Thread by @dogemperor

The fact there is a new Dunnibg-Krugerrand related scam targeting MAGAts is a GREAT opportunity to discuss what I mean by "easy marks", Affinity Fraud, and how this impacts polling (especially with a candidate that has heavily engaged in affinity fraud).

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https://twitter.com/SwissWatchGuy/status/1846638168176824776

So (as the post notes) this is not only a classic scamcoin (even more so than other Dunning-Krugerrands) but is also affinity fraud.

The t/o/ken is locked to a wallet, and can't be sold until TFG allows sale (meaning at least 80% will lose their money).

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And, also, as the post notes--this is primarily using TFG's name/approval to sell the scamcoins, it's being targeted to MAGAts, and even a lot of cr/y/ptobros aren't going to be aware of the financial risks (or the fact most t/o/kens are regulated as a security or futurity)

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So, I should describe a bit about affinity fraud.

Affinity fraud is a very specific type of fraud that targets a particular community that is likely to have more trust in a particular person/brand AND is part of a community that has higher inherent trust in each other

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And at least one particular community of MAGAts--Christian Nationalists, particularly those involved in the NAR or otherwise involved in "Biblical patriarchy" movements where women have a strong social pressure to stay home and raise kids--have HIGH rates of affinity fraud

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In fact, a lot of aspects of Branhamism and ANY religious movement descended from Branhamism (including "Manifest Sons of God" lineage groups including the NAR) inherently include affinity fraud; "Prosperity Gospel" itself can be seen as a form of affinity fraud.

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I go into a much more deep history below, but NAR-linked groups, Independent Fundamentalist Baptists (frequently into Quiverfull/other "biblical patriarchy"), and Latter-Day Saints are EXTREMELY frequent targets of affinity fraud

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And all three groups have specific reasons they are FREQUENT victims--high-demand groups (and especially with NAR and IFB and arguably with LDS crossing over into "coercive religious group" territory), high in-group trust, AND strong societal pressure for WAHM/SAHMs

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The classical affinity frauds that target *women* in these communities involve MLMs (which are often promoted as a way for a Stay At Home Mom to be a Work At Home Mom in a Good Christian Business) or outright ponzis in the form of "Christian Gifting Schemes"

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The classical affinity frauds that target *guys* in these communities are a little closer to what TFG is doing with the scamcoins--explicitly pushing dubious investment vehicles and pushing them as some kind of "Christian investment" or "Kingdom Opportunity" scheme.

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And very often, these will have some very specific in-group theming or branding. "Gold Investment" ponzi schemes (which involved no gold but mere certificates or a token gold coin) have been promoted as "Christian Liberty Dollars" (also playing into SovCit myths)

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And common scams involve investments for things like oil exploration in Gaza (yes, this is a particular affinity fraud that's targeted NAR communities), breeding a red heifer for dedicating the Third Temple (likewise), and MLMs promoted as "Christian businesses".

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There is at least some ancedotal evidence that people who are recruited into a coercive religious group *may* inherently be worse at "truth testing", and at least some are in a particular cohort of "conservative leaning and likely to *spread* conspiracy theories".

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And this *actually* relates to one of the few forms of affinity fraud rife in Christian Nationalist communities that often targets men AND women--the MLM.

Yes, I'm going to be getting into Conspiracy Theology here, and how it started an actual societal panic.

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The *original* "Satanic Panic" largely started out in MSoG-linked churches in the early 70s, with a particularly major source being grifter Mike Warnke who actually created an entire media empire out of what amounted to an affinity fraud targeting "spiritual warfare" sorts.

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Warnke was a Campus Crusade for Christ "street preacher" (Campus Crusade, even in the 70s, was increasingly recognized as coercive, and is MSoG-lineage) who falsely promoted himself as the former leader of a diabolist cabal before his conversion.

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(Of note: Conversion narratives are, in and of themselves, enough of a trope in MSoG-lineage Christian Nationalism that a WHOLE discussion can be done on that--suffice it to say, the more lurid the supposed past-life pre-conversion, the better.)

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And, until Warnke was outed as a complete fraud by (ironically enough) an investigation performed by a Charismatic magazine looking into "Satanic Panic" promoters in the early 90s, he and others did a VERY successful grift targeting evangelical Christians on main.

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His show was basically a wish-dot-com knockoff of Gallagher, but instead of ending with smashing watermelons with a giant baka-hammer, he'd go into how he was FORMERLY PART OF THE SATANIC ILLUMINATI and discuss LURID plots of what The Satanic Cabal was doing to RUIN AMERICA

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And again, this got so big that it functionally created *entire alternative industries* for Christian Nationalists. The whole concept of "Christian Contemporary" as a music genre has its genesis in this. Christian fiction (explicitly marketed as this) has its origins here

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An INCREDIBLE amount of the actual isolating tactics that define the NAR as a coercive religious movement had their origins within "Satanic Panic", including MUCH of the Christian Nationalist alt-media empire--because there was a HUGE push to avoid "Satanist" businesses.

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And this is where "Christian Yellow Pages" directories eventually came into being, and whole Christian Nationalist medical and dental and mental-health associations, and heavy pushes for people to not consume "secular media" or even non-controlled Christian media at all

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And, yes, this led to affinity frauds and at least one bit of Conspiracy Theology that REALLY broke out of Christian Nationalist circles, along with the moral panics involving secular music, video games, and tabletop RPGs.

Specifically: The P&G Urban Legend.

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Now, there's a reason I do mention MLMs specifically in regards to affinity fraud targeting NAR (and LDS) in particular, because at least one example is not JUST affinity fraud but probably the earliest example of what I term "coercive cross-recruitment".

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It helps to know in this context that starting in the 50s, the lineage of MSoG-linked churches that eventually evolved into the NAR who were under Yonggi Cho (nee David Yonggi Cho, nee Paul Yonggi Cho) adopted very MLM-like leadership styles

23/xdailykos.com/stories/2006/1…

I myself grew up in what was essentially patient zero of Cho's network in the US (and which to this day--even after Cho's death--is still the US center of operations). NAR "founding fathers" like C. Peter Wagner were under Cho's network as well.

24/xrdwrc.wciu.edu/archive/ralph-…

And these groups are set up a lot like the typical MLM "pyramid" structure, to the point actual "downlines" can be traced, very similar to a particular MLM I'm about to get into

25/xdailykos.com/stories/2007/8…

Now a lot of you are going to be saying "Hey, this sounds familiar..."

It should!

At almost the SAME time that Cho was pushing MLM-like setups for churches...AmWay was getting ITS start, and AmWay has been associated from the beginning with Christian Nationalism

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I myself wrote about AmWay as a Christian Nationalist MLM back in 2007: dailykos.com/stories/2007/7…

The book "Merchants of Deception" (available online below) notes 3 out of 4 "downlines" are linked to MSoG lineage recruitment.
transgallaxys.com/~emerald/DOWNL…

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It was--and still is--fairly common for AmWay "downlines" to be used to recruit people into NAR-linked churches, and it was (and still is) common for AmWay and other MLMs to be promoted as "Christian business ops" within "cell churches" and "home churches".

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And in the 70s, at least *one* AmWay downline got the clever idea to actively use Satanic Panic as a marketing strategy--promoting a false claim that P&G was run by a Satanic cabal, and using specific claims that would start a pattern in "isolating" tactics.

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One particular claim was that P&G's "man in the moon" service mark (which they had had since their founding in 1837) was somehow a Satanist dogwhistle--either representing Satan and the "13 fallen angels", or Satan and the P&G board (in a cabal of 13).

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And this broke *significantly* out of AmWay circles, to the point that Phil Donohue's show actually did a program debunking the myth to little success. (Donohue, of note, ran a VERY popular talk show in the 70s--"The View" of its day, essentially.)

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One thing that DID largely quell the rumor was the debunking of "Satanic Panic" outside of NAR circles (MSoG-lineage is so wedded to the concept of "spiritual warfare" that it dismissed the outing of "Satanic Panic" promoters as The Satanists Having Taken Over That Mag)

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(And of note re NAR sorts never having given up "Satanic Panic" even after outings of almost everyone involved as frauds. They pushed "Satanic Panic" well past *2018* (when QAnonsense broke out of the 'chans) and LITERALLY see QAnonsense as external confirmation.)

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(And yes, something like 85% of QAnonsense IS ultimately derived from NAR "Satanic Panic" tropes including those continuing past the 90s...and this embrace has led to some VERY dark places, like the actual Great Sedition on January 6th 2021 )

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Back to affinity frauds and disinformation, though--the OTHER thing that ultimately stopped that particular bit of malarkey was P&G actually suing AmWay and winning a series of defamation lawsuits--but even here, it was tied up for decades in court

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By the time P&G finally got a definitive victory in 2007, they had already had to abandon their "man in the moon" service mark

And the whole point of that disinfo? Literal affinity fraud encouraging people to buy from an MLM.

36/xnbcnews.com/id/wbna17702748

AmWay in particular really WAS promoting itself as a "Christian business op", and at the time this bit of disinfo started...the likes of Wal-Mart and warehouse stores like Costco didn't really exist yet nationally.

P&G was THE dominant player in laundry soap.

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P&G was in fact *so* dominant that the term "soap opera" actually derived from how P&G was usually a sponsor of daytime drama programs aimed at housewives--selling laundry powders and cleaning products in the commercial breaks.

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The comparable AmWay-branded products were more expensive and didn't work as well, and AmWay actually required distributors to buy boxes of crappy laundry powder (with their own money) to sell

Hence the disinfo to try to brand P&G as Agents Of The Enemy.

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You actually see the same thing even today, even if it doesn't involve an MLM.

One example is Christian Nationalist aligned disinfo--with a lot of "hostile foreign actor" help--targeting FEMA and nonprosyletizing aid agencies in re Hurricane Helene relief efforts.

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At least some of this disinfo--which has led to plots of Real Life attacks on aid workers--IS functionally of a similar goal to the P&G libel; to force people to prosyletizing, Christian Nationalist groups like Samaritan's Purse only

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Now, to get back (again) to the subject of affinity fraud, and how MAGAts may be extra susceptible.

Again: TFG has had a LONG history of pushing branded, rather scammy products based solely on his name branding and celebrity status in the 80s

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And this gets into the whole "truth testing" thing I discuss a lot in polling.

A lot of persons in coercive religious groups and political cults of personality are, in fact, quantifiably worse at determining "truth" vs "truthiness" for various reasons.

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There are studies that show a marked correlation between populations that trend R, are likely to not just believe but actively *spread* conspiracy theories, AND who are more susceptible to frauds than the population at large

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https://x.com/dogemperor/status/1842993928951439546

This "issues with telling 'truth' vs 'truthiness'"--called "low conscientiousness" in sociological studies--is, again, something that comes up often (and isn't JUST restricted to the US, or MAGAts) x.com/dogemperor/sta…
x.com/dogemperor/sta…

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Put more simply: There is a population of people out there who are "natural marks" who are in general more likely to believe and *propagate* disinfo, who also generally trend more conservative and fall for other forms of fraud in general.

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And there's ANOTHER complicating factor, too.

There are at least *some* studies of coercive religious group involvement that do indicate that the simple act of being in a cult can impact one's ability to distinguish "truth" from "truthiness".

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And considering the isolating tendencies of cults AND the fact a WHOLE LOT of getting and keeping people IN cults is emotion-based, it does make sense being in a cult impacts the ability to tell "Truth from Truthiness"



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MAGAtism is in and of itself widely considered by experts on coercive groups to be a political cult of personality, and one which extensively cross-recruits with coercive religious movements (including the NAR, QAnonsense, and others).

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So in essence there's already a population of not just "born marks" but likely "made marks" which is just about the *perfect* population of "marks" for any sort of scam, spam, or fraud to explicitly target.

Especially as they've often had a HISTORY of being marks.

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Just speaking strictly on the *NAR* contingent in MAGAtism--in a religious movement that is highly coercive, has affinity fraud as part of its core practices, has MANY MANY targeted affinity frauds, and even the churches themselves are often promoters or victims

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AND very often you'll see the same people who invest in "Christian Liberty dollars" or "oil prospecting in Gaza" or "Red Heifer" schemes have invested in things like Iraqi dinars, and may in fact now be involved in cr/y/pto scams.

Like, oh, THIS cr/y/pto scam.

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And--just like with how cults get people in--a whole lot of this "pulling in the marks" is specifically based on emotion-fueled "truthiness" (especially in hitting the same "Your're special and this is your chance to get back against THEM") with these kinds of scams.

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And (as I've noted repeatedly over the past week), unless one is CAREFUL with conducting surveys this even fucks up *political polling* because the people you're most likely to get on a phone call or a paid-survey portal...are Natural Marks



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I've also on occasion seen people (who have studied notable frauds) note that The Former Guy pretty much has historically had ALL the mannerisms of a snake-oil salesman.

Folks studying apocalyptic cults have made comparisons to Jim Jones in particular.

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I myself have made commentary privately to folks that a LOT of The Former Guy's mannerisms (including even the rhythm and repetition of points) is VERY similar to a televangelist or a traveling preacher on the circuit of preacher tours within MSoG-lineage churches

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And it's honestly NOT a coincidence that the single highest predictive factor of being a MAGAt IS being an adherent to NAR/"Seven Mountains Mandate" theology

Which, of note, is ALSO where a LOT of televangelism is focused (speaking of affinity frauds!)

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Again: Basically a pool of marks, ripe for any scammer.

And there are *so* many scams that take advantage of that population that honestly I'm far less shocked than most that cr/y/pto scamming is being done by TFG towards his flock of marks

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