Thread by @ConceptualJames

If you understand Maoism and how it works, this is an amazing and revelatory watch. This is a direct deprogramming from "the people's standpoint," and it's amazing.

https://twitter.com/addicted2newz/status/1753702517765021907

Since I'm currently writing a book about Maoism in Woke America, this is all really present to my mind. I'll try to explain it in a thread here for you all, so you can watch again with understanding, but obviously there's a lot to explain, so it might be janky.

The first thing to notice is that the student in the video pretends to be asking for the teacher's opinion but is in fact probing to find out if his teacher has the right opinion. That is, he's trying to find out if his teacher is part of "the people" or an "enemy of the people."

Bc of the power dynamic (the student is alone, particularly), he's unlikely to be able to initiate a struggle session, though he could deliver "criticism," in line with Mao Zedong Thought by accusing his teacher of being out of step with "the people's standpoint" on the issue.

His opener, though, where he pretends to be interested in the teacher's take or opinion is actually a test as to whether or not criticism needs to be delivered for having a wrong opinion. In other settings, it's the basis for shunning and even outright struggle sessions.

Struggle sessions were a form of psychosocial torture used by Maoist activists to humiliate and shame people who had the wrong opinions, trying to force them into conformity or into a process of thought reform ("ideological remolding"). Alternatively, it would just destroy them.

It's crucial to understand that this video opens with the student probing to find grounds to initiate criticism and struggle against the teacher. Had this gone differently, it's possible the teacher would face MANY students going after him later bringing vicious criticism.

You will find that with Maoist activism, the style is often to seem to probe what you think as a justification to rain opprobrium (struggle) down on you if you don't think what they want. It's very Hundred Flowers: let people speak so you can crush ideological enemies.

The Hundred Flowers Campaign (baihua qifang) was a time in the late 1950s when Mao encouraged free speech against his regime for a while then rounded up everyone who outed themselves as an "enemy" and sent them to be reeducated or die in the countryside (gulag).

The next thing to notice from the video is that the student hasn't formed his opinion about JK Rowling on the basis of any facts. It's what other people are saying. He's in the "outer circle" of the cult, like most people. He's locked in socially and emotionally ONLY.

You can tell this is the case for three reasons:
1) He presents it as such, lacking any substantive evidence;
2) He doesn't actually agree with the people's standpoint perfectly himself but defers to it;
3) He cannot articulate (intellectualize) WHY she's "transphobic."

If he were intellectually committed in addition to socially and emotionally locked ("inner school" of the cult), he would have been able to spout off any number of BS rationalizations for how Rowling is "transphobic" by stating the reality of sex. He can't, though.

This is important to recognize when it happens because people in the "outer school" of a cult are the most rescuable, as we see by the end of the video. They believe it because their social and emotional identities depend on it (so, hijacked psychosocial valuation schema).

A psychosocial valuation schema, by the way, is a method by which people evaluate themselves as good people (psycho-) or good members of a community (social). It's a fascinating subject, but Maoist "unity" through criticism and struggle (peer pressure) hijacks it, as seen here.

In short, the student is perceiving that if he has the wrong opinion about Rowling, he'll be a bad "community member" (ally), which means he's probably a bad person, worthy of shame, guilt, and exclusion, demanding he "do better." This dynamic is crucial to the cult brainwashing.

The teacher skillfully picks apart that this "outer school" cult member student doesn't know why he believes what he believes and forces him to think for himself, breaking him free from the Maoist psychosocial valuation schema for the duration of the exercise.

The next thing to observe is that the student later confesses to the fact that he personally sees nothing wrong with the statement but can see how others would find it problematic. That is, the psycho- part is breaking away from the -social part of the evaluation schema.

What he's expressing there is actually that he has adopted "the people's standpoint," as Mao called it. Wokes would call it "positionality" or "the standpoint of the oppressed" (yes, for those who know, "standpoint epistemology"). He knows he's supposed to see the world that way.

Psychologically for the student, this is the most dangerous and most important moment, and kudos to the teacher for effecting the deprogramming well. The reason is because the Maoist brainwashing program of "self-criticism" depends on the psycho- and -social being out of step.

The guilt and shame cycles in Maoist brainwashing, together with "leniency" or "love bombing" when people uphold the "people's standpoint" and criticism and struggle when they don't, are most powerful when the psycho- and -social parts disagree, not when they align.

The dynamic is to make the target feel like they're the only person who doubts "the people's standpoint." The student, in the wrong setting, would immediately feel alienated, alone, and ashamed that he knows "the people's standpoint" but secretly disagrees with it. This is key.

Maoism as a psychosocial brainwashing phenomenon requires "milieu control," such that the social group around you all publicly seems to perfectly hold to "the people's standpoint" so that each person believes they're the only one who thinks it's probably bogus.

In that state, you will "self-criticize" because you think something must be wrong with you. Indoctrination is external criticism. Conversion is self-criticism. Now note Robin DiAngelo saying "antiracism" is a lifelong commitment to self-reflection, self-critique, and activism.

Robin DiAngelo is a Maoist, by the way, at least in practice if not fully self-aware of it. Her "white fragility" tactic is unambiguously the struggle model of Maoist prisons and revolutionary universities. The same is true coming from "queer allyship" in the present case.

The student in the video might even end up going back to his peer-learning group (as Mao would have it) and feel even more ashamed after this deprogramming session because he knows it's "shameful" to hold incorrect opinions. Mao said that's like not having a soul. Compare Wokes.

In the end, the teacher breaks through, and the students sees not just that he was relying on "the people's standpoint" (psychosocial valuation) instead of his own critical thinking, and the teacher gives him space to feel accepting of "feeling like an idiot." That's very good.

In the Maoist environment, so with Woke teachers, the "people's standpoint" is pushed from the top, the interrogated "student" is urged to confess his sinful private doubts with increasing sincerity, and the social environment reinforces it all (to avoid their own struggle).

After breaking people down psychosocially this way and getting them to half-adopt and fully profess "the people's standpoint," the process enters another phase, xuexi, which means "study." That is, "outer school" cultists are pushed to become "inner school" cultists.

The point of "study" is to lead psychosocially locked people into intellectual rationalization, where the student would have been able to rattle off a litany of robotic-sounding theory (thought-terminating cliches and rationalizations) for how Rowling IS "transphobic."

That not only keeps them hermetically sealed (iykyk) in the cult, making deprogramming FAR harder and rarer, it also creates a demonstration for "outer school" members who can be convinced that their beliefs have intellectual foundations they just don't understand yet.

The purpose of Woke education is to lead kids INTO this pathway and then solidify it. That is, our schools are Mao's revolutionary schools, though the intensity and specific content differ a little. The full dynamic is on display in this video, which starts to deprogram it.

Hopefully, this student, perhaps with this teacher, will continue to deprogram and learn to think for himself outside of hijacked psychosocial valuation schema. His social grouping is almost definitely going to disagree and may struggle him back into the fold later, though.

What I want people to get out of this is that what's happening in our country, in our schools to our children and young adults, and in our workplaces is MAOISM. It will destroy this country and the people in it; you can bet reliably on that. We need to see it for what it is.

Seeing it for what it is won't stop it all by itself, but because nobody wants to be in a cult, and many still recognize that mass-murdering tyrants like Mao aren't heroes in any sense, it can help break the spell of the hijacked psychosocial valuation program at its heart.

I hope many young people who are caught up on the outer edges of this "movement" will see it for what it is before it's too late, esp. since the Woke Maoist cult is much more personally destructive than the OG Maoist cult was to the individuals involved.
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