Newsletter - Knowledge is Not Only Power, It’s Essential for Life!
Keeping Informed is a Vital Part of Responsible Citizenship
This week’s livestream will be tomorrow, Wednesday, July 9th, at 1-2 p.m. EDT. I welcome everyone to tune in with questions and comments! Last week’s livestream was a great success; you can see the recording here if you missed it.
This Thursday at 3-4 p.m. EDT, I have been invited to do a Substack Live with singer/songwriter Monte Mader, who recently appeared on my podcast. I will publish the link as soon as it goes live, so watch this space!
In this week’s episode of Cult Conversations: The Influence Continuum, The Devil’s Confession: The Lost Eichmann Tapes, I spoke with Emmy award winner, director Yariv Mozer, who discusses how he tracked down access to the “lost” recordings of Adolf Eichmann. This documentary destroys the long-accepted narrative promulgated by Hannah Arendt, on the “banality of evil” that he was merely “following orders.” You can listen to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
In next week’s episode, The Undue Influence of Technology: Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity (EHS) and Technology Addiction, I will speak with Claire Sookman. While this episode may seem like a departure from my usual focus on cults and undue influence, Claire and I explore how technology addiction—and even Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity (EHS)—mirror the same patterns of control and impact on people’s lives. The video of our talk is available in advance for our YouTube members, so now is an excellent time to become a channel member.
On this past Thursday, I did my first solo Substack Live! I reflected on my own journey out of the Moonies and explained how that personal experience with authoritarian mind control gave me the tools to write The Cult of Trump, a book that lays out how psychological manipulation, propaganda, and foreign influence have reshaped American democracy. I spoke candidly about the urgent need for strategic, values-based resistance and public education to help de-radicalize millions of Americans and defend our collective future.
One of the best ways to de-radicalize people and reduce polarization is to use Ground News, an excellent resource for analyzing the biases of the media you consume. If you’d like to try out this resource, which helps identify coverage for any news story, offering links to coverage along the political spectrum, which I find to be so useful, you can use this link to sign up today!
Last week, we posted a special blog post for our paid Substack Members, Combating Hate Speech and Violence in The Age of Authoritarianism. This is a vital subject, especially now, when those who hate seem to be empowered to spread divisive and vitriolic rhetoric, and those who combat it sometimes forget that we must not answer in kind. If you wish to receive articles like this regularly and appreciate my work, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription. If you have already done so, I cannot thank you enough.
If you are a psychiatrist, psychologist, social worker, or licensed counselor looking for more information about cults and manipulation, my 9-hour + (CE credit) course provides an excellent deep dive into the subject. We also have a CME version for medical clinicians. For concerned laypersons wishing a deeper understanding without the continuing education credit, we offer a course with the same valuable information at a reduced cost.
If you are a writer passionate about freedom of mind, we seek volunteer bloggers to help us create timely and well-crafted content. We also seek a co-host and possible fill-in host for my Cult Conversations podcast. Ideally, it would be a mental health professional with direct experience with undue influence. Please email center@freedomofmind.com for more information.
Hannah Arendt’s 1963 book, “The Banality of Evil,” is actually wrong. It portrayed the lie Eichmann told when he was on trial. He said that he was “just following orders.” Arendt got conned. Eichmann was a true believer in Hitler’s final solution and a committed Anti-Semite. Reality isn’t black and white, simple to understand, or a straightforward frame of “us versus them.”
Read the blog post or listen to the podcast, below:
This year, Nazis marched in Ohio. Wearing masks, these extremists paraded with swastika flags, chanting antisemitic and racist slogans. It is a sobering reminder of the resurgence of hate and ideological extremism in America. This isn’t an isolated event. It is part of a broader, deeply troubling pattern of radicalization.
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!
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