Thread by @mcjulie

Watching "Inside the Manson Cult: The Lost Tapes" & had a thought about how cults use sex, gender identity, etc. to control people.

I'm sure that if the evangelical community had talked about the Manson Family at all, they would have pointed to "having lots of sex" as proof of their depravity & cultlike nature.

But the cultlike aspect of the Manson Family wasn't that people were having sex -- it was that people were having sex according to the dictates of the cult leader.

A cult that says "no sex, ever" and a cult that says "lots of sex, all the time" aren't really that different -- they're both telling members, "your sexuality doesn't belong to you, it belongs to the cult."

Or, to put it in evangelical "purity culture" terms, your sexuality belongs to God.

As the cult progressed, Charles Manson started to put himself in the role of Jesus Christ. Persecuted. Miracle worker. "I've seen him do things no other man could do!"

How often do DJT worshipers use the same kind of language to talk about their cult leader?

DJT cultists love to claim he's done so many things "no other president" could do, claiming he's suffered persecution "no other president" had to face.

And the next phase: Manson turned his cult militaristic by talking about the coming race war, beginning to train them for murder.

It starts with "they're going to kill you, so you'd better be ready to kill them when they try" and eventually becomes "they're going to kill you, so just kill them now, don't wait for them to try."

Manson didn't pull the trigger but he was responsible for those murders & was found to be so in a court of law.