Warning
More than half a century of quantifiable evidence, proves beyond all reasonable doubt that what has become popularly known as 'Multi-Level Marketing' is nothing more than an absurd, cultic, economic pseudo-science, and that the impressive-sounding made-up term 'MLM,' is, therefore, part of an extensive, thought-stopping, non-traditional jargon which has been developed, and constantly-repeated, by the instigators, and associates, of various, copy-cat, major, and minor, ongoing organised crime groups (hiding behind labyrinths of legally-registered corporate structures) to shut-down the critical, and evaluative, faculties of victims, and of casual observers, in order to perpetrate, and dissimulate, a series of blame-the-victim closed-market swindles a.k.a. pyramid scams (dressed up as 'legitimate direct selling income opportunites'), and related advance-fee frauds (dressed up as 'legitimate training and motivation, self-betterment, programs, recruitment leads, lead generation systems,' etc.).
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Professor David Cay Johnston has studied Donald Trump in depth. From only what has so far been entered in the public record, Johnston has concluded that, because he has managed to get himself elected as US President, Donald Trump has become the most successful con-artist of all time. Despite Trump's history of filing lawsuits against his detractors (in which he always poses as an innocent victim of lies), David Cay Johnston has had the guts to broadcast his analysis quite openly. Personally, I'm inclined to agree with the Professor's opinion, except I would say that Donald Trump has a lot of stiff competition for the title of history's most successful con artist. Not surprisingly, some of the other candidates are linked to the President.
During the best part of a decade, in return for promoting a fake 'direct selling income opportunity,' Donald Trump is known to have openly-received millions of stolen dollars from at least one gang of blame-the-victim 'MLM' cultic racketeers.
Via the peddling of effectively-valueless materials bearing his name, Donald Trump has also been lining his pockets at the expense of countless victims (internationally) of many other kitsch variations of the American-spawned Utopian lie entitled, 'MLM.' As far as I'm aware, neither Donald Trump nor anyone in his entourage, has made any statement to explain the President's conflict of interest regarding this particularly dodgy channel of income. Furthermore, to date, no journalist has bothered to ask Donald Trump about his ongoing revenues from book-sales to vulnerable 'MLM' adherents. Personally, I'd like to know if Trump is still getting this 'MLM' windfall, exactly how much is he getting and how much has he already had?
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/12/nyregion/donald-trump-atlantic-city.html
In the past, when Donald Trump's titanic casino business was sinking in the Atlantic (City), he managed to abandon ship (his pockets stuffed with other people's cash) leaving everyone else to drown. Although Carl Icahn's name features prominently in media reports as one of Trump's major casino business investors, I suspect that his actual role in this earlier chapter of the ongoing Trump tragicomedy, will never be fully-explained.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/01/icahn-conflicts-of-interest-trump-white-house.html
For a while following the 2016 election, it was rumoured that Carl Icahn would be appointed to President Trump's Cabinet, but in the end, it was announced that the 81 year old tycoon is 'the President's unofficial advisor on regulatory reform.' Yet, in this democratically-unaccountable made-up role, Icahn's conflict of interests almost beggars belief, because his current (potentially-catastrophic) investment in the effectively-valueless 'MLM' cultic racket known as 'Herbalife,' tops more than one billion dollars.
Since Donald Trump can now appoint new senior federal regulators whom he knows will turn a blind eye to 'MLM' rackets, you would have to be pretty stupid, and/or deluded, not to foresee that the President will heed the 'advice' of his greedy buddy, Carl Icahn, and continue to betray his fellow citizens (and those of America's allies) by doing everything in his power to protect his fellow peddlers of the absurd, but nonetheless pernicious, 'MLM' fairy story.
Currently, and not just in respect of the 'MLM' phenomenon, government of the people, by the people, for the people has perished from the USA, to be replaced by government of racketeers, by racketeers, for racketeers.
One month ago, I re-published a 'Slate Magazine' article, 'Trump's Great Pyramid,' by Michelle Celarier. Yet even this encouraging piece didn't tell us anything which we didn't already know. It quoted Robert FitzPatrick extensively and acknowledged that, for the overwhelming majority of transient core-adherents, 'MLM' participation has been a confusing and costly nightmare. However, although this article also acknowledged that all 'MLMs' prey on the vulnerable and hide behind the same thought-stopping 'Direct Selling' jargon and Amercian Dream imagery (copied from the 'Amway' original), Michelle Celarier still was not at liberty to publish the full truth and she inadvertently repeated some familiar 'MLM' bullshit.
Michelle Celarier pointed her readers in the direction of mainstream commentators who have been allowed to get closer to the full-truth about 'MLM'. The 'Slate Magazine' article contained a link to last year's episode of John Oliver's satirical show which tore the 'Herbalife/MLM' lie to shreds and, at one point, compared 'MLM' rackets to the 'Scientology' racket.
Although serious in tone, Michelle Celarier's article was in line with the many satirists who have long-since realised that the outrageous, 'America is broke and only I can fix it,' quackery which Donald Trump peddled to get himself elected, is neither original nor unique and, consequently, it cannot be fully-understood in isolation.
So, apart from all the stolen cash that 'MLM' racketeers have invested buying influence in Washington, how did 'MLM' cults help Donald Trump to become US President?
First of all, it should be clearly understood that 'MLM' cults are also 'Prosperity Gospel' cults and that the bosses of these organisations have been employing co-ordinated devious techniques of social, psychological and physical persuasion in order to shut down their victims' critical and evaluative faculties and prevent them from facing reality and complaining. In this way, for decades, 'MLM' cult bosses have been hiding the evidence of their crimes in order to continue to perpetrate them
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/01/15/the-true-mission-of-donald-trump-s-pastor.html
Donald Trump's connections with the so-called 'Prosperity Gospel' go all the way back to his youth.
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| Donald Trump (left) with brothers and sisters. |
At one time, it was reported that, as children, Donald Trump, and his siblings had been taken by their parents to Pastor Norman Vincent Peale's 'Reformed Dutch Protestant Marble Collegiate Church' in Manhattan. Today, Donald Trump's Wikipedia page states that Fred Trump and his wife did not officially become members of Peale's congregation until the 1970s, and that Peale had then Ministered to the Trump family until his death in 1993. In 2015, Donald Trump still claimed to attend the Marble Collegiate Church regularly, but according to the Church, this was not true. However, Donald Trump has never hidden his long-time adherence to Pastor Peale's philosophy.
There has been a lot written about Pastor Peale (1898-1993), but essentially all he did was syphon an existing deep well of credulity to make himself rich. It has to be said that Peale was a highly convincing, word-perfect, performer. He re-wrote, updated and peddled (as his own philosophy) long-established religious concepts (blind faith, power of prayer, paradise, etc.) in a non-religious format ('positive thinking, visualisation, success,' etc.). Cleverly, Peale used the exemplary wealth and success of a few of his followers (like Donald Trump's father) as the proof that his philosophy worked, but he also employed co-ordinated devious techniques of social, psychological and physical persuasion in order to convert other followers to the guilt-inducing belief that a person can only achieve wealth and success by excluding all doubt and totally believing that he/she will achieve wealth and success. In other words, when any of Peale's unquestioning adherents failed to achieve wealth and success, it was child's play to convince them that their failure must have been entirely their own fault for not believing totally.
This, in a nutshell, is the destructive, closed-logic, controlling scenario which has been lying at the heart of all 'MLM' rackets since they first appeared in the late 1940s. Countless millions of victims of dissimulated closed-market swindles (a.k.a. pyramid schemes) have been silenced simply by convincing them that they made a free choice to participate and that they could have made money, if only they had duplicated their leaders' perfect example and not quit. It's little wonder that Peale's books and recordings have been, and still are, widely-peddled by 'MLM' racketeers to their victims.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon_Hill
Pastor Peale was only one of several copy-cat 'Positive Thinking/ Prosperity Gospel' quacks who all found hordes of desperate takers for their rebranded cocktail of psychological + religious + economic snake oil, during the Great Depression. Many politicians (including Presidents) were also bedazzled by their optimistic message and they didn't want to recognise its inherent danger. Again, for obvious reasons, the works of persons like Napoleon Hill have also been, and still are, widely-peddled by 'MLM' racketeers to their victims.
There have been countless, unoriginal, parasitic 'Positive Thinking/ Prosperity Gospel' quacks who have attached themselves to 'MLM' rackets down the decades. All of them have employed co-ordinated devious techniques of social, psychological and physical persuasion.
Donald Trump cut his political teeth performing live to deluded 'MLM' cult adherents. Trump witnessed first hand how (just like Norman Vincent Peale) 'MLM' shills recite a ritual script - pretending affinity with vulnerable people by acting the roles of ordinary men and woman turned super men and women via their access to a secret step-by-step 'positive' plan which can enable anyone to achieve the American Dream of freedom, wealth and success. In 'MLM,' cultic rackets the shills are always prepared to share their knowledge with anyone (for a price - part of the price being the surrender of the adherents' critical and evaluative faculties).
At times of mass-alienation (following: wars, natural disasters, economic crises, etc.), history proves that would-be demagogues steadfastly pretending moral and intellectual authority whilst pursuing hidden criminal objectives, who at other times would have been almost universally-recognised as absurd charlatans, have found it much easier to become widely-accepted as authentic Messiahs.
David Brear (copyright 2017)
