Moved: The Next Mormonism May Very Well Be Liberalism

[Kishkumen]

Modernity is a mixed bag. I can see why some people would chafe against it.

[Wallaby Lover]

“Liberalism” is a word people use for modernity if modernity frightens them.

No one I know, whether they are liberals or conservatives, Mormons or members of another faith, is afraid of modernity.

[Wallaby Lover]

What makes you think I didn't read the article?

I'll take that as a "no."

Do with it what you will. You might be unhappy, it seems to me, since I linked to an article written by a liberal hero who acknowledged that liberalism has cult-like tendencies just like conservatism and Mormonism. I can see why you would take offence to my comparison if you had ever been a Mormon. In essence, I'm saying that if you lean liberal, you left one cult and entered another. Accepting that can be difficult.

[Res Ipsa]

I'll take that as a "no."

Do with it what you will. You might be unhappy, it seems to me, since I linked to an article written by a liberal hero who acknowledged that liberalism has cult-like tendencies just like conservatism and Mormonism. I can see why you would take offence to my comparison if you had ever been a Mormon. In essence, I'm saying that if you lean liberal, you left one cult and entered another. Accepting that can be difficult.

Okay, so the answer is still no -- you didn't read the article before posting. The thread is simple trolling.

[Wallaby Lover]

Do with it what you will. You might be unhappy, it seems to me, since I linked to an article written by a liberal hero who acknowledged that liberalism has cult-like tendencies just like conservatism and Mormonism. I can see why you would take offence to my comparison if you had ever been a Mormon. In essence, I'm saying that if you lean liberal, you left one cult and entered another. Accepting that can be difficult.

Okay, so the answer is still no -- you didn't read the article before posting. The thread is simple trolling.

You're posting style effectively substitute for me in terms of how I describe liberalism. You're frustrated that you can't convince me to believe what you say, so since I won't give you a yes or no answer, you're resorting to slandering my reputation by claiming that my thread was written just for the purpose of trolling.

[Gadianton]

Modernity is a mixed bag. I can see why some people would chafe against it.

Sure, but there's some irony here. As a young reader of Nibley, I briefly converted away from free-market (Skousen) Mormonism to Nibley's ideal that we had to go back to the grass --read the scriptures and farm -- even though I believed it only on paper (kind of like Nibley himself). I briefly became a left-winger. What really put me off was meeting some folks who were way more into Nibley than I was at the Lord's University, who actually walked the walk and were literally against modernity from cars, to dress, to electric lights, and they claimed to have Nibley's personal support. The pretension was off the charts and it was as cult-like as anything I've encountered in person. Since my belief in the Church and God was already eroding at that time and since I had grown up from the right-wing conspiracy world of Skousen, my interests shifted completely away from political or economic philosophy -- probably to general epistemology, if anything.

Now go back to the Skousen days. In the 80's, the stereotype of a young republican in my mind was Alex's character on the sit-com Family Ties, if you ever watched that. That's what it was to be a republican. The opposite, I can't think of a TV character, but would be some goofball hippie who lived in a commune. Well, I don't think the right-wing landscape was totally smooth; in the early 90's, a good friend of mine who also discovered Skousen and never let go even to this day, began sending me materials from established Skousenites he was getting involved with and it was nuts. They were preppers -- for the second coming. There was a particular Mormon I won't mention who posted here a couple times who was their paradigm, a student of Nibley, who believed everything about the modern world was corrupt and evil and the way these people in their firesides talked, this guy had a fortress in the mountains filled with food and guns. But these folks were ultra right-wingers, not lefties.

In my mind, in college, based on the experiences I'd had, left-wingers were anti-science hippies who were hypocrites and totally unrealistic. But that strain from right-wing prepper culture seems to have really flourished and totally eclipsed any left-wing culture with anti-vax and anti-capitalism roots. It's mingled with Nazism that brings to the table everything from insular social views to anti-vax and vegetarianism. Nowadays, folks really pushing the right-wing narrative are as pathetic and offensive to me as the ultra left from my college days. There is more common ground than not. The left explicitly embraces commune ideals, but the far right rejects government, rejects capitalism, accepts Putinesque authoritarianism, buys gold like Ajax and prepares for the big collapse, longs for insular community, and so they will become a loose collection of loud personal rights enthusiasts who end up living in enclaves that for all intents and purposes are communes. Communes with lots of guns, the gun as the center of the family is the only real difference, and it's an anachronism, since easy guns are a product of modernity's highly scalable production capabilities.

[huckelberry]

You didn't read the article you posted, did you? If you're going to troll, at least put some effort into it.

What makes you think I didn't read the article?

Wallaby Lover,
Of course Res Ipsa may be wrong and you read the article. If so you sound like you do not know what a Trotskyite cell is though the article has details to clue you in. Or perhaps you have so little understanding of the left that you imagine that it really is like such a group. It is difficult to know how to converse with such a large misunderstanding.

Perhaps what you are saying is that both the left and right has extremist groups with control cult qualities. I think that is true but your words sound as if you think the left is all like some Trotskyite insurgency. That simply is far from reality.

[Res Ipsa]

Okay, so the answer is still no -- you didn't read the article before posting. The thread is simple trolling.

You're posting style effectively substitute for me in terms of how I describe liberalism. You're frustrated that you can't convince me to believe what you say, so since I won't give you a yes or no answer, you're resorting to slandering my reputation by claiming that my thread was written just for the purpose of trolling.

LOL. This is such a classic example of low effort trolling that I'm going to dissect the specific tactics and bookmark the thread for future reference.

You started off with a stunning own goal of an argument that religious believers sometimes make: X (a secular ideology, political position, or conclusion based on science that the poster disagrees with) is a religion. The argument can work only if religion is a bad thing, and adherents of religion sects don't believe that religion is bad. Beyond that, claiming that X is a religion implies that X should have the same special rights granted to religious believers under the Constitution or that religion should have its special constitutional status taken away. I've yet to encounter a religious believer willing to accept the consequences of equating religious belief to a political philosophy or to accepting the evidence that climate change is a serious problem that the world needs to address. It's one of those arguments that folks reflexively make because they've heard others make it but have never given any serious thought to the consequences.

Next you cited a blog post by Steven Hassan, offering him as a credible source:

This is an article by Steven Hassan that explains how left-wing cults trick people into believing crazy ideologies that are often rooted in marxism. Very impressive and very worrying. Especially since our precious youth are routinely indoctrinated by the ideologies of left-wing cults. Mormonism seems tame compared to left wing indoctrination.

It was clear that you didn't know anything about Hassan before you posted this or had even read the article you linked to. If you had, you wouldn't have described the article the way you did. Hassan's theory and model are apolitical: destructive cults can form around any any person or ideology. Destructive cults are defined by Hassan in terms of how they treat their members, not whether the belief system is liberal or conservative, sacred or secular.

After I asked whether you'd read the article, you dodged the question.

What makes you think I didn't read the article?

This is the weakness of low effort trolling. Dollars to donuts, you simply parroted something you saw someone else post elsewhere as way to "own the libs" without making any effort to see if the description of the post that you read was accurate. If you answer "yes," you have to defend your description of the post with what the post actually says. But you can't because you haven't read the article so you don't know what it says. If you answer "no," you have admitted that you don't care whether what you post is accurate or not as long as you get a reaction. Or, in other words, the purpose of the post is to troll. So, the low effort troll has to dodge the question, just like you did.

After I asserted that your dodge was an admission that you hadn't read the article, you again dodged the question by employing typical trolling tactics:

Do with it what you will. You might be unhappy, it seems to me, since I linked to an article written by a liberal hero who acknowledged that liberalism has cult-like tendencies just like conservatism and Mormonism. I can see why you would take offence to my comparison if you had ever been a Mormon. In essence, I'm saying that if you lean liberal, you left one cult and entered another. Accepting that can be difficult.

This response is interesting because it expressly misrepresents the contents of the blog post you chose to link to. Nowhere does the blog post state or imply that "liberalism has cult-like tendencies." Doubling down on false statements about facts or a source is a typical troll tactic -- admitting to being wrong sucks all the wind out of trolling. Now the position you've put yourself in is even worse: if you now claim to have read the article, you've admitted to lying about its contents. If you admit that you're still making false claims about what the article says, you've admitted to trolling. But, the problem is one of your own making -- you could have spent the time and effort to read the article for offering it as an authoritative source. But that takes away the essence of low effort trolling. The point of low effort trolling isn't to persuade or be factually accurate. The point is to get an emotional reaction from the people you've decided are your enemies.

The response also employs the classic tactic of changing the subject to the person who has responded and attacking them. I haven't communicated any "offense" at all. You made that up. Liberal Hero? Now it's clear that you are so low effort you haven't even read my posts. I've seen posts from some former Mormons (as well as former Witnesses and Scientologists) that seem to consider them a hero. But I just wrote a long post upthread that included my opinions about Hassan, which are far from hero worship. Although I've read pieces about Hassan over the years, I've never heard him described in political terms until you described him as a liberal hero. Something else you made up.

Finally, we get to the part of trolling that is most interesting to me: use of tactics similar to those used by abusers on their targets. It's been referred to as DARVO, which stands for Denial, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender. Your thread attacks liberals as a cult that tricks people into joining the cult. citing an expert on cults who does not claim that liberalism is a "cult" or even has cult-like tendencies. In response to having your bluff called on what Hassan actually says, you now pivot to being the victim of an attack:

You're [sic] posting style effectively substitute [sic] for me in terms of how I describe liberalism. You're frustrated that you can't convince me to believe what you say, so since I won't give you a yes or no answer, you're resorting to slandering my reputation by claiming that my thread was written just for the purpose of trolling.

Slandering your reputation? Classic. Dude, you're an anonymous nickname that you just adopted a few days ago. To the extent you have a reputation, you are only making it right now. There is nothing to slander. Fake outrage to Reverse Victim and Offender. Again, a classic trolling technique.

Finally, we get to projection. I'm specifically referring this: "You're frustrated that you can't convince me to believe what you say...." Dude, I haven't tried to convince you of anything. Why would I think that someone who doesn't bother to read the documents he links to as alleged authority for his position is persuadable. That's not what persuadable people do. Why would I waste my time trying to convince you of anything?

[huckelberry]

...........


This response is interesting because it expressly misrepresents the contents of the blog post you chose to link to. Nowhere does the blog post state or imply that "liberalism has cult-like tendencies." Doubling down on false statements about facts or a source is a typical troll tactic -- admitting to being wrong sucks all the wind out of trolling. Now the position you've put yourself in is even worse: if you now claim to have read the article, you've admitted to lying about its contents. .......

Finally, we get to the part of trolling that is most interesting to me: use of tactics similar to those used by abusers on their targets. It's been referred to as DARVO, which stands for Denial, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender. Your thread attacks liberals as a cult that tricks people into joining the cult. citing an expert on cults who does not claim that liberalism is a "cult" or even has cult-like tendencies. In response to having your bluff called on what Hassan actually says, you now pivot to being the victim of an attack:

..... Fake outrage to Reverse Victim and Offender.
......

The whole of Res Ipsa's post is well thought out and worth the bit of time to read. I have abbreviated it for those in a hurry or with limited attention.

[Res Ipsa]

...........


This response is interesting because it expressly misrepresents the contents of the blog post you chose to link to. Nowhere does the blog post state or imply that "liberalism has cult-like tendencies." Doubling down on false statements about facts or a source is a typical troll tactic -- admitting to being wrong sucks all the wind out of trolling. Now the position you've put yourself in is even worse: if you now claim to have read the article, you've admitted to lying about its contents. .......

Finally, we get to the part of trolling that is most interesting to me: use of tactics similar to those used by abusers on their targets. It's been referred to as DARVO, which stands for Denial, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender. Your thread attacks liberals as a cult that tricks people into joining the cult. citing an expert on cults who does not claim that liberalism is a "cult" or even has cult-like tendencies. In response to having your bluff called on what Hassan actually says, you now pivot to being the victim of an attack:

..... Fake outrage to Reverse Victim and Offender.
......

The whole of Res Ipsa's post is well thought out and worth the bit of time to read. I have abbreviated it for those in a hurry or with limited attention.

Thanks Huck. Much appreciated.