The behaviour of the minions is really the key isn't it.
This is bigger than cults which are relative amateurs compared to some applications of this - particularly totalitarian states.
Think how quickly and easily ordinary, rational people in Nazi Germany were persuaded to hand Jewish members of their own community to the SS to be killed, how people in Communist East Germany were constantly snitching each other to the Stasi, or the sheer number of functionaries it takes to impose the ideals of the regime in say China or North Korea.
These are ordinary people like you and me that are easily convinced to be tools of state violence and oppression. Their home/family life is/was probably was much like yours or mine. It wasn't the party leaders that killed people in the concentration camps and gulags. These people are in a state that just makes them go along with the herd - much like how seminar participants generally don't challenge the leader on the stage no matter how awful their behaviour.
And we're seeing the same scary trend in Western politics now with a rise in right wing extremism (KKK types) and blame of immigrants.
I've also see comparison of LGAT techniques (Lifton Criteria) with the methods used by Communists to turn prisoners of war. I would imagine a lot of $cientology and LGAT concepts are borrowed directly from that and I wonder if some of those involved early on in setting it up had spent time in POW camps. People who engage in abuse are very often themselves victims of abuse.
This is bigger than cults which are relative amateurs compared to some applications of this - particularly totalitarian states.
Think how quickly and easily ordinary, rational people in Nazi Germany were persuaded to hand Jewish members of their own community to the SS to be killed, how people in Communist East Germany were constantly snitching each other to the Stasi, or the sheer number of functionaries it takes to impose the ideals of the regime in say China or North Korea.
These are ordinary people like you and me that are easily convinced to be tools of state violence and oppression. Their home/family life is/was probably was much like yours or mine. It wasn't the party leaders that killed people in the concentration camps and gulags. These people are in a state that just makes them go along with the herd - much like how seminar participants generally don't challenge the leader on the stage no matter how awful their behaviour.
And we're seeing the same scary trend in Western politics now with a rise in right wing extremism (KKK types) and blame of immigrants.
I've also see comparison of LGAT techniques (Lifton Criteria) with the methods used by Communists to turn prisoners of war. I would imagine a lot of $cientology and LGAT concepts are borrowed directly from that and I wonder if some of those involved early on in setting it up had spent time in POW camps. People who engage in abuse are very often themselves victims of abuse.