greece to a life of his own.

I do not ask anyone to distrust doctors. Fourth Generation psychological warfare psychological warfare methods push anti-expert and anti-science, anti-democratic institutions to demoralize a population. I reject this wholeheartedly. I want to research top doctors with credentials and experience, who have open minds, are willing to consider alternate hypotheses based on facts, and a commitment to do no harm.

Stay in Your Lane

Dr. Odenheimer fought the same narrowness inside her own clinic. Doctors referred patients with diabetes or thyroid disease to the dementia clinic only after those patients failed to follow instructions, and the clinic’s director replied with a rule: referring doctors should get patients to follow directions first. She disagreed. “The reason they’re not following the directions is because they’re having cognitive impairment.” Colleagues told her to stay in her lane. “I’ve never stayed in my lane, and I’ve frequently been in trouble.”

Questions Families Should Ask

If you doubt a diagnosis for someone you love, start with questions. Ask whether anyone checked for infection, dehydration, kidney problems, and medication effects before attributing the confusion to dementia. Ask for a medication list and the reason for each drug. Ask for a second opinion. Dr. Odenheimer also urges caregivers to join a support group, and the Alzheimer’s Association lists groups by location⁴. She notes some groups are not good, yet members of the groups she joins on Zoom tell her the groups saved their lives. 

We also returned to the supplement scams targeting desperate families, which I covered in our 2022 conversation⁵. Both topics share one lesson. When a person or an institution asks you to stop asking questions, ask more of them. What would change in your family if you treated every label as a hypothesis worth testing? 

Resources:

Alzheimer’s, Dementia and on Being Wise Consumers: A Conversation with Germaine Odenheimer, M.D. Dr. Odenheimer describes the dinner-talk scam she investigated and explains the difference between dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. 

Mental Health Diagnoses and QAnon: A Complicated Issue. I explain why clinicians who skip a history of group involvement misdiagnose and overmedicate. 

Synanon and Enthusiastic Sobriety: Cults Disguised as Drug Treatment. Two cults posed as drug treatment, and the post lists red flags to check before choosing a program. 

An Expert on Addiction and Critic of 12-Step Programs: A Conversation with Lance Dodes M.D. Dr. Dodes explains what his research and clinical work say about addiction and its treatment. 

Multi-Level Marketing Groups Defraud Consumers! I describe how deception in multi-level marketing recruitment hurts consumers.

References 

1. Adsule K, Mohanaselvan A, Schoo C. Differentiating Delirium Versus Dementia in Older Adults. StatPearls. NCBI Bookshelf. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/books/NBK570594/ 

2. Dementia Officially Replaced by Major Neurocognitive Disorder, per DSM-5. Neurology Reviews. 2014;22(5):43-47. https://www.mdedge.com/neurologyreviews/article/81892/alzheimers-cognition/dementia-officially-replaced-major 

3. Hassan S. Mental Health Diagnoses and QAnon: A Complicated Issue. Cults, Culture & Coercion with Dr. Steve Hassan. https://stevenhassan.freedomofmind.com/p/qanon-mental-health 

4. Alzheimer’s Association. Support Groups. https://www.alz.org/help-support/community/support-groups 

5. Hassan S. Alzheimer’s, Dementia and on Being Wise Consumers: A Conversation with Germaine Odenheimer, M.D. Cults, Culture & Coercion with Dr. Steve Hassan. August 11, 2022. https://stevenhassan.freedomofmind.com/p/alzheimers-dementia-and-on-being-wise-consumers-a-conversation-with-germaine-odenheimer-m-d 

6. Louis Jolyon West papers, 1890-1998. Online Archive of California, UCLA Library Special Collections. https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c84j0hcd 

There is a preponderance of reporting and commentary in the media describing Donald Trump’s hold on his supporters as a “cult of personality.” The phrase is now omnipresent, and points to Trump’s rallies, slogans, and the in-group loyalty that seems to survive most any political scandal as evidence.

However, this frame is incomplete, as seeing MAGA as a …

Read more

When a member of a high-control authoritarian group is feeling lonely, depressed, or even suicidal, leadership might not directly forbid them from seeking therapy.

But often, the message from leadership will be clear: if you were a better believer, you wouldn’t be feeling like this. From only being allowed to see group-approved counselors, to being told to simply “pray more,” to being informed that all therapists are part of a global conspiracy to destroy humanity, members of destructive cults have many roadblocks thrown up between them and their mental health.

Both controlling groups and abusive spouses alike will attempt to control those under them by cutting away any external support.

In this week’s Substack post, Mental Health Crises Inside Authoritarian Cults, I take a deep dive into the manipulation and closed-loop system preventing many people from seeking the mental health support they need.

If you are not already a paid subscriber, please consider becoming one. In addition to supporting my work, you will receive access to my full catalog of helpful guides, insightful interviews, and years of blog posts on cults and their inner workings - posts like:

My friend and protege, Jim Picariello, will be taking on this week’s Wednesday livestream on Sept. 30th, at 2 pm EDT. He will be talking about how anyone can be susceptible to cult thinking - including “us vs. them” narratives, litmus testing, and cancel culture - no matter what side of the political aisle someone aligns with.

I will be returning for our Friday livestream on October 2nd, also at 2 pm EDT. I will be answering audience questions and discussing the midterms, my concerns and hopes, and what we can do to help restore sanity to our nation.

Last week’s Wednesday livestream was such a great success that Sarah Burris of AlterNet wrote an article, Former cult member details top signs America is being run by a cult leader. I’m so proud of Jim that his livestream made such an impact!

And if you missed last week’s livestreams, you can see them here:

Is Trump Using Cult Leader Tactics?! The BITE Model Explained

Jehovah’s Witness Blood Policy Changed: The Deaths, Trauma & Untold Story - with guest Isaac Carmignani

Matthew Rozsa of AlterNet has written another article citing my work, The GOP keeps caving to Trump, and science has found the surprising reason why, this time explaining why so many Republicans stay loyal to Trump, even - and especially when he is acting in ways that would bring condemnation from them if anyone else did something similar.

In this week’s episode of my Cults, Culture & Coercion podcast, How to Build a Truth Engine: Friedrich Moser on Disinformation and the Mind, I speak with Moser about his compelling work as a documentary filmmaker. The film brings together investigative journalism, computer science, and neuroscience to examine our susceptibility to disinformation and what might help us resist it. The film was executive produced by George Clooney.

Catch the full episode here: Listen on Apple | Spotify | Watch on YouTube

You can also read my accompanying Substack article about our conversation here.

Next week’s episode will feature my friend and colleague, clinical psychologist, attorney, researcher, writer Dr. Dawson Woodrum. We are collaborating together on research exploring coercion and human agency: our ability to think, decide, and act for ourselves.

Remember, check with legitimate state election officials that you are registered and request a mail-in ballot if you wish. Be sure that your neighbors and everyone you know is registered to vote and able to do so! We must defeat MAGA in the coming elections!

As always, please let us know what you think about these pieces or what you’d like to see us discuss in the future. Thanks so much!

Donald Trump has repeatedly described critical news coverage as “fake news” and used the phrase “enemy of the people” about news media. His remarks raise a question that extends beyond any particular politician: How do people evaluate evidence when the sources providing it have already been discredited in their minds? Reporting on Trump’s statements doc…

Read more

Lee Marsh, a former Jehovah’s Witness, a retired Canadian counselor and president of Advocates for Awareness of Watchtower Abuses, spent years inside an abusive marriage, one she was coerced to stay in. She had been sexually abused as a child — first by her father, later by her mother’s partner — and both times the matter was handled by elders at her Ki…

Read more

This is something I needed to share. It is very thought-provoking and explores some questions we need to ask ourselves.

Just over 80 years after the Holocaust, we are looking at rising fascism worldwide. Did we not learn the lessons humanity needed to learn? Social psychology has taught us much-needed knowledge about how the mind works and how good people can be deceived and programmed into a pseudo self. I learned firsthand 50 years ago how my mind could be taken over, and I could be involved with destroying democracy.

This week’s Substack article, From Creativity to Catastrophe: How Societies Shape the Human Mind, is a special guest post by my father-in-law, Dr. Zvi Bar-Yam. He escaped the Nazis as a child in Poland, got a PhD in physics, and had a distinguished career. As we face dictatorship and disruption, he reflects and encourages us to work together to a common vision that will enable us to survive and live in diversity and freedom.

Matt Stone of the Vanguard News Group has recently posted an op-ed article, Joe Rogan Built a Cult and Called It A Podcast, in which he uses my BITE Model to quantify how comedian and podcaster Joe Rogan has created an unhealthy web of influence around the followers of his podcast - many of them impressionable young men. I wrote to Matt, and he said the editor took out the BITE Model, and despite my email to the editor, I don't believe this was fixed yet.

I will be traveling this week, but my assistant and protege Jim Picariello will be filling in for the Wednesday livestream on September 23rd, at 2 pm EDT. He will be focusing on how Trump’s actions and policies align with my BITE Model.

I will be returning for the Friday Livestream on September 25th, from 2-3 pm EDT. My guest, former Jehovah’s Witness elder Isaac Carmignani, will discuss the radical change in the cult’s blood transfusion policy. I wrote a blog post about Éloïse Dupuis, a 27-year-old Canadian JW woman who died in childbirth because she refused the necessary transfusion. Bring your questions and comments!

This week’s episode of my Cults, Culture & Coercion podcast, Selling Financial Freedom, features Dr. William Keep, who has spent decades examining the business practices behind multi-level marketing (MLMs), as well as other varieties of commercial cults, including labor trafficking and cryptocurrency. We talked about what drives people into these groups and the grim financial realities of our current economy that have created fertile ground for these types of exploitative groups to thrive.

Catch the full episode here: Listen on Apple | Spotify | Watch on YouTube

You can also read my accompanying Substack article about our conversation here.

Today, MLMs were in the news: FTC Takes Historic Action Against Multilevel Marketing Operator Amway for Unfair and Deceptive Business Practices

And for more on MLMs, remember to check out last week’s article for paid subscribers, How MLMs Exploit Women’s Work.

Next week’s podcast episode will feature filmmaker Friedrich “Fritz” Moser; we will be talking about his documentary, How to Build a Truth Engine (produced by George Clooney), which unpacks why people are vulnerable to disinformation, fake news, and conspiracy theories and what we can do to fight back. There are few topics more important than how to navigate the digital disinformation/ misinformation that is proliferating worldwide.

And if you’re not already a paid subscriber, please consider becoming one: when you upgrade to a paid subscription, you directly support my ongoing work, as well as receive complete access to my entire archive of articles, comprehensive guides, and exclusive interviews, such as:

Remember, check with legitimate state election officials that you are registered and request a mail-in ballot if you wish. Be sure that your neighbors and everyone you know is registered to vote and able to do so! We must defeat MAGA in the coming elections!

As always, please let us know what you think about these pieces or what you’d like to see us discuss in the future. Thanks so much!

You want to help your family. Someone you trust offers an opportunity to earn extra income, work from home, and become financially independent. They introduce you to enthusiastic people who seem to share your values. Perhaps they attend your house of worship.

Then you discover that making money requires recruiting other people. When the income fails to m…

Read more

I would like to share this essay written recently by my beloved 98-year-old father-in-law for thoughtful people to read, reflect, and hopefully share with others who wish to have wisdom from one of the smartest, kindest, most loving people I have been blessed to know since 1980.

When I first met his daughter Aureet Bar-Yam, and fell in love, he was a physicist with a PhD from MIT, teaching physics at U Mass Dartmouth where he became head of the department while simultaneously conducting research at Brookhaven National labs. His son, Yaneer Bar-Yam later got his PhD from MIT in physics and went on to found and direct the New England Complex System Institute (necsi.edu). Yaneer taught me the basics of complex systems, held conferences, invited me to teach and because of him helped me to develop my Strategic Interactive Approach (SIA) that I wrote about in my book, Freedom of Mind: Helping Loved Ones Leave Controlling People, Cults and Beliefs.

1. The Question

For many years after the Second World War, I chose not to speak about my experiences during the Holocaust. I had survived the Kraków Ghetto, escaped twice through the city’s sewer system, and eventually survived the war. Yet I could see no constructive lesson to be drawn from what had happened. Remembering horror did not, by itself, seem to tell us how to prevent its recurrence.

That attitude changed in 1991. My daughter confronted me with the consequences of my silence. She told me, in effect, that the void created by not knowing was worse than knowing the past. I promised then to take my children to Kraków and show them where our family had lived, suffered and escaped. I kept that promise.

For many years thereafter, my concern was principally remembrance: to preserve testimony, establish historical facts, and make certain that subsequent generations would know what had happened.

More recently, another change occurred.

During visits to Holocaust memorials in Warsaw and Kraków, and particularly while responding to detailed questions posed by a Holocaust historian, I found myself asking a different question. The Holocaust was not produced by a natural disaster. Human beings created the institutions, language, laws, propaganda and social conditions that permitted other human beings—including children—to be systematically excluded, transported and murdered.

How could the standards of acceptable human behavior change so profoundly?

And if they could change in a destructive direction, could societies also change in the opposite direction?

I remembered my friend Emanuel Tanay, whom I first met as a young man during our flight from Nazi persecution. Having witnessed what human beings could do, he decided to study the human mind. He became a distinguished psychiatrist and expert in homicide cases. Much of his professional work concerned the psychology and responsibility of individuals.

The question that increasingly interests me is somewhat different.

What happens to the human mind collectively?

How can attitudes regarded as unacceptable by much of a population become tolerated, normalized, or even celebrated within a generation? Conversely, what enables societies at other moments to release extraordinary reserves of creativity, cooperation, generosity and achievement?

I am a physicist, not a social psychologist, historian or political scientist. This essay therefore does not propose a theory of mass behavior. Its purpose is more modest: to ask whether certain questions about collective human behavior deserve more sustained and integrated investigation.

Perhaps asking the right questions is itself worthwhile.

2. The Puzzle of a Generation

Human beings acquire social norms remarkably early. Societies depend upon norms to coordinate behavior, establish expectations and make cooperation possible. Modern research examines how those norms emerge, spread through networks and generations, persist, and sometimes change or disappear. Importantly for our inquiry, scholars themselves describe this research as fragmented among disciplines.

This presents a puzzle.

We tend to regard fundamental moral principles as deeply embedded. Do not murder. Protect children. Do not punish people for their ancestry. Treat neighbors as human beings.

Yet history demonstrates that the boundaries surrounding such principles can move with frightening speed.

The question is not simply why dictators become dictators or murderers become murderers. It is how sufficiently large portions of a society come to participate in, accommodate themselves to, profit from, remain silent about, or rationalize conduct that previously would have been considered unacceptable.

There is an important distinction here between explanation and inevitability.

Germany emerged from the First World War facing defeat, political instability, national humiliation, heavy reparations, economic disruption and, subsequently, catastrophic unemployment. These conditions are indispensable to understanding what followed. At the same time, Germany remained a country of considerable scientific, technological and industrial capability, with particular strengths in fields such as chemistry, engineering and manufacturing. The coexistence of severe national difficulties with substantial productive and intellectual resources is important to our inquiry. It does not tell us what alternative course Germany could or should have followed, and we do not propose to speculate about such alternatives. It does, however, caution against treating the destructive course that ultimately prevailed as the inevitable consequence of Germany’s predicament.

The question for us is therefore not what Germany should have done, but whether other courses remained possible—and, more generally, what determines which possibilities a society recognizes and ultimately chooses under severe pressure.

This raises a broader methodological question:

When examining a society that moved toward catastrophe, should we consider not only the pressures acting upon it but also the human, intellectual, institutional and productive resources still available to it?

That observation produces a question that should recur throughout this essay:

Under severe historical pressure, what determines which choices a society perceives as possible—and which choices it eventually makes?

Perhaps an even more revealing question is whether the available field of choice itself changes.

At one moment, many futures may appear possible. Later, some become politically unacceptable. Still later, dissent becomes socially costly or dangerous. Eventually, conduct once regarded as extraordinary may appear normal, necessary, patriotic, or inevitable.

Can we understand that progression?

3. Periods of Extraordinary Creation

History also presents the opposite puzzle.

There are periods during which extraordinary concentrations of human creativity seem to occur.

The Renaissance produced remarkable developments in painting, sculpture, architecture, literature, scholarship and scientific inquiry. These achievements were not the work of isolated geniuses alone. They depended upon patrons, workshops, cities, trade, education, intellectual exchange and institutions that allowed talent to develop and ideas to circulate.

Vienna around the beginning of the twentieth century presents another remarkable concentration. Music, painting, architecture, medicine, psychology, philosophy, mathematics and physics developed within an unusually fertile intellectual environment.

Yet Vienna also warns against romanticizing creative periods. Cultural brilliance coexisted with nationalism, political instability and antisemitism. Creativity and social deterioration are therefore not necessarily opposite states occupying different historical periods. They can exist simultaneously.

A third example is particularly interesting because I experienced it professionally: the United States following the Soviet launch of Sputnik in 1957.

Sputnik was a shock. It demonstrated that the Soviet Union had achieved a technological capability many Americans had assumed belonged to the United States.

Yet an important part of the American response was not withdrawal but investment.

Science and engineering expanded. Universities and research laboratories grew. The space program established an extraordinarily ambitious national objective. Education received renewed attention, including experimentation with curricula, methods of teaching science and mathematics, and later broader experiments in how schools themselves might operate.

At roughly the same historical period, the United States underwent profound struggles over racial equality and subsequently gender equality. There was increasing confidence that poverty, disease and even world hunger might yield to organized human effort and scientific knowledge.

These developments had different causes and should not all be attributed to Sputnik. What interests us is the broader atmosphere they may represent: a belief that difficult problems could be addressed and that the future could be deliberately improved.

This raises a question:

What causes a society, when confronted by difficulty or threat, to expand rather than contract its sense of possibility?

And another:

What conditions allow large numbers of individuals to believe that discovery, education, experimentation and cooperation are worthwhile—and give them the institutions through which to act on that belief?

4. Periods of Collective Deterioration

The contrast is disturbing.

Nazi Germany, Stalin’s Soviet Union, and militaristic Imperial Japan differed profoundly in history, ideology, institutions and objectives. We should resist treating them as instances of a single psychological disease.

But they invite a common set of questions.

How does loyalty become obedience?

How does disagreement become betrayal?

How does another human group move from being different, to inferior, to threatening, and eventually to undeserving of ordinary moral protection?

How does violence become administratively routine?

And how much participation requires genuine ideological conviction?

Perhaps a destructive system does not need everyone to believe everything it proclaims. It may need some true believers, some who benefit, some who fear the consequences of resistance, some who obey authority, and many who simply adapt to what they perceive everyone else to be accepting.

This suggests that we should distinguish private conviction from public behavior.

A society may appear unanimous when it is not. People observe one another. Silence can be interpreted as agreement; that apparent agreement may then encourage further silence.

The problem therefore may not always be that millions of minds have been independently converted to the same belief.

It may sometimes be that millions of individuals are responding to their perceptions of one another.

5. What Psychology Knows

There is already extensive scholarship relevant to these questions: conformity, obedience, social identity, authoritarianism, persuasion, social norms, dehumanization, moral disengagement, diffusion of responsibility, dissent and resistance.

We should approach this literature with humility. We are entering several mature fields of scholarship, not discovering phenomena that psychologists and social scientists have overlooked.

Yet something important appears in contemporary reviews: knowledge about social norms remains divided among psychology, sociology, economics, political science, anthropology and cultural-evolution research. 

Social norms can exert substantial influence through internalization and through formal or informal enforcement. But they can also be challenged and attempts to manipulate norms do not always produce their intended effects. People may resist when influence threatens autonomy, identity or deeply held values. 

This complicates any simple conception of “mass psychology.”

People are neither entirely independent actors nor passive material waiting to be molded.

They influence one another.

And perhaps this is where apparently insignificant choices become interesting.

Consider two ordinary words:

us and them.

Neither is objectionable. Human beings necessarily distinguish among families, communities, professions and nations.

But what happens when the distinction is repeatedly associated with value?

We are responsible; they are irresponsible.

We are civilized; they are primitive.

We belong; they do not.

We are threatened; they are the threat.

Research on social and national identity demonstrates that the definition and boundaries of “us” can have both beneficial and harmful consequences. 

That leads to a question whose simplicity may conceal its importance:

Can repeated choices of language gradually change the boundaries of the moral community—who is perceived as one of “us,” and therefore entitled to empathy, dignity and protection?

6. What History Adds

Psychology can identify mechanisms. History places them within circumstances.

People do not make decisions in laboratories. They act amid unemployment, war, technological disruption, political institutions, family obligations, propaganda, religious beliefs, economic incentives, fear and uncertainty.

Leadership matters.

Institutions matter.

Education matters.

Communications technology matters.

Historical accident may matter.

And choices made at one stage alter the choices available at the next.

This suggests that we should examine historical cases not simply by asking what caused the eventual outcome, but by reconstructing the alternatives available along the way.

For Germany, for example:

What responses to the post-World War I crisis were genuinely available?

Who advocated them?

Why did some gain support while others lost it?

At what stages did choices narrow?

When did political opposition become personally dangerous?

When did language change?

When did discrimination become legally respectable?

When did violence become tolerable?

When did participation in previously unthinkable conduct become an occupation performed by ordinary bureaucracies and professions?

This way of asking the question preserves human agency without ignoring historical constraint.

7. The Constructive Mirror Image

Studies of catastrophe naturally ask why people conform, obey and hate.

But perhaps we should ask the mirror-image questions with equal seriousness.

Why do people cooperate?

Why do they sometimes protect strangers?

What makes disagreement productive rather than threatening?

What encourages curiosity?

What allows individuals to challenge established knowledge?

What gives young people confidence that they can discover something their teachers do not already know?

What enables societies to enlarge the group regarded as deserving equal treatment?

These questions may concern some of the same psychological mechanisms found in destructive collective behavior.

The Apollo program required shared identity, common purpose, leadership, institutional discipline, enormous public expenditure, sacrifice and social prestige attached to a national objective.

Collective mobilization itself is therefore neither good nor evil.

Perhaps the critical questions are:

Toward what objective is it mobilized?

Who is included in the community it serves?

Can the objective be questioned?

What happens to dissenters?

What means are considered impermissible even in pursuit of the common goal?

The same human capacity to coordinate with others may contribute to a moon landing or to a war.

The mechanism alone does not determine the moral result.

8. Can Mass Psychology Be Guided?

This question is uncomfortable because collective attitudes are already deliberately influenced.

Businesses advertise.

Political candidates campaign.

Governments encourage vaccination, military service, tax compliance and energy conservation.

Schools attempt to transmit values as well as knowledge.

Religious institutions teach moral behavior.

Modern communication systems continuously influence what millions of people see, discuss and regard as important.

Research shows that information about what peers do or approve of can sometimes be used to change behavior, including environmentally relevant behavior. 

Consider a modest example.

The I LOVE NY campaign was introduced in 1977 during a period of economic difficulty. New York State itself describes the campaign as part of an effort to improve the state’s image and stimulate tourism and economic development. It would be unreasonable to claim that three words transformed New York; many much larger forces were involved. But the campaign raises an interesting question about identification. 

Could words encourage people to perceive a place as something to which they belong?

Then consider:

I love our planet Earth.

It is not a solution to climate change, pollution, war or resource depletion.

But notice what the words attempt to do.

Love establishes an emotional relationship.

Our establishes shared belonging.

Planet Earth defines a community larger than nationality.

Could repeated language of this kind modestly enlarge the conception of “us” and strengthen a norm of stewardship?

We do not know.

And that is precisely why the example belongs in this essay—not as a recommendation, but as a question.

If language can narrow “us,” can language enlarge it?

If collective behavior can be influenced, when is such influence education and when is it manipulation?

Who decides which behavior is “constructive”?

History gives us ample reason to distrust anyone claiming the authority to manufacture a better human being.

Therefore, the constructive use of social influence presents a moral problem of its own:

Can societies consciously strengthen cooperation, responsibility and widening moral concern while preserving individual autonomy, pluralism and the right to dissent?

9. Early Warning Signals

If social deterioration occurs gradually, perhaps its early stages can be recognized.

This may be one of the most consequential questions of the inquiry.

Could we observe changes in:

the language used about minorities;

the frequency with which political opponents are described as enemies;

public tolerance of violence;

acceptance of demonstrably false information;

independence of institutions;

punishment of dissent;

definitions of citizenship and belonging;

or the willingness to excuse conduct by one’s own group that would be condemned in another?

No single indicator would prove that catastrophe is approaching.

But perhaps combinations and trajectories matter.

The same question can be asked constructively.

Can we recognize when a society is becoming unusually fertile?

Might increasing investment in education, scientific exchange, intellectual freedom, social mobility, interdisciplinary contact, tolerance of experimentation, widening participation, and confidence in common projects indicate expanding creative potential?

The problem may therefore not be simply identifying good societies and bad societies.

It may be identifying direction of movement.

And perhaps the crucial moment occurs before the destination is obvious.

Can a society recognize that its field of acceptable choices is narrowing while meaningful alternatives still remain?

10. The Unanswered Question

We began with the Holocaust because that is where this inquiry began personally.

But the question extends beyond the Holocaust.

Human beings possess an extraordinary capacity for collective action. We construct cities, universities, orchestras, scientific laboratories and systems of law. We educate children, care for strangers, explore space and cooperate across generations to create things no individual could create alone.

The same species organizes persecution, war and mass murder.

It is tempting to explain the difference by dividing humanity into good people and bad people.

History does not permit such an easy answer.

Nor does it permit us to assume that sufficiently cultured, educated or scientifically advanced societies are immune from moral deterioration.

We therefore return to our original question:

What causes the collective attitudes and standards of acceptable behavior of a society to change, sometimes profoundly within a single generation—and what determines the direction of that change?

We do not know the answer.

Perhaps there is no single answer.

Psychology can illuminate conformity and identity. History can reconstruct circumstances and choices. Political science can examine institutions and power. Sociology can examine networks and norms. Economics can investigate incentives. Education can study how values and knowledge are transmitted. Communications research can examine persuasion and information environments.

Recent scholarship itself recognizes that important work on norm dynamics remains divided among disciplines. 

Perhaps greater integration among these fields would help.

Our premise is modest: understanding social dynamics may improve humanity’s ability to recognize choices.

Historical pressures can be enormous. They can constrain choices brutally. But if genuine choices nevertheless remain, understanding the forces that enlarge or narrow them becomes important.

Can we recognize when fear is beginning to redefine a neighbor as an enemy?

Can we understand when conformity is replacing judgment?

Can we identify when language is quietly shrinking the meaning of “us”?

Can we also understand the circumstances that release curiosity, cooperation, creativity and moral courage?

Can societies learn to enlarge “us” without demanding uniformity?

Can knowledge of collective behavior be used constructively without becoming manipulation?

And can we recognize destructive change early enough that choosing differently remains possible?

We do not offer answers to these questions.

We suggest that they deserve to be asked—carefully, repeatedly, across disciplines, and across generations.

For a survivor, remembrance remains an obligation. But perhaps remembrance carries another obligation as well: not only to preserve what happened, but to continue asking what humanity might learn from the fact that it happened at all.

It happens so often, it’s a cliché. A woman, looking for community, a boost in income, and a way to get out of the house, will be approached by a friend or acquaintance offering a “business opportunity.” Swayed with tales of posh retreats to exotic locations and an easy, fun way to make extra cash, she signs on. She will be love-bombed by dozens of new friends. She will be reassured and comforted when (inevitably) she doesn’t make the sales she thought she would. She will be welcomed into a sisterhood of fellow sales “representatives.”

She will NOT be given accurate information or informed consent.

In this week’s article for our paid subscribers, How MLMs Exploit Women’s Work: leaving an MLM costs women more than money, we’ll be doing a deep dive into how these commercial cults deliberately target women, how they leach money from families, and how the normal, healthy desire for community and connection is exploited to take money from the women at the bottom of the organization - often working-class mothers - and gives it to the already wealthy owners at the top of the pyramid.

When you upgrade to a paid subscription, you directly support my ongoing work, as well as receive complete access to my entire archive of articles, comprehensive guides, and exclusive interviews, such as:

This week’s livestream will take place on Wednesday, September 16th, at 2 pm EDT. With the midterms approaching, we will be discussing Trump’s latest power plays, including his shocking “pledge of allegiance” to HIM, another false promise to pay people $5k to vote GOP (if they win), how AI doesn’t need regulation, and the Supreme Court voting 7-2 against Trump on his attempt to change the rules of mail-in voting for states. I love answering your questions.

Last Friday, we livestreamed in memory of the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attack. So, this Friday, September 18th, at 2 pm, my guest will be Lance Christie. Lance is a former member turned whistleblower of the authoritarian cult, the Exclusive Brethren, a splinter group of the Plymouth Brethren. They are a billion-dollar authoritarian cult connected to the Cult of Trump and working with neo nazis to interfere with politicians in Australia and probably elsewhere around the world.

If you missed last week’s livestreams, you can see them here:

Rewriting Reality: How the Trump White House is Weaponizing AI Slop

9/11 to Now: How Conspiracy Theorists Took Advantage of a National Tragedy

With all of the bizarre ego trips and cult-leader-like behavior coming from Donald Trump, applauded by his sycophantic staff, the term “cult of Trump” has been gaining traction. Matthew Rozsa of AlterNet has published an article, Trump’s MAGA backers fool themselves to save pride: right-wing research, which quotes me and cites my books, Cult of Trump and Combating Cult Mind Control. The article discusses how Trump supporters are using an ecosystem of biased information to validate their belief in the president.

In this week’s episode of my Cults, Culture & Coercion podcast, Who Gains From The “Inevitability” of AI?, I talk with Oxford professor and AI ethicist Carissa Véliz on how AI prediction is a tool of authoritarian control. We also talked about the importance of privacy and the dangers of digital surveillance that is being pushed on us. She reminds us we are human and we can resist - read a paper book!

Catch the full episode here: Listen on Apple | Spotify | Watch on YouTube

You can also read my accompanying Substack article about our conversation here.

Next week’s episode will feature business Professor William Keep, an expert on MLMs and crypto. We will discuss how financial deception works, why it can be so difficult to recognize from inside, and what happens when businesses gain influence over the institutions meant to protect us.

Remember, check with legitimate state election officials that you are registered and request a mail-in ballot if you wish. Be sure that your neighbors and everyone you know is registered to vote and able to do so! We must defeat MAGA in the coming elections!

As always, please let us know what you think about these pieces or what you’d like to see us discuss in the future. Thanks so much!

A woman can recognize that her multi-level marketing (MLM) business is costing her money and still feel that it has saved her. Perhaps, for the first time in years, someone notices her effort. Her phone fills with encouragement when she first joins the sales team. When her sales disappoint, other women reassure her that they have struggled too. She belongs to a group of supportive individuals who encourage her and make her feel like she is a part of something bigger.

This dynamic is something that dwindling funds cannot fully represent. In MLMs, financial exploitation and emotional attachment reinforce each other through losses and subsequent comfort by the community. Leaving such a dynamic would mean confronting the debt and losing the people helping her bear it.

An Answer To a Real Need

Women’s involvement in MLMs needs to be understood in the context of the choices society makes available to them. Women are often expected to interrupt paid work to raise children or care for relatives, then face a job market that treats those years of essential, unpaid labor as gaps in their qualifications.

Multi-level marketing (MLM) is a sales model in which independents sell a company’s products while also recruiting others into a tiered sales network, often called a “downline”.

Although MLMs present participants as business owners, the company controls the compensation plan while distributors bear expenses such as inventory, fees, training, travel, and marketing.

These cultish schemes disproportionately target women. Affordable childcare and adequately paid, flexible employment can be difficult to find. In some conservative religious communities, expectations that women remain home with their children further narrow their options, even when their households need another income.

An MLM’s promise of earning money from home, gaining recognition, and joining a supportive community speaks directly to those pressures. Recruitment through trusted friends or fellow religious congregants can make that promise feel especially credible.

It is absolutely necessary to understand that none of this reflects a lack of intelligence, ambition, or judgment on women’s part. It reflects a society that relies on women’s caregiving while providing too little economic support for it and the proliferation of businesses willing to exploit the resulting dynamic. Responsibility for that exploitation belongs to those who practice it, not to women seeking independence and belonging.

In religious communities where women are expected to prioritize homemaking, a “family-friendly” business can appear to reconcile financial independence with those expectations.

Where questioning authority is discouraged, a recruit may also struggle to challenge a respected mentor. An MLM can borrow the language of service and shared values, making scrutiny of a business arrangement feel like disloyalty to a community she cherishes.

“Be your own boss” speaks to a legitimate desire for autonomy, yet the company controls the compensation plan and participation rules while the woman carries the risk. A woman may be celebrated as an entrepreneur while supplying unpaid marketing, emotional labor, and access to her friends.

The Allure of Community

An unusually intense welcome coupled with enthusiastic praise can accelerate feelings of belonging well before any woman invests into an MLM.

Read more

Human beings want to make sense of chaos. We want explanations, patterns, and some sense that we know what is coming next. However, wanting an explanation does not necessarily mean wanting what is true and factual.

That was one of the ideas that stood out to me during my conversation with Oxford professor Carissa Véliz. Her latest book Prophecy, Predicti…

Read more

It’s something I hear all the time: “I would never let myself get fooled into joining a cult!” Often, the person making this claim will add a description of how they have already resisted a cult recruiter, and use this experience to “prove” that they are immune to any kind of recruitment: after all, they spotted one recruitment pitch for what it was, so they’re confident they will be able to spot any future attempts.

Or, an atheist will announce how their distrust of “any form of spirituality or religion” will keep them safe from any authoritarian group, despite the fact that so many controlling groups are not spiritual or religious in nature.

Or perhaps the person believes that only the “stupid and gullible” or those who are “missing something” would ever be drawn in, so of course, they are safe.

Whatever the reason, no one ever sees the recruitment for what it is. They’re not joining a cult; they’re making friends, taking a class, or starting a new career path.

If you’ve ever found yourself at a loss to explain how cultic recruitment can happen to anyone, you’ll want to read this week’s post for paid subscribers, You Would Never Join a Cult. In it, I lay out the process of how one person can get drawn into a high-control group and have no idea that they have been recruited - even when they start recruiting others.

By becoming a paid subscriber, you directly support my work and gain instant access to this article. You also gain full access to my archive of articles, in-depth interviews, and practical guides, including:

This week’s regular livestream will be on Wednesday, Sept. 9, at 2 pm EDT. We will be talking about how the White House is using AI to make Trump into Green Lantern in a desperate bid to influence the gamers and his core disciples. He did the Jesus Christ AI thing, now this.

The Friday Livestream will feature my guest, Lance Christie, a former member and whistleblower of the authoritarian cult, the Exclusive Brethren, a splinter group of the Plymouth Brethren.

If you missed last week’s livestream, you can see it here:

Trump’s Cold War with Canada?! - September 2

In this week’s episode of the Cults, Culture & Coercion podcast, The Power of Us, I sat down with Jay Van Bavel, PhD, professor of Neuroscience and Social Psychology and author of The Power of Us: Harnessing Our Shared Identities to Improve Performance, Increase Cooperation, and Promote Social Harmony. Our conversation centered on the vital importance of bridging social and cultural divides through respectful, civil discourse, even when we disagree. Did you see him on Oprah’s podcast?

Catch the full episode here: Listen on Apple | Spotify | Watch on YouTube

You can also read my accompanying Substack article about our conversation here.

In next week’s episode, I will be speaking with Dr. Carissa Véliz, writer, keynote speaker, and associate professor at the Institute for Ethics in AI at the University of Oxford. We’ll be discussing her recent book, Prophecy: Prediction, Power, and the Fight for the Future, from Ancient Oracles to AI. We talk about cults, AI, privacy, and how to rebel- read a paper book!

Remember, be sure that you, your neighbors, and everyone you know is registered to vote and ready to do so! We must defeat MAGA in the coming elections!

As always, please let us know what you think about these pieces or what you’d like to see us discuss in the future. Thanks so much!

Social identity, or how the portion of our identity we derive from participating in our social groups, can expand our mind or limit our ability to embrace complexity and nuance.

Why should this matter to someone who has never joined a cult? Because every one of us moves through families, workplaces, political communities, faiths, fandoms, and online netw…

Read more

The question comes to me more than any other, from people who got out and from families who watched someone go in. It is always some version of the same sentence.

How did this happen?

No two recruitment efforts run on the same schedule. Some take a weekend and some take five years. However, let’s explore how it can happen to you, assembled out of hundreds of accounts I have heard over the decades.

Day 1. You Have No Idea

You would never join a cult.

Day 2. You’ve made a new friend

You meet a new woman (or man) in the elevator, coming down from your new job. You’ve just moved to the city to pursue a great new opportunity, and while you’re excited about all of the possibilities, the move has left you feeling a bit lonely.

When the kind looking person points out the wellness book you’re carrying, one you bought on a whim to drown out your moving blues as “a great book”, you agree, it’s a great read. She introduces herself as Sue, and she’s forward and confident when she asks, since you’re new in town, if you’d like to attend a local weekend wellness retreat with her.

“I work right here in the same building,” she adds, brightly.

What the hell, why not? you think, exchanging phone numbers with her. The city is about new adventures, you tell yourself. When you get home, you feel happy. You spend the night reading the rest of the book.

You would never join a cult.

Read more

Some months after my exit from the Moonies, I was driving through a town, and the thought popped into my head: “This would be an excellent fundraising spot!”

But I’d already left the group, realized that Moon was a liar, and had shed the destructive beliefs that had kept me entrapped. I wouldn’t be doing any more fundraising for them. Where did this intrusive cult thought come from?

In this week’s article for paid subscribers, How Ex-Members Slip Back Into Cult Thinking, I explore the very real, very normal phenomenon of “floating,” which is when a cult survivor returns to the cult’s mental framework, reverting back into the doctrine, the mindset, the vocabulary, and the emotional certainty. More importantly, I discuss what to do (and what not to do) when you or your loved one experiences “floating.”

Paid subscribers, who can read this article today, are vital to supporting my work! They get access to my complete catalog of articles, past interviews, and helpful guides, such as:

This week’s livestream will be this Wednesday, September 2nd, at 2 pm EDT. We will be discussing the “trade war” with Canada and the punitive tariffs Trump is imposing upon our neighbor to the north, essentially scuttling the friendly relations we have traditionally enjoyed. Carney is replying in kind! Trump’s narcissism has been injured- seeing a real man, a real leader, standing up to him. Trump countered by renaming Lake Ontario to “Lake America,” which Google Maps changed (for the US only). This is just solidifying Canadians’ support for Carney. Border states are being truly hurt financially, and with the midterms coming up, we expect more cheating attempts by Trump.

If you missed last week’s livestreams, you can see them here:

Trump’s Inner Circle: Does Natalie Harp Have Too Much Power? - Wednesday, August 26th

Can Protesters Be Prosecuted as Terrorists? The Texas Antifa Case with guest Dr. Anne Speckhard - Friday, August 28th

More and more people are becoming disenchanted with Trump, and in a recent article in AlterNet, ‘It’s hard’: Red state worker on why she’s ditching the ‘Trump Wagon’, I was interviewed by Matthew Roza on how it’s important to encourage people to engage in reality-testing and start thinking for themselves.

In this week’s episode of my Cults, Culture & Coercion podcast, Carlos Castaneda’s Cult of Witches, I speak with the artist and author Ru Marshall about his book, American Trickster: The Hidden Lives of Carlos Castaneda. Castaneda’s books influenced millions of people and contributed to the new-age movement - I was fooled along with millions of others, reading his books when they came out.

Listen on Apple | Spotify | Watch on YouTube

Read my Substack post about the interview here.

In next week’s episode, my guest will be Jay Van Bavel, PhD, professor of Neuroscience and Social Psychology, and author of The Power of Us: Harnessing Our Shared Identities to Improve Performance, Increase Cooperation, and Promote Social Harmony. We talk about the need to keep talking across social and cultural divides, and disagree while remaining civil and respectful. Fascinating discussion!

Remember, be sure that you, your neighbors, and everyone you know is registered to vote and ready to do so! We must defeat MAGA in the coming elections!

As always, please let us know what you think about these pieces or what you’d like to see us discuss in the future. Thanks so much!

Carlos Castaneda sold more than 10 million books to readers who thought they were buying anthropology. Real fieldwork. A real Yaqui shaman named Don Juan, teaching a real Westerner how to see. None of it happened. Castaneda made it up, and for years almost nobody in the press called him on it.

I read all of those books as a teenager. Grew up on them, the…

Read more

In the 1970s, as deprogrammers worked with more cult members, they noticed that some ex-members who appeared to have clearly realized the group was a fraud, or a brainwashing cult, and wished to exit, they still might get triggered and, mid-conversation, be back into the group’s way of thinking, realize it, and then shift out again.

Read more

For some families, the absolute worst outcome can become shockingly real: instead of a loving parent, a family court can declare where your child sleeps tonight, whether you’re allowed to see them, and whether you’re even permitted to raise a concern about your spouse. In this week’s episode of my Cults, Culture & Coercion podcast, The Problems with America’s Family Courts, I talk with noted attorney Karen Winner, JD, about how the family court system is failing the people it is meant to protect - and protecting the people doing the most harm. Winner, a journalist turned attorney and the author of Divorced from Justice: The Abuse of Women and Children by Divorce Lawyers and Judges, shares how her book, which started as a government investigation, became one of the few serious accounts of how family court actually operates in this country. It’s a conversation that every parent - and every citizen - should listen to, today.

Listen on Apple | Spotify | Watch on YouTube

Read my Substack post about the interview here.

Next week’s podcast will be with the artist and author Ru Marshall; we talked about his book, American Trickster: The Hidden Lives of Carlos Castaneda. His books influenced millions of people and contributed to the new-age movement. How could so many people get fooled (including myself) as I read all the Castaneda books when they came out.

This week’s livestream will be on Wednesday, August 26th, at 2 pm EDT; I will be discussing Natalie Harp, her obsession with Trump, lack of security clearance, whether she might be a foreign asset or agent, or whether she is just a very disturbed person. The reporting is that she keeps him in an “information silo” and feeds him only “good news,” which is typically lies- like his poll numbers are fantastic, prices are coming down, the war with Iran is almost ended, etc..

Have you heard about the extreme case in Texas, alleging Antifa were violent terrorists because they were protesting ICE? This Friday, August 28th, I will be doing a special livestream with Anne Speckhard, Director of the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism (ICSVE) and Adjunct Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Georgetown University School of Medicine. Anne is a forensic psychologist. She will be sharing the facts of the case, based on her experience as an expert witness for the defense in the Texas case involving Antifa protestors, who have received disproportionately lengthy sentences (one 50 years, another 100) for protesting ICE.

If you missed last week’s livestreams, you can see them here:

How Trump Turns Information Into Power... and Power Into Money - Wednesday, August 19th

How to Build a Truth Engine: Groundbreaking Film about Propaganda with guest Friedrich Moser - Friday, August 21st

With all the inadvertent misinformation - and deliberate disinformation - being thrown around, it’s hard to know what’s true and what’s not. Fortunately, Ground News is a great resource that makes it easy to compare news sources, read between the lines of media bias, and break free from algorithms that lead to “echo chambers” of polarized reporting. Start getting your balanced news today!

Remember, be sure that you, your neighbors, and everyone you know is registered to vote and ready to do so! We must defeat MAGA in the coming elections!

As always, please let us know what you think about these pieces or what you’d like to see us discuss in the future. Thanks so much!

A family court judge can reach into your family, single you out by name, and rearrange your life by dinnertime: where your child sleeps tonight, whether you’re allowed to see them, whether you’re even permitted to raise a concern about your spouse. Karen Winner told me that in the opening minutes of our conversation, and it’s the line I keep coming back…

Read more