CultNEWS101 Articles: 9/2/2025

Malaysia, Falun Gong, China, Nazism, Anthroposophy, UK, The Kingdom of Kubala

Free Malaysia Today: Falun Gong exhibits allegedly seized by 'China police' near National Monument

"A Falun Gong practitioner claims that seven men, identifying themselves as policemen from China, removed her group's exhibits near the National Monument in Kuala Lumpur last Friday."

" ... The woman, who wanted to be known only as Yong, told FMT she had set up the booth there three months ago to educate the public about Falun Gong, a spiritual movement banned in China.

"I chased after them and asked for the items to be returned. One of them said, 'We are policemen from China'. They ignored my pleas and drove off," she said.

Yong claimed the men left in a van accompanied by a local tour guide and driver.

In May, then Kuala Lumpur police chief Rusdi Isa said the arrest of more than 70 Falun Gong followers ahead of Chinese president Xi Jinping's visit to Malaysia was lawful as "Falun Gong is an illegal organisation".

"As such, it is not permitted to carry out any activities," he was quoted as saying at a press conference."

Between Occultism and Fascism: Anthroposophy and the Politics of Race and Nation in Germany and Italy, 1900-1945 by Peter Staudenmaier

"The relationship between Nazism and occultism has long been an object of popular speculation and scholarly controversy. This dissertation examines the interaction between occult groups and the Nazi regime as well as the Italian Fascist state, with central attention to the role of racial and ethnic theories in shaping these developments. The centerpiece of the dissertation is a case study of the anthroposophist movement founded by Rudolf Steiner, an esoteric tendency which gave rise to widely influential alternative cultural institutions including Waldorf schools, biodynamic agriculture, and holistic methods of health care and nutrition. A careful exploration of the tensions and affinities between anthroposophists and fascists reveals a complex and differentiated portrait of modern occult tendencies and their treatment by Nazi and Fascist officials.

Two initial chapters analyze the emergence of anthroposophy's racial doctrines, its self-conception as an 'unpolitical' spiritual movement, and its relations with the völkisch milieu and with Lebensreform movements. Four central chapters concern the fate of anthroposophy in Nazi Germany, with a detailed reconstruction of specific anthroposophical institutions and their interactions with various Nazi agencies. Two final chapters provide a comparative portrait of the Italian anthroposophical movement during the Fascist era, with particular concentration on the role of anthroposophists in influencing and administering Fascist racial policy.

Based on a wide range of archival sources, the dissertation offers an empirically founded account of the neglected history of modern occult movements while shedding new light on the operations of the Nazi and Fascist regimes. The analysis focuses on the interplay of ideology and practice, the concrete ways in which contending worldviews attempted to establish institutional footholds within the organizational disarray of the Third Reich and the Fascist state, and shows that disagreements over racial ideology were embedded in power struggles between competing factions within the Nazi hierarchy and the Fascist apparatus. It delineates the ways in which early twentieth century efforts toward spiritual renewal, holism, cultural regeneration and redemption converged with deeply regressive political realities. Engaging critically with previous accounts, the dissertation raises challenging questions about the political implications of alternative spiritual currents and counter-cultural tendencies." 

Independent: Exclusive: A missing Texas mom was found living with a lost 'African' tribe. Now, her family speaks out

"A missing Texas woman found living with the self-proclaimed leaders of a lost "African" tribe in a Scottish forest insists she is there by her own free will, despite her family's fears she is lost to the sect forever.

Kaura Taylor was recently found living in the woods with the group after vanishing from her home three months ago, leaving relatives distraught.

"It is very stressful, and difficult. It breaks our heart. We're overly concerned about Kaura, but she doesn't think anyone is concerned about her," Taylor's aunt Teri Allen told The Independent.

In a message posted to Facebook after 21-year-old Taylor, mother to a one-year-old child who she took with her to Scotland, said that she was not missing and lashed out at reports she "disappeared."

"I'm very happy with my King and Queen, I was never missing, I fled a very abusive, toxic family," Taylor wrote, following up with a video message telling U.K. authorities to leave her alone in the woods in Jedburgh, 40 miles south of Edinburgh. She added that she is "an adult, not a helpless child."

However, Allen on Thursday pushed back stridently against those assertions, describing her niece's younger years as "very sheltered and protected."

She said Taylor "was brought up in church, but not their religion. Not this thing that they got going. It's a bunch of hogwash."

Speaking to The Independent from her Dallas-area home, Allen said Taylor kept it "totally hidden from the family" when she began communicating in 2023 with so-called Kingdom of Kubala leader King Atehene, a former opera singer and PR agent from Ghana whose real name is Kofi Offeh, and his wife Jean Gasho, who now goes by Queen Nandi.

Queen Nandi did not respond to a request for comment. An email seeking comment from King Atehene bounced back as undeliverable.

The Kingdom of Kubala claims to be a lost Hebrew tribe that aims to retake the land they say was expropriated when Queen Elizabeth I expelled native black Jacobites from England in the 1590s.

The trio in Jedburgh hope to add to their numbers by bringing other supposedly lost tribes back to their purported ancestral homeland."

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The People With Purple Triangles

Jehovah’s Witnesses share the story of their unique experiences during the Holocaust—and the lessons that can be applied today as they face continued persecution in Russia and elsewhere

MAGGIE PHILLIPS
Tablet
JANUARY 25, 2023

Jehovah’s Witnesses were among the very first groups persecuted by the Nazis, from 1933 until 1945. By the end of WWII, thousands had been imprisoned or sent to concentration camps. Hundreds of ernste Bibelforscher (“earnest Bible students,” as they were called by many Germans at the time) died by guillotine, shooting, hanging, lethal injection, in gas chambers and medical experiments, and as a result of the harsh conditions they endured in detention.

Often Aryan and fluent German speakers, many Jehovah’s Witnesses had an atypical experience in concentration camps, compared to other groups (accounts describe some working in the homes of SS officers). A 2017 article in the journal Genocide Studies theorizes that their race and language, combined with “group cohesion, mutual support, and religious faith,” meant a higher-than-average survival rate for Jehovah’s Witnesses compared to other groups. Like the other descendants of groups persecuted during the Holocaust, followers of the faith today continue to honor both the profound suffering and the steadfastness of their forebears who faced deprivation, torture, and death. But their fellow believers today draw particular inspiration from the way that Jehovah’s Witnesses of the time were committed to communicating their faith to their fellow prisoners, and the horror they were living to the wider world.

This legacy continues, as Jehovah’s Witness publications and media speak out about the persecution of their co-religionists in the oppressive regimes of the 21st century, as Jehovah’s Witnesses around the world continue to experience state persecution for their beliefs.

Faith-sharing is at the core of who Jehovah’s Witnesses are; they are best known for their door-to-door evangelism. Even when the COVID-19 pandemic stymied their trademark in-person approach, they switched to handwritten letters, inviting recipients to learn more about Jehovah’s Witnesses’ perspective on suffering (they resumed door-to-door ministry just last year).

Originally calling themselves simply Bible Students, Jehovah’s Witnesses came out of the Adventist movement of the 1830s, which believed in the imminent return of Christ. When the movement broke up into factions in the 1840s, the Bible Students were led by a man named Charles Taze Russell. Russell departed from much of Christian orthodoxy, preaching that the doctrine of the Trinity was unscriptural, and that Christ’s second coming would be an invisible manifestation of his presence. Today, Witnesses continue to oppose Trinitarian beliefs, rejecting the idea that Jesus is one with God, while remaining distinct, manifesting through their relationship a third person, known as the Holy Spirit. Rather, they see Jesus as subordinate to God, his father. Jehovah’s Witnesses remain convinced of Christ’s invisible, spiritual second coming, which they hold began in 1914, based on a prophecy in the Book of Daniel, and which they believe is leading up to the final triumph of God over evil.

RELATED

Evangelizing by Mail

When the pandemic made unannounced home visits untenable, Jehovah’s Witnesses stopped knocking on doors and started writing letters instead



BY MAGGIE PHILLIPS

Publishing is in their DNA: Russell also established the Watch Tower Society, which was dedicated to the publication of tracts and other religious literature, still a feature of Jehovah’s Witnesses’ proselytizing today. In fact, the Bible Students’ leadership was imprisoned in Atlanta in 1918 for violating the Sedition Act, due in part to the publication of a book, The Finished Mystery, which criticized the U.S. government and the militarism that it asserted led to America’s involvement in WWI. According to a Jehovah’s Witness publication on the history of their denomination, when their leaders were released in 1919, the Bible Students approached their mission of sharing their beliefs with renewed vigor; 1927 saw believers formally encouraged to devote some of their time to “witnessing,” or sharing their faith with others. In 1931, inspired by a verse from Isaiah (“‘You are My witnesses,’ said the Lord, ‘And I am God.’”), they changed their name to Jehovah’s Witnesses. By 1933, when Hitler came to power as chancellor of Germany, their numbers in Germany had grown to an estimated 30,000 since their arrival in the country at the end of the previous century.

Jehovah’s Witnesses’ faith commits them to remain neutral toward secular things like politics, military service, and nationalism. In Nazi Germany, then, they resisted joining the military or the Nazi party. They abstained from participation in elections, from working in government factories that supplied the military, as well as from saluting the swastika, the Nazi flag, or Hitler.

“In the distribution of their literature and in door-to-door missionary work,” writes one 2001 reviewer of a book of essays on the Jehovah’s Witnesses in the Holocaust, “the Jehovah’s Witnesses […] offered a real and visible challenge.”

The Third Reich began putting Jehovah’s Witnesses in concentration camps after they realized their 1933 ban on the group’s activities had failed. Jehovah’s Witnesses, who were drawn primarily from the urban working classes, and whose earliest converts were within a generation of the existing contemporary communities, carried on their proselytizing and meetings in secret, even after members were temporarily jailed by authorities.

Once they were placed in camps, Jehovah’s Witnesses were made to wear purple triangles. Because they were some of the earliest detainees, according to the authors of the 2017 Genocide Studies article, Sabrina C.H. Chang and Peter Suedfeld, Jehovah’s Witnesses often served as mentors and advocates for those who arrived after them. In contrast to the Jews and the other ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities the Nazis put in concentration camps, Jehovah’s Witnesses were allowed to recant and leave if they so chose, by signing a statement repudiating their beliefs. While some certainly did, it is thought that, per the 2001 review, appearing in the journal Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte, “the majority of Witnesses simply refused to give to the state what they knew belonged only to God.”

Unlike other Christians who were persecuted during the Holocaust, usually interned and killed for speaking out against the regime, or for hiding Jews, Jehovah’s Witnesses were a different case. Not an ethnic or sexual minority, “[w]hile other opponents of the regime were persecuted for what they did, the Jehovah’s Witnesses suffered because of what they refused to do,” wrote Jon S. Conway of the University of British Columbia, in a 2004 review of the same essay collection (Persecution and Resistance of Jehovah’s Witnesses during the Nazi Regime 1933-1945, edited by Hans Hesse).

For this reason, Conway asks in his review whether Jehovah’s Witnesses, who were often treated more favorably by their captors due to their race, could properly be thought of as engaging in resistance. Similarly, Chang and Suedfeld observe that Jehovah’s Witnesses could perhaps afford to conduct themselves differently than other prisoners, since unlike the Jews, they were not “marked for annihilation,” and accordingly, “presumably felt less imperiled.”

Even so, Jehovah’s Witnesses did suffer torture, abuse, and death in the camps. Jehovah’s Witness women were often sent to Auschwitz’s female camp, the horrific conditions of which are documented in an educational module on the Auschwitz memorial website. Those who survived faced ongoing physical, mental, and emotional trauma after the war ended and camps were liberated. First-person testimonies from interned Jews include Charles de Gaulle’s niece, Genevieve, who attested to the inspiration other prisoners drew from Jehovah’s Witnesses, and their daily refusal to renounce their faith, even in the face of deteriorating conditions. Their faith and courage, she said in a recorded interview through a translator, made them stronger than all the SS officers together.

However, even if their religion prohibited them from political activity, the Jehovah’s Witnesses may be thought to have offered one crucial form of resistance: They continued to publish. By writing about the persecution their fellow believers were experiencing, they added to the chorus of voices working to inform the world about Nazi atrocities. And it seems every voice was needed. Despite a steady stream of news out of Germany since the 1930s about Hitler’s demonization of Jews and human rights conditions in the country, half of American respondents to a 1943 opinion poll believed the murder of 2 million Jews to be rumor, and while the next year as many as three-quarters were willing to acknowledge the existence of concentration camps, they still severely underestimated the death toll.

As early as 1936, according to a 2001 article in Jehovah’s Witness publication The Watchtower, “some 3,500 Witnesses distributed tens of thousands of copies of a printed resolution regarding the ill-treatment that they were suffering. Respecting this campaign, The Watchtower reported: ‘It was a great victory and a sharp stab at the enemy, to the indescribable joy of the faithful workers.’” By the war’s end, the article says, Jehovah’s Witness publications had named and reported on the conditions of 60 different camps and prisons.

Critics assert that the Holocaust narratives put out by the Jehovah’s Witness organization tend to ignore antisemitic statements made by different members and, indeed, leadership, at the time. These accounts, they say, also omit initial attempts by Jehovah’s Witnesses in Germany to reach a kind of detente with Hitler in the early years. There are examples of Jehovah’s Witness publications and public remarks trafficking in stereotypes about Jewish financial and political control of America, responsibility for Christ’s death, and supersessionist theology (a view that God’s covenant with the Jewish people has shifted to Christianity). This was the case even in a 1933 document, known as the Declaration of Facts, which was co-written by Jehovah’s Witness President Judge Rutherford. The declaration was a defense in the face of persecution by Hitler’s government, intended to clear up misunderstandings about their religious activities and literature, and to correct a Nazi claim that their work was supported by Jewish financing (the so-called “Anglo-American Empire” and Irish Catholics also come in for sharp criticism in the declaration).

The detention, torture, and execution of Jehovah’s Witnesses under Hitler were not widely talked about in the first few decades following the war.

But as noted by one reviewer of Hesse’s book, Richard Singelenberg, although German-language Jehovah’s Witness publications did not become critical of the Nazis until after Kristallnacht in 1938, English-language ones were condemnatory “from the moment that Hitler started to persecute the Jews.” Nevertheless, contemporary antisemitic tropes and stereotypes, and the Declaration of Facts, remain controversial parts of the Jehovah’s Witness legacy. Singelenberg, writing for a 2002-03 edition of Journal of Law and Religion, sounds a note of caution, however, stating a belief that “post-Holocaust social sensitivity concerning anti-Semitism” may cause present-day observers to engage in a backward projection of outright Nazi sympathies onto the Jehovah’s Witnesses of the 1930s and ’40s.

Estimates vary on just how many Jehovah’s Witnesses were held in captivity by Hitler’s government. Numbers published in the Jehovah’s Witness publication The Watchtower estimate around 1,500 members died in the Holocaust, and about 10,000 were either imprisoned or held in concentration camps, with about 2,000 estimated specifically to have been interned in the camps; Genocide Studies cites roughly similar numbers in its 2017 article. Moreover, the children of some Jehovah’s Witnesses were forcibly removed and placed with Nazi families or in reeducation camps.

Conway notes in his review that the detention, torture, and execution of Jehovah’s Witnesses under Hitler were not widely talked about in the first few decades following the war. Conway attributes the scarcity of information to a belated realization by Jehovah’s Witness leadership, around the turn of the 21st century, that there was value to sharing these stories. He writes that the denomination then began in earnest to confront this part of their past, holding meetings for survivors, and making an effort to document and record contemporary accounts.

As with all Holocaust survivors, opportunities to hear their firsthand recollections are increasingly scarce. While this is a problem from the standpoint of posterity and the historic record generally, more scholarly interest in this field could be of more immediate use, as well.

For example, the authors of the Genocide Studies article point out, “the fact that Jehovah’s Witnesses are still being persecuted in other parts of the world, such as Russia, Singapore, and China, may give researchers the opportunity to compare Witnesses who are currently being persecuted to those who have lived through their persecution.” The result, they say, could be “a fuller understanding of the impact of these experiences on the survivors, and of the latter’s subsequent readjustment,” which may be a benefit not only to today’s Jehovah’s Witnesses, but persecuted minorities around the world.

That reporting on the camps, by Jehovah’s Witnesses and others, failed to gain much moral traction in the United States may also be instructive for our time. In 2018, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum mounted an exhibit, Americans and the Holocaust, which sought in part to dispel a common perception that Americans simply weren’t aware of the ongoing atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis against Europe’s Jews. “It’s not that the story was buried,” curator Daniel Greene said in a Time magazine interview about the exhibit. “Just like news is there today of Syria or of the danger to the Rohingya, it punctures through our consciousness at certain times.” But with the Depression dominating the news for most of the 1930s, he said, and the Roosevelt administration’s prioritization of defeating the Nazis militarily, rather than freeing their victims, it simply wasn’t the most salient topic for most people when they considered the U.S. war effort. To understand how this might be possible, add to Greene’s examples, which are still applicable in 2022 as they were in 2018, the relative lack of popular outcry over reports of the imprisonment and forced sterilization of Uyghur Muslims in China, the ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign in Ethiopia, or Russia’s forcible deportation of Ukrainians to Russia and Russian-controlled areas.

There is also the continued persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia today, where the religion was banned in 2017 as an extremist organization, in violation of the country’s anti-extremism laws. The Jehovah’s Witnesses’ internal statistics as of late last year estimated that approximately 643 Jehovah’s Witnesses had been charged with “organizing the activities of an extremist organization” in the country, where, as in Germany in 1933, their literature and their refusal to serve in the military brought them under the government’s suspicion. According to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses is practiced throughout the former Soviet Union. Speaking on an October 2022 USCIRF podcast, Jehovah’s Witness spokespeople Jarrod Lopes and David Williams described abuse and poor living conditions for imprisoned members of their faith, increasingly facing “longer and harsher sentences,” and the trauma visited upon their families.

“Every day at the moment,” said Jehovah’s Witness international spokesman Paul Gillies, “I’m getting information fed through to me about various fellow believers who have been convicted. I think most days this month we’ve seen examples of that.” The day we spoke, Gillies said a regional court in Russia had upheld a Jehovah’s Witness’ six-year sentence to a penal colony for reading the Bible.

Gillies said he was at the Russian Supreme Court in Moscow in 2017 when they banned Jehovah’s Witnesses. “They were very adamant that all they were doing was banning the religious organization, but believers could believe what they like, and they could practice their faith. That’s not what’s happened in practice,” he said. “They removed our facilities, our branch office,” just outside St. Petersburg. “All our Kingdom Halls, places of worship, throughout Russia were closed. They felt that by doing that they would put a stop to our activities, but people continued to worship in the way that they do,” said Gillies. “And so then now the authorities have moved against them just for practicing their faith.”

Gillies sees parallels between what happened to Jehovah’s Witnesses in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, and what is happening in Russia in 2023. Their members’ preaching activity, outreach to people interested in discussing religious questions, political neutrality, and conscientious objection to military service, are once again attracting government suspicion in Russia.


The Russian government has investigated and banned Jehovah’s Witness literature, including the Bible and a book of children’s Bible stories, he said, with one court deciding that Jehovah’s Witnesses were sowing religious discord by claiming they were the true religion (something, he notes, the Russian Orthodox Church, among others, also do).

Gillies believes that Jehovah’s Witnesses’ neutrality, coupled with their insistence that a divine kingdom is being established, make governments nervous. He also notes the irony of labeling conscientious objectors alongside violent terrorists as “extremists.”

“We say that Jesus at his time will intervene, but there’s nothing Jehovah’s Witnesses are going to do to bring that on,” Gillies said. “We don’t try and replace governments today. In fact, our relationship with governments is very clearly defined.” He cites Romans 13:1 as the basis for that practice: “Any government that’s in place, we’re subject to the laws of the land,” he said in summary. However, per Jesus’ command to his followers in chapter 22 of the Book of Matthew, Jehovah’s Witnesses hold that while they must render under Caesar what belongs to Caesar, they must also render to God those things properly belonging to God.

“We’re obedient to the laws of the land,” Gillies said. “But when the law asks for worship, then that’s a red line for us.”

This story is part of a series Tablet is publishing to promote religious literacy across different religious communities, supported by a grant from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations.

Maggie Phillips is a freelance writer and former Tablet Journalism Fellow.



https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/community/articles/purple-triangles-jehovahs-witnesses

CultNEWS101 Articles: 3/21/2022 (TikTok, Seven Mountain Mandate, 7M Films, Podcast, Transcendental Meditation, Satanic Panic, Legal, Cult Recovery, Events, Video, Event, Triggers, Shunning, Jehovah's Witnesses, Lebensborn, Nazi)

TikTok, Seven Mountain Mandate, 7M Films, Podcast, Transcendental Meditation, Satanic Panic, Legal, Cult Recovery, Events, Video, Event, Triggers, Shunning, Jehovah's Witnesses, Lebensborn, Nazi

Global Grind: A TikTok Dance Cult? One Famed TikToker's Family Believes She's Being Held Hostage In Hollywood

" ... A widely successful TikToker named Melanie Wilking is alleging that her sister and former collaborator Miranda has been held hostage by an entertainment management firm since January 2021, which she and her family also believe to be a cult. The Michigan born sisters started their entertainment careers on YouTube before amassing their 3 million followers on TikTok in 2020 together. The Wilking sisters often posted their sisterly dances with vibrant and bubbly personas.

Unfortunately for their blossoming joint social media accounts, Melanie and her parents think the cult is standing in the way of their family. In a tearful Instagram Live on Feb. 25, Melanie and her parents made claims that Miranda is being held hostage by an organization called 7M Films, an offshoot of a Penetecostal sect that believes in something called the Seven Mountain Mandate.

The Seven Mountain Mandate is based on a selective reading of Bible verse Isaiah 2:2, from which "a group of self-proclaimed 'apostles' have a plan rooted in biblical prophecy to 'invade' every sphere of life as we know it." According to followers of 7M, the key facets of life are education, religion, family, business, government, entertainment, and media. They believe it is their job to rid those institutions of demons and witchcraft.

This group took on the White House as former President Donald Trump's "spiritual advisor" and now they are breaking their way through the TikTok algorithm." 

Profiling Evil: "Transcendental Meditation Cult"

Mike King interviews Patrick Ryan.

The Herald News: Robin Murphy, convicted in Fall River 'cult murder,' tells her story to the parole board

"Robin Murphy, one of three "people convicted in the Fall River "cult murders," is again looking to be paroled after spending more than three decades behind bars.

"I feel as though the board doesn't think I take responsibility for my actions. I don't know how to better express that I have," she said during a parole hearing on Tuesday.

In 1979 and 1980, two local young women and one teenage girl — Doreen Levesque, Barbara Raposa and Karen Marsden — were gruesomely murdered in the Fall River area. The graphic nature of their killings and the involvement of a so-called Satanic cult, at a time when "Satanic panic" gripped the nation, contributed to a subsequent frenzy that surrounded the murders.

Alleged cult leader and pimp Carl Drew was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in the Marsden murder and remains in prison. Andrew Maltias, another alleged cult member, was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the Raposa murder and has since died. No one has ever been convicted for Levesque's killing.

Murphy, who was just 17 when she was arrested, took a deal in exchange for testifying against Drew and Maltais. She admitted to killing Marsden and was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole. In 1985, she recanted her testimony and has maintained her innocence since then."

ICSA Annual Conference: Leaving family to join a cult, getting out, & healing. The power of connection

Jennifer French

June 24, 2022, 4:00 PM-4:50 PM

When an individual joins a cult, it can be the case that so many others are affected beyond that individual. In 2001, at the age of 25, I joined a "mystical christian" cult that I would remain in for 11 years. I was immediately targeted by the leaders as they sensed the close bond I had with my brother, mother, and father. This schism from my family would prove to be one of the greatest experiences of torture I would endure. But it was also this deep connection with family that seemed to shift from a bold rope that tied us all together, able to endure, until it slowly thinned into a frayed piece of string, constantly tugged on by the leaders of my group until it was a whisper of a web that I perceived as a glistening temptation of the past.

And then an awakening began to emerge, resulting from my question that arose against the messages I had been fed. I wondered for the first time in a long time, 'Why had I not communicated with my family in 8 years?' Any question of being attached had disappeared years ago with the puff of wind that sent the thin silky thread floating as a distant memory. This curiosity initiated my return to self and release from the group.

While the survivor stories of how we left are varied, the role that relational connections might play are often central to recovery, healing, or even survival. We will explore the power of this beyond my story. My hope is that this presentation provides relatable information for survivors, and helpful suggestions for friends and families with a loved one in a group of high control.

Jon Atack: The Dynamics of  Cult Involvement 

"Pat Ryan and Joe Kelly have worked helping people exit and recover from cults for many years. In this week's video, they join Jon to talk about the nature of authoritarian control, the nostalgia some people hold for the early days of their involvement, and how no two experiences are ever the same."

ICSA Annual Conference: Recovering a sense of personal identity after leaving a high demand group, or relationship

"Fervent, earnest, participation in a cult or other high demand social experience can result in loss of a sense of personal identity as we become more identified with the group. This loss can be characterized by many things but personality function alterations, changes in basic values, and adoption of new and consistent behavior patterns that mirror those of the leader or of other participants in the experience, are at the top. Those who grow up in these conditions, SGA/MGA's, may have never experienced reality any other way. This can be difficult for the emerging survivor to articulate, especially since the concept of a sense of personal identity itself is controversial. It has been argued that the concept is a fantasy and does not exist, just a construct of a Western worldview that must be recognized as such and left behind. It can also be difficult for the emerging survivor to identify exactly what is wrong now that they have left. They can, with certainty, identify with not fitting in where and with whom they used to feel at home. SGA's say they have never felt they fit in and cannot imagine ever feeling that way. This feeling can be present whether the emerging survivor identifies with having been "brainwashed" or not. This session will enable participants to recognize the three above aspects of personal identity and to know how to address each as they enable themselves or others to function freely in society outside the group."

ICSA Annual Conference:  Coping with Triggers and Shunning - How To Change and Use Our Belief System - Gary Alt

"Coping with triggers and shunning may seem like two different topics. However, they have at their basis the same factors, and changing these factors in our favor can help us to cope with both, and in fact thrive beyond them. There is little one can do to stop the shunning by still-members of the group we have exited from. Those triggers that explode in our hearts and minds without notice can be difficult to react positively to. Those things are hard to change. What we can change is how we react to them. How we react to them is linked to our belief system - what we believe about ourselves, and what we believe about the group we have left (how much it still matters to us). How can we change our belief system?"

"Gary Alt was one of Jehovah's Witnesses for 41 years, from the age of 16. He served part of that time as a congregation elder and as a member of the headquarters family in Brooklyn NY. Since exiting the organization, he has been educated and trained as a Life Coach by The Coach Training Academy, and received his certification from Certified Coaches Alliance. He specializes in helping former members of high-control groups."

Timeline: The Nazi breeding and infanticide program you probably never knew about

"It sounds like the stuff of dystopian fantasy: women encouraged to bear children to hand over to a totalitarian regime. But for thousands of Europeans, including ABBA singer Anni-Frid Lyngstad, such a program isn't imaginary — it's the story of their lives. Lyngstad and approximately 20,000 others are the Lebensborn, survivors of a Nazi breeding program designed to create racially "pure" children for the Third Reich.

Between 1935 and 1945, the secret program encouraged racially "fit" women to bear children for the Reich and protected babies thought to exemplify Nazi Germany's Aryan ideals. Translated as "fount of life," the Lebensborn program involved secret birthing facilities, hidden identities, and the theft of hundreds of thousands of children.

The program has its roots in World War I, which decimated Germany's male population and contributed to a sharp decline in the country's birth rates, which fell 43 percent between 1920 and 1932. This was a problem for Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party, which came into power in 1933 with plans to usher in a new world order, one in which Nordic and Germanic "Aryans" — whom they considered the most superior of the races — would rightfully reign supreme. In order to carry out Hitler's vision of a completely Aryan Europe, the Nazis would need address the country's genetic shortage.

SS head Heinrich Himmler was convinced that abortion was the primary reason for the falling birthrate, and in 1935 he decided to strike back. He decided to make abortions of racially "pure" children less appealing by offering an alternative to their mothers. Women who could prove that their unborn child would fit Nazi racial purity standards could give birth to the child in secret, comfortable facilities.

But there was a catch: Once the babies were born, they had to be relinquished to the SS. The SS would then educate them, indoctrinate them in Nazi ideology, and give them to elite families to raise."

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CultNEWS101 Articles: 2/24/2022 (Nazi Germany, Video, Social Experiment, New Book, Spiritual Abuse, Plymouth Brethren, UK, Bentinho Massaro)

Nazi Germany, Video, Social Experiment, New Book, Spiritual Abuse, Plymouth Brethren, UK, Bentinho Massaro

Israeli Educational Television: The Third Wave

"The Third Wave was the name given by history teacher Ron Jones to an experimental recreation of Nazi Germany which he conducted with high school students.

The experiment took place at Cubberley High School in Palo Alto, California, during one week in 1969. Jones, unable to explain to his students why the German citizens (particularly non-Nazis) allowed the Nazi Party to exterminate millions of Jews and other so-called 'undesirables', decided to show them instead. Jones writes that he started with simple things like classroom discipline, and managed to meld his history class into a group with a supreme sense of purpose and no small amount of cliquishness. Jones named the movement "The Third Wave," after the common wisdom that the third in a series of ocean waves is always the strongest, and claimed its members would revolutionize the world. The experiment allegedly took on a life of its own, with students from all over the school joining in."

The Wave Home: Resources for Teachers, Media "The Third Wave Class" (1967)

"In spring 1967, in Palo Alto, California, high school history teacher Ron Jones conducted a social experiment in fascism with his class of 10th-grade 15-year-olds, to sample the experience of the attraction and rise of the Nazis in Germany before World War II. In a matter of days the experiment began to spin out of control, as those attracted to the movement became aggressive zealots and the rigid rules invited confusion and chaos. This story has attracted considerable attention over the years through films, books, plays and musicals, and verges on urban legend. It serves as a teaching tool, to facilitate discussion of those uncomfortable topics of history, human nature, psychology, charismatic leaders, group behavior, intolerance and hate.

The primary purpose of this website is to document and share with teachers, students and media both the original experiment and the variations on the Wave story over the years. As the story is told and re-told, reported and fictionalized, carried in the news and blogged on the internet, it is becoming more difficult to learn what really happened. There has also been more information available recently from the original students, and that has been very helpful in sorting things out. This is intended to be a comprehensive and current collection of material and news, mostly from original primary sources. Student names are generally left out to protect their privacy.

It is also the purpose here to support the discussion of this dark and never-ending side of human nature. In today's confused and chaotic world, it seems that polarization, persecution, political and religious extremism, cults, gangs and bullying are as prevalent as ever. The risks and stakes have never been higher, and this lesson is needed now more than ever."

ICSA: Wounded Faith

Wounded Faith (Amazon, January 2022) is a new collection of essays edited by the Reverend Dr. Neil Damgaard. It has two audiences in mind: recovering victims and the religious community at large. While it was written as an aid to help victims who are grappling with their faith, the book also seeks to clarify the meaning of spiritual abuse and instruct religious communities on how to effectively welcome victims of spiritual abuse. The book's authors come from a background in Christianity and have each, in their own way, experienced spiritual abuse. Here they attempt to dispel commonly held misconceptions, to elucidate the circumstances in which spiritually abused individuals often find themselves, and to implore leaders in communities of faith to shine a light on this harmful, not uncommon offense. In addition, each chapter provides an encouraging and sympathetic voice that will be appreciated by readers who have also been victims of spiritual abuse. The end note is that faith, though perhaps wounded, is salvageable on the other side of abuse, with a little help from our (educated) friends.  

The Times: Billions in Covid deals given to firms linked to Plymouth Brethren sect

"Dozens of companies with connections to a tiny fundamentalist Christian sect were awarded as much as £2.2 billion in government coronavirus contracts, The Times can reveal.

Firms with links to the insular Plymouth Brethren have been handed contracts for PPE, masks, visors, aprons, tests and ventilators without other companies being given the chance to bid for the contracts.

It can be revealed that PPE worth millions of pounds supplied by firms linked to the group were cleared for use by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) despite being declared substandard by the Health & Safety Executive (HSE).

The evangelical group, likened to a "cult" by some former members, has connections with the Conservative Party, and MPs have previously lobbied for it to be given charitable status.

The first Brethren assembly in England was established in Plymouth in 1831 by a group who had become disillusioned with the Anglican church and felt it had become too involved with the secular state. The majority of members are born into the church, though on rare occasions those without a family connection have joined by meeting a local group. Members are encouraged to set up their own businesses."

A Little Bit Culty: Bentinho Massaro Sucks Part I

"Imagine a narsty blend of an Instagram influencer, spiritual huxter, Winklevoss twin, and Hugh Hefner's ghost. These are the vibes that Bentinho Massaro is serving. He's got all the scary charisma and shiny trappings of a culty overachiever, like thousands of social media followers, a grandiose plan to build a fully enlightened society by 2035, and he even claims to vibrate at a higher frequency than other humans. He's also already achieved a rite of passage that's becoming all too common among culty fuckwads: His name in headlines concerning the suspicious death of one of his followers at a Sedona retreat.

Our trio of guests in this double episode whistleblower extravaganza are coming forward to call bullshit on Bentinho's special brand of mindfuckery. Jade Alectra, Keilan McNeil, and Jacqueline Graham were pulled into his mad world, and got themselves out. But they aren't going radio silent. Oh hell no. Because they want you to know that this so-called millennial spiritual guru is less of a messiah and more of a walking, talking human Fyre Festival. In part one, Jade, Keilan, and Jacqueline share what made Bentinho seem so alluring and transformational at first, and what happened when shit started getting real."

A Little Bit Culty:  Bentinho Massaro Sucks Part II

"He's just one guy, but there's so much culty shit flying around Bentinho Massaro that our first episode went into extra innings.  Part two of our spotlight on the International Man of Alleged Assholery continues with Jade Alectra, Keilan McNeil, and Jacqueline Graham  taking us into the pivotal moments that helped them wake up, pack up, and peace out of his toxic basecamp. They also share why they're speaking out, even though it is all still painful AF; what's helping them heal; and where they're finding the joys of life after Bentinho. Blessed be the whistleblowers."

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