# Is Modern Social Justice a Cult?



## tampax pearl (Jul 22, 2020)

What is a Cult?
A misplaced or excessive admiration for a particular person or thing. Anything can be a Cult, it all depends on the influence it has on a person’s life. Unfortunately, I haven’t found many good models to accurately present this. The BITE Model, as pointed out by @JambledUpWords , doesn’t have a scoring system. If anyone has a better one, please feel free to share. I’m not going to use it here because it’s almost entirely useless without some form of scoring.

Why Does This Matter?
Cults thrive on despair and confusion. In our great year of 2020, everyone’s confused. Nobody knows what the hell is going to happen tomorrow. Older folks, maybe you remember a time where the world wasn’t so strange, but I don’t. Never have. Consider that most of the protesters look to be young. Look at the media they’ve been consuming since they were kids. They never had to question why Katniss was rebelling, simply to accept it as heroic. In school, they’re fed tales of the peaceful ones: Rosa Parks and King. Told to be like them. I don’t know if these protesters have forgotten about the usage of hoses and police dogs, but it seems so. “Fighting for what’s right” has never been beautiful.

Young people are primarily the ones to champion the cause of social justice. They are willing, if not eager, to rebel against cops because they were taught to be. Those ideas didn’t develop on their own. Have you seen how clueless these people are? Come on now, they didn’t actually read the Communist Manifesto and decide to be Marxists one day. It was a slow process starting from the time they were children. Children that had no chance of standing up for themselves or questioning a single goddamned thing. If your history teacher says “white people are racist”, and every student is nodding their head, of course you’re going to nod along. You don’t want to be othered.

A school is the perfect breeding ground for a Cult and it’s specifically because no child wants to be othered. There is no room for contrarianism, only to accept what you are told, and to tell your parents about it. But what do kids do? They talk! Historically, children were excellent for movements because they tell people everything. So if their parents don’t agree, who’s going to be the first to rat them out? Their own children. Unknowingly, sure, but it doesn’t change the fact that it happened, and continues to happen. 

So what do we have now? We’ve got a bunch of useful idiots. When people shout “white bodies to the front”, of course they’ll move to the front. They want to be martyrs. They want to be saviors. The ones that didn’t, do now, because of peer pressure. That’s why they’re so unhappy all of the time. There is no room for error, no room for development. Everything is televised. Either you are a perfect example or you’re cancelled. They are expected to lay down their lives for people who don’t give a damn about them; to seek out approval from the ones that never wanted them; to risk their own safety for a group that isn’t even theirs, and would never do the same. 

How do we fix this if it is a Cult? If it isn’t, what is it? What do we do?


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## Y2K Baby (Jul 22, 2020)

Shut the fuck up.


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## Diabeetus (Jul 22, 2020)

Y2K Baby said:


> Shut the fuck up.


/thread


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## stupidpieceofshit (Jul 22, 2020)

I was going to say its nothing like Jonestown, then I remember "wait they killed a congressman, before becoming an heros. They knew the feds were going to rain thunder on them for killing a congressman" 

Mm yeah I need to agree now, only I think it will be a larger blood bath if antifa actually fights the feds, they are starting to get more daring after engating in meelee combat with the federal officers the other night (1 fed vs many antifa).


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## soy_king (Jul 22, 2020)

If it's not a cult, then it's most certainly a religion, and like Marxism and Buddhism, a nontheistic one.


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## tampax pearl (Jul 22, 2020)

stupidpieceofshit said:


> I was going to say its nothing like Jonestown, then I remember "wait they killed a congressman, before becoming an heros. They knew the feds were going to rain thunder on them for killing a congressman"
> 
> Mm yeah I need to agree now, only I think it will be a larger blood bath if antifa actually fights the feds, they are starting to get more daring after engating in meelee combat with the federal officers the other night (1 fed vs many antifa).


Jim Jones started as a civil rights movement activist and then went waaay off the rails because he started doing drugs and shit. It's really interesting, actually.


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## EcoLibertarian (Jul 22, 2020)

i have to agree with all of your reasoning, but cults need a central leader right? most """successful""" ones had a strong leader.


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## Dom Cruise (Jul 22, 2020)

Yeah, it's a cult, it's completely a cult.


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## ConfederateIrishman (Jul 23, 2020)

I feel like this is the sort of question that would make more sense to ask around 2014; Now it is just more noise.


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## tampax pearl (Jul 23, 2020)

EcoLibertarian said:


> i have to agree with all of your reasoning, but cults need a central leader right? most """successful""" ones had a strong leader.


Well, that's why I'm asking, really. It exhibits all of the signs and yet there's no leader. I think that's why all of it is so disorganized.


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## Ted_Breakfast (Jul 23, 2020)

It's the state religion of the West.


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## Save Goober (Jul 23, 2020)

I don't think it's an actual cult, but it's extremely cult-like. It reminds me a lot of AA, which has similar accusations of being a cult but fails on several key points.


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## Sgt. Pinback (Jul 23, 2020)

tampax pearl said:


> Jim Jones started as a civil rights movement activist and then went waaay off the rails because he started doing drugs and shit. It's really interesting, actually.


It also had many of the hallmarks of a hastily-abandoned CIA mind control experiment.

Just sayin...


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## Foxxo (Jul 23, 2020)

It's not a cult. Cults have a single central figure to them, whether it's the founder, or the specific deity in the (classically) polytheistic belief system that the cult spawns from. It's more like an Eastern Religion at this point -- godless, nebulous, and bent entirely around ritual and behavior.


Sgt. Pinback said:


> It also had many of the hallmarks of a hastily-abandoned CIA mind control experiment. Just sayin...


Jim Jones was a filthy Commie though. There's a recording of his last day where he reaffirms this with his followers.


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## Forgetful Gynn (Jul 23, 2020)

tampax pearl said:


> I think that's why all of it is so disorganized.


How is it disorganized? You think this all happened by accident?


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## Notgoodwithusernames (Jul 23, 2020)

We’ve gone over this a gajilillion Times: SJWS are a cult without a god


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## Harbinger of Kali Yuga (Jul 23, 2020)

Are boogaloo boys real or are they really just boogeymen?


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## Dwight Frye (Jul 23, 2020)

Foxxo said:


> Cults have a single central figure to them,



He's called George Soros, and he's the Jim Jones to these acolytes.


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## Foxxo (Jul 23, 2020)

Autumnal Equinox said:


> He's called George Soros, and he's the Jim Jones to these acolytes.


Nobody worships George Soros. Soros pays them to act, which makes this whole thing a money-grab if you're going off of that logic. No one actually likes Soros after they know what he's done.


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## ZombiefiedFerret (Jul 23, 2020)

This is a real trite thing to ask here. How desperate are you for upcummies?


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## Joe Swanson (Jul 23, 2020)

Yes, now stop making shitty threads


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## The Cat From Outer Space (Jul 23, 2020)

Any ideology could be used for a cult, really.


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## tampax pearl (Jul 23, 2020)

Forgetful Gynn said:


> How is it disorganized? You think this all happened by accident?


Of course I don't think this started by accident. But what I'm saying is, the extremism has been ramping up ESPECIALLY in the past few weeks, much like cults do before they combust. There are undeniable similarities.


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## JambledUpWords (Jul 23, 2020)

The BITE model isn’t even a good indicator. Many of the items, such as ones controlling how you dress and what you can and cannot say is pretty much what any company you work for does already. No matter what institution you join, there will be some standards given for behavior (since any institution requires standards in order to create group cohesion).

Additionally, most of the points are pretty subjective. Steve Hassan, the creator of the BITE model doesn’t even give a scale of reference to determine whether or not something is a cult (such as a 1-5 rating for each criteria, and what the least to most extreme would look like for each point listed). He also mentions that cult members can work steady 9-5 jobs and have outside hobbies and still not be able to control their thoughts. As far as I’m concerned, Steve Hassan needs to make the requirements more strict because if you have enough of a life outside of whatever group you’re a part of, it _shouldn’t be considered a cult_.

Finally, what is considered a cult to the average person is also really subjective. Christianity in its earliest days was deemed a cult until it got legalized under Constantine. I can understand why you think social justice is a cult, but if you’re going to make an analysis on it, don’t use the BITE model.


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## Ghost of Wesley Willis (Jul 23, 2020)

The only thing that's really cult like is the mentality, but even then that's putting it very simply.

Social Justice is just fortune 500 companies, NGOs, and Government Agencies gaslighting us while using it as an excuse to make their logos rainbow for a month and pass stupid legislation.


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## Mambamia (Jul 23, 2020)

You're giving it too much power calling it a cult, when modern social Justice is literally just a Fad.
Every SJW powered phenomenon is just a dumb little fad because "Boomers just don't get it! Ughh!"


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## NulWillBecomeTranny (Jul 23, 2020)

Mambamia said:


> You're giving it too much power calling it a cult, when modern social Justice is literally just a Fad.
> Every SJW powered phenomenon is just a dumb little fad because "Boomers just don't get it! Ughh!"



You are a small brained moron. You will be completely destroyed by marxism after the boomers die off and will not even understand why.


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## Syaoran Li (Jul 23, 2020)

Sgt. Pinback said:


> It also had many of the hallmarks of a long-forgotten KGB mind control experiment. Just sayin...



Fixed that for you


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## Lone MacReady (Jul 23, 2020)

Might as well be after they killed God in the West. Something had to fill the void, no society can survive on the theories and will of corruptible men alone. Any nation that lives apart from their God, will crumble, the religious always have more will than the secular.


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## Syaoran Li (Jul 23, 2020)

Lone MacReady said:


> Might as well be after they killed God in the West. Something had to fill the void, no society can survive on the theories and will of corruptible men alone. Any nation that lives apart from their God, will crumble, the religious always have more will than the secular.



More or less this.

I can totally get why the West wanted to "kill God" but at the same time, we didn't think of what would happen after we did. 

Traditionalist Abrahamic religions are pretty fucking austere with Trad Protestants and hardliner Islam being the most authoritarian of the lot, historically speaking. Only the pacifist Jains and a few Buddhist sub-sects more strict and austere than the Abrahamic traditions.

Naturally, when we were finally fully able to break from that orthodoxy in the post-WWII era, we did. America took a little longer, and the Religious Right fought tooth and nail in the last big culture war only to lose hard and end up creating the Woke Left in the process. The notion of Cultural Christianity was dealt harsh blows by the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, but it was WWI and WWII that killed it. Europe was hit hardest and saw the horrors first hand, which is why they secularized first. America was insulated from the horrors of the World Wars and so it took longer for Cultural Christianity to die out there. But WWII's post-war economic boom and the prosperity it brought also helped in that demise.

Now, we're at a point where Christianity is more of a sincere faith-based religious movement as opposed to one with backing by political or socio-economic power to keep the masses together

The only problem was we didn't find a new or different religion to fill the void (because that would be seen as "LARP'ing/Cultural Appropriation/historical grave robbing" or whatever) and became a de facto atheistic society, which led to the atheistic but also dogmatic Woke Left stepping in to fill the void.

A person can be atheist, but people are religious by their very nature. Even if they're not theistic in their religion of choice, humans always find some sort of sacred ideal to uphold. It's hardwired into our own nature and way of thinking.


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## mr.moon1488 (Jul 23, 2020)

ConfederateIrishman said:


> I feel like this is the sort of question that would make more sense to ask around 2014; Now it is just more noise.


What's funny is someone actually called a lot of this shit all the way back into 1961.


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## tampax pearl (Jul 23, 2020)

JambledUpWords said:


> The BITE model isn’t even a good indicator. Many of the items, such as ones controlling how you dress and what you can and cannot say is pretty much what any company you work for does already. No matter what institution you join, there will be some standards given for behavior (since any institution requires standards in order to create group cohesion).
> 
> Additionally, most of the points are pretty subjective. Steve Hassan, the creator of the BITE model doesn’t even give a scale of reference to determine whether or not something is a cult (such as a 1-5 rating for each criteria, and what the least to most extreme would look like for each point listed). He also mentions that cult members can work steady 9-5 jobs and have outside hobbies and still not be able to control their thoughts. As far as I’m concerned, Steve Hassan needs to make the requirements more strict because if you have enough of a life outside of whatever group you’re a part of, it _shouldn’t be considered a cult_.
> 
> Finally, what is considered a cult to the average person is also really subjective. Christianity in its earliest days was deemed a cult until it got legalized under Constantine. I can understand why you think social justice is a cult, but if you’re going to make an analysis on it, don’t use the BITE model.


I really liked your critique! I didn't quite think of it that way. The BITE model is most familiar to me which is why I used it. Do you know of any other models that might better represent what's going on currently?


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## Tismguide (Jul 23, 2020)

tampax pearl said:


> I really liked your critique! I didn't quite think of it that way. The BITE model is most familiar to me which is why I used it. Do you know of any other models that might better represent what's going on currently?


If you never have, I recommend reading up on the Great Awakenings, as well as the Prohibition movement. The True Believer by Eric Hoffman is also a great read for understanding the dynamics of mass movements. These things rise and fall organically, and are often encouraged or suppressed as benefits the powerful.



Spoiler: shitpost



It doesn't actually take that many people holding an extreme viewpoint to push it because most people will repeatedly split the difference to keep the peace or "compromise". The woke left does this all the time, but they're not the only ones. Hitler wanted to kill all the Jews, most people didn't support killing Jews, so they compromised by killing half the Jews.


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## tampax pearl (Jul 23, 2020)

Tismguide said:


> If you never have, I recommend reading up on the Great Awakenings, as well as the Prohibition movement. The True Believer by Eric Hoffman is also a great read for understanding the dynamics of mass movements. These things rise and fall organically, and are often encouraged or suppressed as benefits the powerful.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Thank you for the recommendations!! I'm really excited to start reading them. I recall Prohibition; lately I've been focusing on Charles Manson but I completely forgot about those!


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## schizoid PD (Jul 23, 2020)

Social Justice is just another name for Cultural Marxism, or Intersectional Feminism.  They are all designed around the collective identity overriding the individual identity. Similar to typical Marxism except now, the bourgeoisie group is replaced by the traditional Christian based European culture group, and the proletariat is replaced by any group opposed to them, even Islam.  Since European culture has been successful in history, in their theory, it wasn't merit that made them successful, it was oppression.  It's also why they hate Christianity, because thats what much of the laws and morals of European culture are founded on.

Cultural Marxists often ignore any evidence against them, which would mean they don't believe in facts or research, so now you are operating on faith based principles.


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## Sopressata (Jul 26, 2020)

You don't even need to know the hallmarks of a cult to see that something is up here. From the footwashing to the kneeling it’s bizarre. The way people are forced to isolate and forsake their friends and family who don’t have the same beliefs is classic cult.  The shunning that happens when you disagree and start questioning the doctrine. It’s all very cult like.


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## GloryHole Stalker (Jul 26, 2020)

To answer the the OP's question simply...Yes it is. Or something close to a religion.


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## Fek (Jul 26, 2020)

Short version: It's just a cult of Marxism wrapped up and repackaged with a shiny consoomer label from _<trusted brand>_ on it. It is essentially this story played out for all to see.



Spoiler: 'Tism



SJWism offers no truth and no path to redemption. There are no moral foundations present which one could use to build a successful life for themselves or their offspring. Its leaders are no prophets..no beacons of positive moral guidance. They have no knowledge of what it's like to build something for themselves through personal sacrifice over time. It's all destruction and fickle consumption.

In fact, I'd say it offers nothing more than short hits of euphoria in being part of something they no doubt see as _good_. There are nothing but lies and destruction to be had upon the altar of the SJW.

I cannot call it a proper religion in good faith. Just comparing it to the religion I know best (Christianity), it'd have to offer something more _transcendent_ than rainbow flags (with an ever-growing amount of stripes), black patches tacked onto product packaging, white skittles..oh, and the destruction of great depositories of culture, urban centers, and monuments to my nations's goddamned history.



Their movement will burn out and be a footnote in history, just like so many of the times before now (with varying degrees of success). We'll get a lull in the action until the next time that the powers that be need to stir up some shit, and then it'll start all over again with some new movement designed and encouraged to nuke national tradition and social cohesion.

It's a shame we're mostly lacking the cojones required to just deal with the problem at its source, but such is human nature.


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## ToroidalBoat (Jul 26, 2020)

Without a doubt identity politics is a cult. Compare their traits to the likes of a typical cult - many similarities.

American society as a whole has gotten fairly cult-like lately. Probably because of the infestation of identity politics pretty much everywhere, from education to work to entertainment...


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## Getting tard comed (Jul 26, 2020)

Is water wet? Does a bear shit in the woods? What other obvious questions can we ask? 


The better question is was it always going to play out this way or was it corrupted from Luigi Taparelli d'Azeglio's intent.


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## ToroidalBoat (Jul 27, 2020)

Syaoran Li said:


> Cultural Christianity was dealt harsh blows by the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, but it was WWI and WWII that killed it.





Syaoran Li said:


> The idea that history and societal progress is a linear timeline forever progressing forward into some utopia on Earth [...]


So in other words, the modern West is being run like the Tower of Babel: usurping God by reaching "heaven" through human effort. Some "heaven" this seemingly endless cyberpunk dystopia is...


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## Syaoran Li (Jul 27, 2020)

ToroidalBoat said:


> So in other words, the modern West is being run like the Tower of Babel: usurping God by reaching "heaven" through human effort. Some "heaven" this seemingly endless cyberpunk dystopia is...



More or less. 

The Protestant concept of "Whig History" merged with Marxism and postmodernism to morph into "The Right Side of History" and it's basically a modern-day Tower of Babel, and 2020 is now looking like the year it hits the breaking point and comes apart at the seams. 

Everything's reaching a climactic moment and it's going to get a lot worse before it even can start to get better, especially as we get closer to November. 

If Trump wins four more years despite all this insanity, then even the most stubborn of the corporate establishment Dems will have to secretly admit 2016 was not a fluke or aberration and will do what they can to disown, disavow, and effectively disenfranchise the Woke Left since they failed as useful idiots (same as how the Religious Right got cast out like yesterday's garbage once they stopped being useful for the neocons in the mid-late 2000's) 

If there's any hope, it's in the Boomers and the Karens. A second term of Trump in 2020 will be the kick in the balls to make them realize what's going on and shut it all down before more of the Millennial Left gets let into the pantry, and given how much of a thorn The Squad have been in the side of the Democratic Establishment, the second win of Trump will lead to the old guard disowning and doing what they can to memory hole their endorsement of the Antifa/BLM coup and doing everything they can to make sure the Millennial Woke Left is defanged. This will likely happen more intensely if the Dems also have midterm losses in 2022.

I know I'm voting for Trump because he will need every vote he can get to win 2020, and if he wins 2020, I think we'll see a major realignment of the two-party system.

If Biden wins, we'll be closer to that cyberpunk dystopia.

If Trump wins, say goodbye to "Current Year" and hello to the Seventh Party System. I don't know if the era that follows the end of Current Year will be better, but it will be very different and likely not woke either.


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## Starkiller88UnitedOwl9 (Jul 27, 2020)

I happen to be a victim of SJWs and the alt-right(!) since 2012 after the failure of Russia's Phobos-Grunt space mission. Recently, I've been stalked by Koncorde, a British Wikipedian who seemed to spin BatteryIncluded's narratives and being called "Britain BatteryIncluded." Looking up to him, his birth date is 1980, and his birth place is St. Helens, Lancashire, England. He is anti-Democrats, anti-liberal and anti-globalism, which leads me to him being a Russian agent / useful idiot / fellow traveler cultivated by President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin. He has a Reddit account, and he nowadays conspires with JustARandommer. Both Koncorde and JustARandommer are GamerGaters, whose controversy helped Donald Trump and Brexit alongside Facebook.


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## Alexander Thaut (Jul 27, 2020)

when it all comes crashing down, I'll still be me and these weasels will be crying.


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## JambledUpWords (Jul 27, 2020)

tampax pearl said:


> I really liked your critique! I didn't quite think of it that way. The BITE model is most familiar to me which is why I used it. Do you know of any other models that might better represent what's going on currently?


I don’t have any recommendations, sadly. That said, I don’t think that the BITE model is entirely wrong, it just needs to be more precise and an actual scoring system. Without a scoring system, it leaves it up to more interpretation (which can be bad if you’re trying to think objectively). I’ll give an example of how the think one of the criteria for the BITE model should look: 

*Does the group allow outside contact? *
1- lots of outside contact, no restrictions in who you associate with
2- lots of outside contact, some restrictions in who you associate with 
3-some outside contact, some restrictions in who you associate with 
4-little outside contact, lots of restrictions in who you associate with 
5-no outside contact, not allowed to associate with anyone outside of the group 

The improved BITE model would be a series of questions related to cult behavior and each question would specify what each number on the scale means (as shown above). The higher the score, the closer it is to a cult. At the end, all points would be tallied up and there would be ranges for cult versus not a cult.


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## Bum Driller (Jul 27, 2020)

While I don't necessarily disagree with OP, your post is incoherently written and isn't exactly communicating the intent behind it in the best possible way. To be frank, it's quite fucking dumb, which is reflected in the rating I gave it.


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## tampax pearl (Jul 27, 2020)

JambledUpWords said:


> I don’t have any recommendations, sadly. That said, I don’t think that the BITE model is entirely wrong, it just needs to be more precise and an actual scoring system. Without a scoring system, it leaves it up to more interpretation (which can be bad if you’re trying to think objectively). I’ll give an example of how the think one of the criteria for the BITE model should look:
> 
> *Does the group allow outside contact? *
> 1- lots of outside contact, no restrictions in who you associate with
> ...


That's a better way to score things! I'm kind of surprised there hasn't been one like that developed already, or that the BITE model was not updated to accurately score the different categories. Hmm. Will think about this and potentially update it. Thank you!



Bum Driller said:


> While I don't necessarily disagree with OP, your post is incoherently written and isn't exactly communicating the intent behind it in the best possible way. To be frank, it's quite fucking dumb, which is reflected in the rating I gave it.



I don't blame you, friend. I wasn't entirely sure how to make an OP without making it absurdly long, but I think I may need to revamp it and just insert spoilers. No hard feelings!


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## ToroidalBoat (Jul 27, 2020)

Syaoran Li said:


> "Whig History"


What's the story of "Whig History" and why is it called that?


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## Syaoran Li (Jul 27, 2020)

ToroidalBoat said:


> What's the story of "Whig History" and why is it called that?



Whig History emerged in the early 20th Century and was named after the center-left leaning party in the British Parliament, the Whigs (the direct predecessor of the Liberal Party) and it more or less made the assumption that history is always moving in a more "progressive" or left-leaning direction.

This was more or less the foundation to the Marxist idea of the "worker's paradise" and most of the SJW concepts of "the right side of history" as well as the "End of History"-style neoliberalism that was famously preached by Francis Fukuyama in the 90's.


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## ToroidalBoat (Jul 27, 2020)

Syaoran Li said:


> [Whig History] more or less made the assumption that history is always moving in a more "progressive" or left-leaning direction.


The Wikipedia article on "progress" says that in the Renaissance, "the individual potential was seen as a never-ending quest for being God-like, paving the way for a view of Man based on unlimited perfection and progress" - that could be the root of this so-called "Whig History".

Such a view does seem somewhat cult-like.


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## Jar-Jar Fanboy (Jul 28, 2020)

There definitely is somewhat of a cult-like mentality. Look at Scientology and their "suppressive people," for example. If anyone is deemed a "suppressive person," which is basically anyone who doubts Sceintology, you're pretty much forbidden from associating with them in any way. You see that a lot with the current Social Justice movement, only the non-believers are considered "toxic" and not "suppressive." Family member supports Trump? They're toxic, cut them out of your life. Friend made a racist joke? Toxic, cut them out of your life. Your brother listens to a band where the singer had accusations of misconduct made against him? Clearly, your brother supports abusers, and you need to cut him out of your life.

Hell, I saw a post floating around the other day about how you should never refer to Trump by name, just refer to him as "45" as though he's fucking Voldemort or some shit. They treat this guy like the literal devil, who's so evil, you shoudn't dare utter his name, nor should you engage in any discussion with his supporters, as though they're terrified that his supporters might actually have a point. 

And, SocJus forbid, you tweeted something "impure" as a teenager. No matter how much you've changed, no matter how much you beg, and grovel for forgiveness, you're still dirty, and unclean, for daring to tweet something not ideologically pure. And, should someone hold views that they disagree with, that person should be banned from all social media, and not allowed to share their thoughts or opinions on anything. Only the opinions they agree with should be available for consumption. Can't have anybody questioning the "approved" opinions, can we?


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