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| Gary M. Huggins |
This sinister grinning clown, Gary M. Huggins, is currently the Executive Director of the so-called Direct Selling Education Foundation.' This privately-controlled corporate structure has been created by 'MLM' cultic racketeers with their victims' money. Thus, Huggins and his academic associates have been the de facto deployable agents of criminals. In other words, this is a cabal of amoral dunces with diplomas who have been coopted to pretend moral and intellectual authority, as well as to hear no evil, see no evil and speak no evil whilst playing along with the Big 'MLM' Lie
The following communication was recently sent, by Huggins to Michael A. Bernstein, President The College of New Jersey.
Huggins employed predictable, reality-controlling 'MLM' shielding terminology. Laughably, he headed his communication:
'Re: False narratives and challenges to academic integrity and open discourse: The 2025“Multilevel Marketing: The Consumer Protection Challenge,” conference hosted by The College of New Jersey.'
'Dear President Bernstein,
As Executive Director of the Direct Selling Education Foundation (DSEF), I am writing to share our concerns and those of distinguished scholars of higher education who are established experts in business ethics, marketing and sales models to name a few areas of study. The annual “MLM Conference” (mlmconference.com) created and organized by retired TCNJ faculty member William Keep, PhD, was presented for the fifth consecutive year on May 8-9, 2025. The one-sided conference, which began with a welcome and enthusiastic endorsement from Interim Dean Tammy Dieterich, TCNJ School of Business, presented false narratives, unsubstantiated research, and failed to provide a true, balanced view of the direct selling distribution channel.
We believe it is essential for TCNJ leadership to conduct a thorough audit of this conference and investigate its practice of bias against microentrepreneurs —the majority of whom are women— and the entire direct selling channel. The suppression of academic freedom at public universities can have significant consequences beyond campus, weakening societal trust in higher education and its ability to serve the public good. Each year the conference presents isolated historical examples of misconduct, cherry-picked and generalized in an attempt to mislead the public and damage the direct selling channel. This content bears no resemblance to the modern reality of direct selling and how companies operate. Many of the speakers go as far as to claim that all direct selling firms are illegal pyramid schemes, although FTC actions and policy disprove these false and inflammatory claims.
The reality: direct selling is a retail consumer sales channel that has been in existence for over a hundred years and includes some of America’s best-known companies and consumer brands. These companies have high ethical standards, collectively employ tens of thousands of people and create jobs. Many of these companies have sophisticated teams of scientists, research and development teams and their own manufacturing facilities.
According to a recent study by Dr. Robert A. Peterson of the University of Texas, the annual economic impact of direct selling in the United States alone is $111.4 billion. It is one thing to have an earnest and honest concern about a particular sector of business or retail channel. However, it is clear that Dr. Keep has a one-sided and biased agenda that is below the stature of The College of New Jersey and its academic standards and, in fact, besmirches the college’s reputation as an academic institution. Universities should be safe havens for the free exchange of ideas.
Academic freedom means faculty, students and other stakeholders can engage in intellectual debate without the fear of censorship that impairs the rights of others in expressing their viewpoints. Never offering leading academic scholars or direct selling firms the opportunity to present an alternative view of the direct selling channel limits the academic freedom of the educators and stifles the voice of the channel in what should be an open discourse. Furthermore, the Department of Education’s policy on academic freedom requires universities to comply with the First Amendment. Failure to allow free expression, research and rigorous discourse without undue restrictions can jeopardize federal grants. The policy is intended to protect against restrictions that could limit free speech or academic inquiry. Despite numerous offers to provide proven academic research that investigates all viewpoints on direct selling, Dr. Keep has refused to include a balanced review of the industry. He continues to attack qualified academics from top-tier universities for their industry research as well as the independent contractors who choose to become involved in direct selling.
Additionally, Dr. Keep has allowed critics of the direct selling channel, including one presenter who cited and quoted from Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf while Dr. Keep looked on, and other speakers with questionable online practices to have a platform and a voice during his annual forum. I say “his” annual forum, but it is clearly publicly endorsed by The College of New Jersey as both sponsor and host. This is most concerning to us and we hope to you as well. To provide a balanced and fair examination of consumer protection efforts, DSEF hosted a national conference, “Building Trust in the Marketplace,” at Emory University in 2023. Event speakers included leading academics from around the country as well as individuals and organizations that have been critical of the channel. The same invitation was offered to Dr. Keep, who declined to participate and yet continued to create and produce his one sided conference, calling it “ethical education” for the students at The College of New Jersey. Indeed, is this education or inappropriate advocacy? How can this be an ethical review of an industry if you are only soliciting information from its critics? And why is the Interim Dean of the School of Business endorsing the demonization of an entire industry? I welcome the opportunity to discuss the implications of this conference for the companies that are part of the direct selling channel, including its potential impact on microentrepreneurs and consumers across the United States.
You can reach me via cell at 301-395-3112 or email at ghuggins@dsef.org I look forward to your response and insight following your review of the conference.
Thank you,
Gary M. Huggins Executive Director Direct Selling Education Foundation'
____________________________________________________________________
never allow the public to cool off;
never admit a fault or wrong;
never concede that there may be some good in your enemy;
never leave room for alternatives;
never accept blame;
concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong;
people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.'
'... in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad mass of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly outrageous lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.'
Bearing the above in mind, how can a pile of money be made from a financially
suicidal ‘business model’ that has been deliberately rigged to fail?
In 1967, an American satirical movie offered a memorable
answer to this conundrum. I am of course referring to ‘The Producers,’ written
and directed by Mel Brooks.
Whilst this movie went over the heads of certain
humourless critics who described it as, ‘controversial,’ in 1968, it won its
author an Academy Award for best original screenplay. Indeed by 1996, ‘The
Producers’ had long-since achieved a cult status and was deemed to be of such ‘cultural,
historic and aesthetic significance,’ that it was selected by the Library of
Congress to be preserved in the United States National Film Registry. For Mel
Brooks’ had presented the world with a classic comedy double act - Max
Bialystock, an outrageous caricature of a once successful, but now failing, New
York Jewish theatrical producer (evidently suffering from Narcissistic Personality
Disorder) played by Zero Mostel, and Leo Bloom, a deeply insecure Jewish
accountant (evidently suffering from Social Anxiety Disorder) played by Gene
Wilder. In the movie, this pair of physically and psychologically opposite
characters come together and perpetrate an absurd swindle - identified by the
accountant and peddled by the producer. By first building a bedazzling utopian fantasy
of future prosperity and freedom in his mind, Bialystock
overwhelms an initially reluctant Bloom, and persuades him to become his
partner in crime. He then sets to work seducing a flock of wealthy, but lonely
and vulnerable, old ladies. One by one, Bialystock persuades them to buy a
total of 25 000% of the projected profits from, what he assures them will
be, a sure-fire hit stage musical which he and Bloom are producing on
Broadway. However, he doesn’t tell them that the show has been written by a deranged
devotee of Adolf Hitler, Franz Liebkind, or that it will venerate the ‘führer’
and the ‘Nazis.’ For the show, ‘Springtime for Hitler,’ has
been carefully selected by its producers with the hidden motive of offending a
sophisticated New York theatre audience to such an extent, that it will be doomed
to close after just one disastrous performance. Just to make certain that it
will immediately bomb, Bialystock and Bloom recruit an aggressively kitsch transvestite,
Roger DeBris, to direct the show, and they find a drug-fuelled pacifist-hippie,
Lorenzo Saint DuBois (LSD), to play
Hitler. On opening night, Bialystock even makes an enemy of the New York Times
theatre critic, by offering him a bribe.
The devious plan being that, seeing as ‘Springtime for
Hitler’ has cost Bialystock and Bloom only a mere fraction of their available
financing to stage, when inevitably it sinks without a trace, the Internal Revenue
Service will have no reason to investigate Bloom’s fraudulent declaration that no
profit was made. Moreover, the old ladies who collectively have vastly
over-financed the show, will believe that they simply made a bad investment.
As ill-informed and isolated individuals, they too will have no reason to
suspect fraud. Thus, Bialystock and Bloom will be able quietly to keep
the large pile of excess finance. However, when despite all their sabotage efforts,
‘Springtime for Hitler’ turns out to be a smash hit predicted to ‘run
and run,’ the producers along with the show’s author wind up behind bars. They
are ultimately seen duplicating the same fraud on their fellow inmates and the prison
warden, with Bialystock and Liebkind directing rehearsals and Bloom
over-selling shares in their latest sure-fire hit production, ‘Prisoners
of Love.’
Now most people would automatically assume that, in the
real world, it wouldn’t be quite so easy to perpetrate essentially the same absurdly
obvious swindle, albeit hidden behind an a far more complex and confusing ‘sure
fire business model,’ but again one deliberately rigged to fail. A swindle not
just based on essentially the same one-off, financially suicidal modus operandi
as described above, but now expanded and duplicated on an industrial scale and
baited to keep ensnaring a much wider range of ill-informed individuals. Indeed,
to the average person, the idea that numerous gangs of copycat charlatans have
been allowed to keep peddling the same insidious game of commercial make-believe
as reality, steadily exploiting, isolating and silencing many millions of
losing investors around the world over a period spanning several decades, and thereby
get away with stealing a veritable mountain of money, would seem to be beyond
the bounds of possibility. However, it should be remembered that the best way of
hiding something, is to place it in plain sight and make as big as you possibly
can.
Thus, I managed to live more than three decades
without ever hearing the made-up impressive-sounding phrase, 'Multi-Level
Marketing,’ or its catchy abbreviation, ‘MLM.’ Today, I wish this contagious
nonsense had never entered my life, but unfortunately, I had no choice in the
matter. Whilst reading the history of my own nightmare encounter with the
original 'MLM commercial' cult known as 'Amway' (corruption of 'The
American Way'), bear in mind that, when these disturbing events first started
to unfold, I had no idea of the level of danger my family was in, or of the
true nature, extent and power of the phenomenon I was confronted with. As yet,
there was no full explanation of 'MLM commercial' cultism readily available.
That's why I began the thankless task of compiling one as long ago the late
1990s. However, at that time, I was still trying to find the right words to
identify it accurately. Even when I did find the right words, I discovered that
the ugly, but ultimately absurd, truth about the 'MLM commercial' cult
phenomenon was still unthinkable to most people. The truth being that what has
become commonly referred to as, 'the MLM business model,' has been
nothing more than a classic example of the notorious, reality-controlling,
totalitarian/toalistic propaganda tactic known as the 'Big Lie.' That is to say, the
spreading of a falsehood which is so colossal and outrageous that the average
person cannot even begin to conceive that anyone would have the audacity to
invent it. Indeed, when I first began to challenge the Big 'MLM' Lie,
I was faced with the daunting situation where it had been repeated, largely unchallenged,
so often and for so many years, that a remarkable number of apparently
sophisticated and rational people had come to accept it as the truth.
The situation is still daunting, but lately it has begun
to change in that, mainly due to the Internet, an increasing number of
courageous 'MLM commercial' cult survivors have found accurate information,
as well as mutual support, enabling them to come forward and describe their
essentially identical experiences. Also, whereas in the past many 'MLM' converts
were men, who naturally found it hard to admit to the world that they'd been
duped, lately the majority of persons being lured into, and exploited by, these
pernicious groups, have been women. Furthermore, in 2019, my American associate,
Robert FitzPatrick, published 'Ponzinomics.' In this book, Robert not only goes
a long way towards identifying the true nature of the 'MLM commercial' cult
phenomenon, but he also traces the history and origins of the Big 'MLM' Lie
and explains how a pair of its earliest creators managed to obtain the
highest-level of protection in the USA. As a result, politically appointed
senior Federal Trade Commission officials effectively raised the white flag
of surrender to predatory criminals, albeit dressed up as respectable businessmen,
when, starting in the 1970s and despite significant levels of complaint, they
set aside an established, common-sense legal precedent which had automatically identified
and banned all endless-chain recruitment frauds, previously labelled as,
'pyramid selling schemes.' For, even though it had been under investigation for
years and was facing civil prosecution, these senior officials eventually latched
onto a convenient pretext not to go ahead and shut-down the corporate-front for
the original 'MLM commercial' cult upon which all subsequent versions have
been, and continue to be, modelled. This dubious decision was evidently made because
the bosses of 'Amway,' Messrs. Richard DeVos and Jay Van Andel, with a
Bible in one hand and the Stars and Stripes in the other, had purchased
association with their local congressman (fifth Michigan district) with
significant quantities of stolen money. The beneficiary of these ill-gotten
gains was none other than Gerald Rudolph Ford Jnr. - a politician not exactly
noted for his intellectual capacity, but nonetheless someone of great influence.
For those readers who are perhaps too young to remember
him, Gerald Ford was leader of the Republican party in the House of
Representatives 1965-1973, becoming US vice-president under Richard Nixon when,
in 1973, Spiro Agnew (who was under investigation for corruption), pled guilty to
a minor felony charge and was obliged to resign. Ford went on to become US
president 1974-1976 after Nixon himself was obliged to resign rather than face
certain impeachment. Thus, Ford remains the only person to have held both the
office of US vice-president and US president, without being elected to either.
He is also the president who granted a pardon to Nixon for the crimes he'd
committed whilst in office.
However, the coopting of Gerald Ford to play the role of
‘Amway’s’ useful idiot was only one step in DeVos and Van Andel’s
well-financed infiltration, and subversion, of the US legislative process and justice
system. Indeed, there can be absolutely no doubt that, culminating in 1979, the
chiefs of an important civil regulatory agency of the US federal government
played politics, and in so doing, completely failed in their appointed task of
protecting the American public. As a direct consequence, the FTC brought about
the birth of the essentially meaningless phrase, 'Multi-Level Marketing is
legal.' In this way, an absurd, but nonetheless insidious, endless-chain
recruitment fraud was effectively authorized in the USA. Furthermore, this
major American regulatory lapse enabled the profitable racket of 'MLM commercial'
cultism not only to be extensively reproduced in the USA, but also to be
exported around the world, now hidden behind the pretence that ‘the MLM
business model (as developed by the founders of the Amway Corporation) had been
examined and approved by the US government.' Not surprisingly, subsequent
generations of politically appointed senior FTC officials have all refused to
admit publicly to their predecessors' catastrophic failure and their own chronic
negligence - for which, one day, a sitting American government might find
itself liable. In this way, the Big ‘MLM’ Lie was permitted to transform
and expand into a well-oiled machine for stealing and laundering money on a
global scale - each year bringing billions of dollars into the USA, and all
right under the noses of officials who have continued to allow this plunder to
be falsely-declared, with the paid-compliance of some of the world's largest accountancy
firms, as 'retail sales revenue.' However, plenty of senior FTC types,
as well as high-ranking US politicians, including a certain Donald John Trump,
have all had their snouts planted in this almost bottomless trough of foreign
and domestic loot, set before them by the bosses of a multiplication of 'Amway'
copy-cat 'MLM' cultic rackets whose essentially identical camouflaged
criminal activities they have conveniently refused to identify. Indeed, the
number of senior FTC officials who have accepted, and continue to accept,
tempting offers of well-paid employment from 'MLM' front-companies, or
law and accountancy firms, co-opted to hear no evil, see no evil and speak no
evil whilst playing along with the Big 'MLM' Lie, is truly astonishing.
All this begs the not unreasonable question: other than
enabling a growing number of unoriginal gangs of devious con artists to get
away with thieving from the entire planet for the best part of half a century,
what exactly has been the point of having such a spineless, easily-corrupted
and, therefore useless government agency as the FTC?, when in 'Ponzinomics' one
independent American does far-more to protect his fellow citizens from the Big 'MLM'
Lie, than the entire one thousand five hundred+ FTC staff (including more
than five hundred attorneys and seventy economists, with an annual budget of hundreds
of millions of dollars) have ever done. In fact, Robert explains in great
detail why, completely contrary to the ambiguous official message broadcast by
the FTC for more than forty years, it has not just been ‘a few bad apples,’
but all 'Amway' copy-cat so-called 'MLM Income Opportunities' that
have been centrally controlled rigged-market swindles, hiding their inevitable,
effectively 100%, overall net-loss/churn rates of endless-chains of transient contractors.
For the crack-pot pseudo-economic theory which has been falsely-labelled the
'MLM business model,' was maliciously designed to be flawed-financially, to
the point where it would be impossible for any so-called 'MLM' company
to derive the majority of its revenue lawfully from persons who are not its own
ill-informed investors motivated by the false expectation of a future reward.
In even more accurate terms, 'MLM/commercial' cults have all comprised groups,
and sub-groups, of susceptible individuals who have been subjected to identifiable,
co-ordinated devious techniques of social, psychological and physical
persuasion designed to shut down their critical and evaluative faculties, and thereby
convert them, without their fully informed consent, to the self-perpetuating
and self-gratifying, but ultimately self-destructive, belief that: endless recruitment
+ endless purchases by the recruits = endless profits for the recruits. For
this reason, Robert FitzPatrick coined the word, 'Ponzinomics,' in an attempt
to place an appropriate label on the financially suicidal activity that, to their
eternal shame, generations of senior FTC officials, their advisers and
political masters, have permitted to be passed off and normalized around the
world as, ‘a viable and legal part of the direct selling industry.'
Thus, 'Ponzinomics' can be briefly defined as the
dark art of peddling vulnerable persons infinite shares of their own
finite money, because what the FTC has consistently refused to acknowledge
publicly, is the undeniable fact that any claim, or implication, that one
penny of extra net-income, let alone life-changing sums of money,
can be generated lawfully by participating in an 'MLM business opportunity,'
is dangerous comic-book nonsense designed to entice and deceive. Indeed, it
should be glaringly obvious that the Big 'MLM' Lie is far-too-good to be
true, whilst it's no secret that what used to be the traditional direct selling
industry (once known as ‘door-to-door peddling’), has long-since died out. Its
demise being due to many evolving social and economic factors; not least the
arrival of supermarkets, hard-discount stores and online shopping. Furthermore,
'MLM' products/services have been offered at fixed, often exorbitant,
prices, rendering them effectively unsaleable on the open market to persons
with fully functioning critical and evaluative faculties; whilst no so-called 'MLM'
company has ever set common-sense limits on the number of contractors being
recruited, or on the areas of population where these so-called 'distributors/direct
sellers' are supposed to find customers. Just imagine what would
happen if the bosses of McDonalds fixed the price of their company’s hamburgers
at twice that of their competitors and set no limits on the number of
franchises they sold, or any restrictions on the locations where all these demonstrably
unviable catering establishments were supposed to operate shoulder to shoulder?
Once the utter absurdity of the so-called 'Multi-Level
Marketing business model' is fully understood, anyone with a modicum of
common-sense, and/or the most-rudimentary hands-on experience of commerce,
ought to be immediately able to deduce that no ‘Amway’ copy-cat company
can ever have been, or will ever be, found by the FTC voluntarily disclosing
the true results of its economically incestuous activities and operating
lawfully. Indeed, this ongoing situation is beyond farcical, because when asked
the most obvious of questions, it goes without saying that American trade
regulators and their academic advisers, have never been able to come up with one
solitary example of a so-called 'MLM' company that would be able pass independent
rigorous inspection. Yet despite the lengthy list of common-sense reasons proving
that there can be no such thing as ‘a viable and legal MLM direct selling income
opportunity,' FTC officials, guided by a cabal of smug dunces with diplomas,
came up with a truly pointless and stupid ‘test.’ This boils down to them
throwing common-sense out of the window whilst trying, on rare occasions and on
a case-by-case basis, to determine that a so-called 'MLM' company, suspected
of being a pyramid scheme, has not been deriving the majority of its income
lawfully from authentic retail sales (i.e. based entirely on value and demand)
to members of the general public (i.e. persons who have not been ill-informed contractors
the so-called 'MLM' company motivated by the false expectation of a
future reward).
Laughably, FTC officials have listed other ‘pyramid
scheme red flags' for the public to look out for, and the agency has even posted
stern warnings that 'MLM companies have caused, and are still causing,
extensive damage to consumers, because some MLM income opportunities are actually
pyramid schemes in disguise.' At the same time, American trade regulators,
without the slightest concern for the extensive damage they themselves have
caused and are still causing, have continued bleating the Big 'MLM' Lie,
by insisting that 'MLM is a viable and legal branch of the direct selling
industry.' Yet no one at the FTC has ever seen a shred of quantifiable
evidence proving that this ridiculous adult fairy story can be true. In
fact, when asked in the most specific of terms, if they have ever seen such
evidence, like income-tax payment receipts, it has been impossible to get any
meaningful, let alone the only truthful, response to this simple question.
Another highly revealing question that FTC types have obviously shied away from
answering, is: what would be your own reaction if a vulnerable individual you
care about suddenly underwent a radical personality transformation, and
declared that he/she had signed up for a so-called 'MLM income opportunity?'
Thus, in respect of their Orwellian refusal to tell the
truth publicly, and identify the Big 'MLM' Lie, Robert FitzPatrick has
compared the inflexible attitude of FTC officials, and their advisers, to a body
of humourless scientists who have been paid to investigate the manifestly preposterous
claim that 'pigs might fly,' but after decades of examining an
assortment of wingless pigs, they still insist on continuing their futile, but
financially-profitable, quest whilst systematically refusing to consider even
the suggestion that there can be no such mythical creature.
At this point, I should perhaps point out that, although
I am an 'MLM commercial' cult survivor, I was never an adherent of one
of these pernicious groups. Unfortunately, I found myself shackled financially to
a person, my only brother, who at a time of vulnerability, had fallen
completely under the spell of the Big 'MLM' Lie. Again, when these disturbing
events started to unfold, I did not fully understand that my brother was ideal prey
to be lured and defrauded, then used as bedazzled-bait to lure and defraud
others; all for the benefit of a little gang of sanctimonious American
billionaire-charlatans posing as 'Compassionate Capitalists,' and whom
he had never met. Yet classically, my brother was an ideal subject to be
deceived, for the simple reason that he was completely convinced that he was
far too smart to be deceived. Thus, once enslaved inside the ‘MLM’
trap, the most powerful weapon in the hands of the criminals exploiting him,
was my brother’s own mind. However, initially I failed to grasp just how
dangerously deluded and devious, chronic 'MLM commercial' cult adherents
can be. That said, like many people whom they approach, I immediately realised
that they are living in a parallel reality - completely obsessed with trying to
recruit you into what is quite clearly a dumb pyramid scheme, but which they
insist is 'part of the legal MLM direct selling industry and definitely not
a pyramid scheme.' What took me much longer to fathom, is that core-'MLM
commercial' cult adherents are also living by a parallel, and perverted,
code of morality. Their destructive behaviour is controlled by the
self-righteous guided-delusion that, by recruiting you, and even by lying to
you, they are ultimately helping both themselves and you to achieve future
redemption in a secure utopian existence - a form of Capitalist Paradise on Earth
- where no one has a job, but everyone is his/her ‘own boss’ - a happy,
healthy, prosperous and free 'MLM business owner.'
Thus, it should always be remembered that chronic 'MLM'
adherents' belief can be quite genuine, but what they believe in, and have
bought into body and soul, is a colossal and bedazzling fake. The irony of all
this being, that the Big 'MLM' Lie has continued to thrive, because its most-fanatical
adherents have been tricked into wasting their own time and money spreading it
and hiding the truth about it, combined with law enforcement agents' and
legislators' chronic, and catastrophic, failure to identify it accurately. Although
they have no idea what they are really involved in, active 'MLM' adherents
are, in fact, proselytising-evangelists for a camouflaged, non-rational, ritual
belief system (call it a 'perverted religion' if you like) which has been
maliciously designed not only to spread like a contagion - enticing, deceiving,
robbing, exploiting and abusing susceptible individuals and their friends and
families - but also to load its victims with shame and guilt for their inevitable
failure to succeed, and thus, prevent them from facing reality and complaining.
Consequently, whilst they remain under the control of the Big 'MLM' Lie,
its most-dangerous adherents should be seen for what they really are -
the deluded deployable agents of a de facto syndicate comprising the bosses of
some the most widespread, socially, psychologically and financially destructive
organized cultic crime groups to have emerged in recent history.
One of the universal identifying characteristics of a totalistic cult, is that their leaders seek to control all information entering not only their adherents’ minds, but also that entering the minds of casual observers. This is achieved by constantly denigrating all external sources of information whilst constantly repeating the group’s reality-inverting key words and images, and/or by the physical isolation of adherents. Cults leaders systematically categorise, condemn and exclude as unenlightened, negative, impure, absolutely evil, etc. all free-thinking individuals and any quantifiable evidence challenging the authenticity of their imaginary scenarios of control. In this way, the minds of cult adherents can become converted to accept only what their leadership arbitrarily sanctions as enlightened, positive, pure, absolutely righteous, etc. Consequently, adherents habitually communicate amongst themselves using their group’s thought-stopping ritual jargon, and they find it difficult, if not impossible, to communicate with negative persons outside of their group whom they falsely believe to be not only doomed, but also to be a suppressive threat to redemption.
Thus, the great weakness of all forms of totalistic cultism, is that once you understand how it functions by excluding external reality whilst ritualizing (constantly repeating) the group's reality-controlling fiction as fact, every jargon-laced statement made by cult bosses and their propagandists, becomes almost 100% predictable.
Totalistic cultism is a trap. Obviously, anyone who only examines the bait in a trap and who remains unaware of its true purpose, risks getting caught themselves. Just like a mousetrap, the basic design for the cultic trap has remained the same down the centuries even if the presentation of the bait has become evermore sophisticated. Sadly, many commentators have found it impossible - when faced with the apparently illogical results of cultism - to abandon their existing academic, and professional, disciplines, which are anchored in the logic of the traditional world. Consequently, their understanding has often been made impossible by misplaced objectivity. However, it must be remembered that a counterfeit banknote might be 99.9 % perfect, but the bit that is not makes all of it a fake. Similarly, in order to have any chance of understanding cultism, it must be approached from the apparently subjective point of view that its results are always the product of a contagious deception, the victims of which unconsciously accept fiction as fact. Only then, can the phenomenon be examined with genuine objectivity. Once this vital principle has been learnt, the apparently authentic words and images reflected by persons under the influence of cultism - like those printed on counterfeit banknotes - are revealed as dangerous distractions. They should never be taken at face value and, therefore, I try to remind the reader of this at all times. Any commentator who repeats the reality-controlling shielding-terminology of any cultic group, but without detailed qualification (or heavy irony), demonstrates that he/she remains at a pitifully low-level of understanding.
David Brear (copyright 2025)
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