Christian Identity, Ku Klux Klan, George Lincoln Rockwell's American Nazi Party, Cult Characteristics, World Mission Society Church of God, Law of Attraction, AmazonSmile, Polygamy, Kingston Group, Mormon
"Vancouver antiracist educator Tony McAleer is astonishingly transparent about his past life as a neo-Nazi activist.
In his new memoir, The Cure for Hate: A Former White Supremacist's Journey From Violent Extremism to Radical Compassion, he describes attending the Aryan Nations World Congress of 1988, which took place at the racist group's compound in Idaho.
'There were various members of Klans (contrary to popular belief, the Ku Klux Klan is not a large solitary force but has splintered into dozens of regional and sometimes competing groups of different sizes) and old-school Nazis from the days of George Lincoln Rockwell's American Nazi Party, founded in 1959, wearing brown shirts and swastika armbands,' McAleer writes. 'Every major white supremacist faction was represented, but at this Congress, skinheads were present in large numbers for the first time. There was even a group of Christian Identity skinheads from Las Vegas accompanied by sisters and girlfriends who all had blonde hair and brown Nazi uniforms—they were euphemistically referred to as the Brown Skirts.'"
We suggest that you check all characteristics that apply to you or your group. You may find that your assessment changes over time, with further reading and research.
- The group is focused on a living leader to whom members seem to display excessively zealous, unquestioning commitment.
- The group is preoccupied with bringing in new members.
- The group is preoccupied with making money.
- Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished.
- Mind-numbing techniques (such as meditation, chanting, speaking in tongues, denunciation sessions, debilitating work routines) are used to suppress doubts about the group and its leader(s).
- The leadership dictates sometimes in great detail how members should think, act, and feel (for example: members must get permission from leaders to date, change jobs, get married; leaders may prescribe what types of clothes to wear, where to live, how to discipline children, and so forth).
- The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its leader(s), and members (for example: the leader is considered the Messiah or an avatar; the group and/or the leader has a special mission to save humanity).
- The group has a polarized us-versus-them mentality, which causes conflict with the wider society.
- The group's leader is not accountable to any authorities (as are, for example, military commanders and ministers, priests, monks, and rabbis of mainstream denominations).
- The group teaches or implies that its supposedly exalted ends justify means that members would have considered unethical before joining the group (for example: collecting money for bogus charities).
- The leadership induces guilt feelings in members in order to control them.
- Members' subservience to the group causes them to cut ties with family and friends, and to give up personal goals and activities that were of interest before joining the group.
- Members are encouraged or required to live and/or socialize only with other group members.
"Christy's name has been changed to protect her identity due to fear of retribution from church members.
Christy listened eagerly as the stranger from the post office told her about their bible study group. She'd grown up religious and wanted her son to have a similar upbringing, so she wrote down the church's address and paid them a visit. Less than two years after joining the church, she was homeless, had lost over $3,500 and was sharing custody of her son with her now ex-husband.
Christy's experience with the World Mission Society Church of God, which occurred in Nebraska, wasn't unique. Since the church was established in Korea in 1964, several ex-members have released videos urging the public against joining. Two UTD students reported recruitment attempts from church members while one witnessed what happened after her friend joined the UTD chapter of the church, the Elohim Bible Study Club. Political science senior Kathryn Higgins ran into church members in 2018 while running errands in Arlington."
"New Age guru Abraham Hicks has made many shocking and disturbing statements about rape, slavery, 9/11 victims and Holocaust deaths. She claims "less than 1% of rapes" are "true violations" and the rest are attractions. Hicks believes slavery was "the beginning of a journey that was better" and part of an "overall improvement in humanity." She says "AIDS is the physical manifestation of not liking yourself." Hicks and others like Rhonda Byrne, creator of "The Secret," have taken a partial truth and concretized it into a religious absolutist system known as the Law of Attraction and made millions in the process. The teaching is harmful and a form of spiritual bypassing."
New York Post : Inside the alleged 'cult' that has been quietly operating in NY for decades.
"In December 1978, a bizarre theater company headed by an actress from the "Slaughterhouse-Five" film was run out of San Francisco.
Members of Sharon Gans' so-called Theater of All Possibilities had come forward to claim they were pressured into arranged marriages, beaten if they didn't sell tickets and had gone broke paying for classes — while Gans and her husband lived in a tony home in the posh neighborhood of Pacific Heights.
With the police asking questions and the ex-members' claims splashed across the pages of local papers, the actress and her theater group closed up shop and seemingly disappeared from public view.
But they never really went away.
A new group sprang up in the 1980s in New York under the name Odyssey Study Group and has been operating here quietly ever since — still led by the washed-up actress, now 84, who reigns from a $8.5 million apartment at Manhattan's Plaza Hotel that was mostly paid for by devotees, according to public records."
" ... No one is sure what will come of La Mora after the ambush, suspected of being perpetrated by a drug cartel, but everyone agrees the place has changed. The people who grew up here tell of a childhood of romping in the brown desert hills that surround the valley, of fishing and swimming in the river that runs past the homes, and of helping their families raise the crops or cattle that thrive nearby.
Now, they talk about their fears.
"I do not feel safe here and I won't," David Langford, the husband to Dawna Langford and father to Trevor and Rogan, said Thursday at the closing remarks to their funeral.
Later Thursday, Joe Darger, a polygamist from Herriman, Utah, who attended Thursday's services, tweeted that Dawna Langford's family members planned to relocate, though they didn't know where yet."
Mexican officials have confirmed an "unspecified number" of arrests in connection with last week's cartel massacre that left nine Mormon women and kids dead.
"There have been arrests, but it's not up to us to give information," Security Minister Alfonso Durazo told reporters Monday.
Prosecutors in Sonora, as well as at the federal level, are leading the investigation, according to Durazo.
But a spokeswoman for the state government of Sonora told Reuters, "We don't have that information."
Three women, 8-month-old twins and four other children were killed in the Nov. 4 bloodbath in the border state of Sonora, near where they worship with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The families were members of La Mora, a decades-old settlement in Sonora founded as part of an offshoot of the mainline Mormon church."
