Thread by @_Ungagged

Social media is an amazing place to

1 feel listened to
2 grow a community
3 bring people together

4 sow discord amongst alienated people
5 pull alienated people together in cultist, right wing anger
6 create angry community

It is an incredible space to manipulate.

"Thought Reform" is on display on social media, constantly, injected in to movements in order to create discord and splits. To do this, the bad actors need to control the narrative and make people believe sometimes what was the opposite of what they once believed. Edward Hunter

came up with eight criteria to describe how totalitarian regimes/cults go about this.

1 Milieu control. The leader, or a select band, has complete control of information. Isolate people from outside information. People are taught to trust only the internal publications

and diktat and the group becomes self mental police. Think "fake news" and blocklists.

2 Mystical manipulation. Group and individual experiences are contrived, engineered and even staged in a way that makes them seem spontaneous.

3 Demand for purity. Viewing the world in

simple, binary terms-"Black vs White," "good vs evil" and members are told they must strive for perfection. (Eg the attacks on Nicola Sturgeon from certain members of Alba Party for not being as "indy" as them... in fact accusing her of being a British agent).

4 Confession.

Personal boundaries are broken down and destroyed. Every thought, feeling or action -past or present- that does not conform to the groups rules should be shared or confessed either publicly or to a personal monitor. All past divergences will be used by leader or group to control

members whenever they need to be put in line (digging through social media history is a perfect example).

5 Sacred Science. Doctrine is considered to be absolutely, scientifically and morally true... no room for questions or alternative viewpoints. The leader is above criticism.

6 Loading the language. Members learn a new vocabulary that is designed to constrict their thinking in to absolute black and white, thought stopping clichés that conform to group ideology. (Re transphobia , look at various statements about toilets, prisons and of course "adult

human female.")

7 Doctrine over person. Group ideology is privileged far above a members experience, conscience or integrity. If a member doubts or has critical thoughts about those beliefs, it is due to their own shortcomings.

8 Dispensing of existence. Only those who belong

to the group have the right to exist. All members and critics or dissidents do not. This is of course, the most dangerous and defining of the criteria. The language of some re Trans people show the danger of this. And the bile and hatred aimed at Scottish

Green and SNP members on social media of late, really should be concerning.

In addition to this, Margaret Singer, in her book "Cults in Our Midst," identified six conditions for exerting undue influence on people:

1 Keep them unaware of what is happening and how they are being

changed one step at a time
2 Control their social and/or physical environment, especially time
3 Systematically create a sense of personal powerlessness
4 Implement a system of rewards, punishments and experiences that inhibits behaviour that might reflect the person's former

social identity.
5 Implement a system of rewards, punishments and experiences that promotes learning the groups ideology or belief system and group approved behaviours.
6 Put forth a closed system of logic and an authoritarian structure that permits no feedback and cannot be

modified by the leaders.

Remember how positive the independence movement used to be? -if that is a question you ask, perhaps you are stuck in a closed system, controlled by a hierarchy or authoritarian structure. For most of us, the independence movement still IS a positive

one.

Alienation has us naturally seeking groups in which we belong. But there are bad actors who recognise this, and are applying the above criteria -identified by military and totalitarian regimes post WW2- on social media, much in the way political and religious cults do.

Remember, alienation is a product of an unequal society. People are isolated from physical communities that were once the norm. People feel disenchanted and separated from their culture, and feel powerless in their isolation and turn to online, digital life and social media.

In the 1991 book , Age of Propaganda, Aronson and Pratkanis provide a formula on how to lead a cult:

1 create your own social reality by eliminating all sources of info other than that provided by the cult (fake news; lying SNP etc). Provide a picture of your world (eg women's

rights under attack)that members can use to interpret all events.
2 Create an in-group of followers (follow lists) in contrast to an evil out-group (trans people, snp, greens)to be hated and feared.
3 Create an escalating spiral of commitment, beginning with simple requests

(small donations, rally attendance).
4 Establish your credibility and attractiveness through myths and stories that can be passed from member to member.
5 Send members out to proselytising the unredeemed (campaign!)
6 Prevent members from thinking undesirable thoughts by

continually distracting them (with outrageous tweets or manufacturing fake news/science/incidents)
7 Dangle a notion of a promised land before the faithful (independence quickly, but only for true believers).

They go on to say, 'When it comes to teaching your social reality,

there is one additional point to keep in mind: repeat your message over and over again. [Supermajority;supermajority betrayed by Sturgeon; trans women are men; adult human female] Repetition makes the heart grow fonder and fiction, if heard/read frequently enough, can come to

sound like fact.

Cheers for reading.

Information from Steven Hassan, Harford Medical School.

(Noticed the mistake... that should read, "Harvard Medical School."