Why People Become Overwhelmed by Conspiracy Theories — and How To Help Them

Commonly driven by financial stress, many people will readily adopt even the wildest conspiracy theories. Disavowing them, on the other hand, often requires the help of social psychologists.

Tim Brinkhof

July 22, 2021
Discover Magazine

“I pray you will not be a journalist for the deep state,” Albert Samaha’s mother told him when he began working as a reporter for BuzzFeed News. As her son was publishing research on COVID-19 outbreaks and Donald Trump’s attempt to challenge the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, the mother took to Twitter to suggest that George Floyd was — contrary to what the government supposedly wanted her to think — alive and in hiding.

Samaha spent years trying to pull his mother out of the so-called rabbit hole of conspiracy theories, he wrote in a March BuzzFeed article, but has yet to succeed. He has tried presenting counterevidence to her propositions and pointing out contradictions in her worldview using simple logic. Unfortunately, each unsuccessful attempt only seemed to solidify the belief that her son had become a spokesperson for the “liberal media” ordered to “silence Patriots” like herself.

Samaha’s story isn’t unique: A 2021 poll from the Public Religion Research Institute estimated that as many as 15 percent of Americans follow QAnon, which claims that Donald Trump was elected to bring down a cabal of Democratic figureheads from drinking the blood of unborn children. Support for this particular theory solidified during the pandemic, when social media posts on the subject increased by 175 percent and 63.7 percent on Facebook and Twitter, respectively.

Narratives like QAnon have played a role in public life for decades, and during that time disciples have mostly received scorn or ridicule from cynics. It wasn’t until QAnon was declared a domestic terrorism threat by the FBI following the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol attack that experts seriously considered preventing the spread of conspiracy theories. But how do you stop something capable of ripping apart families and halting lifelong friendships?

Forming a Group Identity

“[Conspiracy theories] aren’t about what’s true or false — let alone right or wrong — but about what kind of psychological need a certain piece of information could satisfy,” says Anni Sternisko, a doctoral candidate in psychology studying conspiracy theories through the lens of social psychology at New York University. People from various backgrounds hold conspiracy theories, she continues, and dismissing them as uneducated or malicious won’t help anyone.

Given the highly political nature of some conspiracy theories, it’s difficult to study them in an objective, scientific setting. In her research, Sternisko has chosen to focus on people who believe in narratives with little to no factual evidence. Analyzing how conspiracies spread remains tricky because social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube tend to conceal their recommendation algorithms. Analyzing hashtags on Twitter, Sternisko did find that disinformation tends to spread faster than accurate information.

Revealing why people believe in conspiracy theories is far easier thanks to an abundance of psychological literature on the subject. “People are very good at selecting and interpreting information that seems to confirm what they already believe, and rejecting or misinterpreting whatever goes against those beliefs,” says Kate Douglas, a social psychologist at the University of Kent and author of The Psychology of Conspiracy Theories.

Sternisko takes particular interest in the relationship between conspiracy theories and identity. “We know from social psychology that part of our identity is tied to a group, that we want our group to look good and the other to look bad,” she says. Sternisko sees the conspiracies surrounding the presidential election as a prime example: “More Republicans than Democrats believe the election was rigged, partly because Republicans are grappling with the idea that their party lost and that they are not as likeable as they would want to be.”

Deradicalization Programs

Conspiracy theories’ growing presence in the United States — not to mention the influence they exert over the country’s political institutions — have led many policymakers, reporters and psychologists to speculate on how their spread might be controlled. Security studies professor Melissa Graves has suggested looking at programs that were implemented in Europe and the Middle East to deradicalize incarcerated jihadists during the War on Terror.

While this may seem like an extreme example, Graves notes that such programs have set an important precedent by incorporating cognitive development, community reintegration, ideological reform and mental health counseling. The goal is to get participants to think critically about their beliefs, give them a sense of belonging, and address untreated psychological struggles that may have driven them towards extremism in the first place.

Deradicalization programs vary from one country to another, but many of them share an emphasis on cross-cultural dialogue. “Reestablishing positive and trust-based social relationships among communities across ideological divides to experience the failure of black-and-white, us-versus-them extremist ideologies is of the utmost importance,” says Daniel Koehler, the founding director of the German Institute on Radicalization and De-Radicalization Studies, in a March Lawfare article.

Recent studies back up Koehler’s proposition. Earlier this year, researchers at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University found that living with Black neighbors predicts Democratic partisanship for white Americans for up to 70 years later. When evaluating corporate inclusivity initiatives, Neil Lewis, Jr., a behavioral scientist at Cornell University, suggested that cross-cultural dialogue was more effective than conventional anti-bias training.

Do These Strategies Work?

While deradicalization programs have existed for over three decades, a variety of factors make it hard to determine their effectiveness. First, a relatively low number of former extremists participate — too few to gain a quantitative understanding of the process. Additionally, most evaluations only look at the short-term effects of deradicalization rather than long-term ones. That’s partly because longitudinal studies are costly and harder to organize.

Ryan Brown, a behavioral scientist who researches disinformation for the RAND Corporation, thinks that small programs could be more effective than wider-reaching ones. “Whether you’re dealing with conspiracy theorists or violent extremists, both see outside attempts to deradicalize them as further evidence that their beliefs are correct,” he explains. For that reason, extensive involvement from the government, military or police could do more harm than good.

“We found that almost two-thirds of our participants had experienced unsuccessful intervention attempts in the past,” Brown continues, “usually under guidance of the aforementioned authorities.” Heeding Brown’s advice, Parents for Peace — a grassroots nonprofit focused on working with extremists across the political spectrum — refuses to accept government funding because it may risk the trust of their participants.

Overall, deradicalization appears to be a promising yet underdeveloped research field. Although quantifying their outcomes remains challenging, programs continue to evolve and improve, in part by studying the relationship between radicalization and financial stability. “It is key to understand that deradicalization does not work through a one-size-fits-all approach,” Koehler surmises. “Multidisciplinary teams that hand-tailor the intervention for each participant are the most effective, including social work, educational initiatives, creative arts and sports.”


https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/why-people-become-overwhelmed-by-conspiracy-theories-and-how-to-help-them

ExitUK: NO JUDGEMENT, JUST SUPPORT

"We are all formers who have been members of far-right organisations and know how hard it is to leave. We also know how much better our lives are now we’re out. As we rebuilt our lives and began to have children of our own, we realised how much easier leaving would have been if there’d been an organisation to help us. That’s why Nigel Bromage set up Exit UK in October 2017.

Since then we have worked with many people like you and are committed to providing first-hand, non-judgemental support and advice. We are not the police, and we aren’t aligned to any political movement. Everything you say to us will be treated in confidence and we will never judge you on what you have done, as we have been there ourselves so want you to benefit from our experience and get you the kind of support you need.

We believe being patriotic is a good thing, and while we understand your views, violence solves nothing. And being a member of certain far-right groups such as National Action, Scottish Dawn and NS131 is a criminal act that could land you a jail sentence – get in touch with us before things get that far."

Get help leaving the far right and rebuild your life.

https://exituk.org/

RAN EXIT Gender-specific approaches in exit work

October 22-23, 2019

"The topic of gender has been discussed extensively within and outside RAN over the past few years. The focus has been directed at gender differences and the role gender plays in the process of radicalisation. However, research on gender and deradicalisation has found that 'even though gender is really pushed in terms of policy and CVE policy … it's not something being addressed on the ground'.

This ex post paper sets out the key topics and issues for practitioners considering the influence of gender in their exit work, as well as for experts and policymakers active in this area. It highlights the importance of the role gender plays in exit work with diverse violent extremist (VE) groups: gender informs their motives for joining, their experiences and reasons for leaving, as well as their post-VE needs and identity formation.

The paper also considers gender-specific aspects of disengagement, deradicalisation and reintegration efforts of exit work: the needs, networks and narratives of participants are influenced by the gender norms and gender roles of the communities with which they reconnect."

https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/sites/homeaffairs/files/what-we-do/networks/radicalisation_awareness_network/about-ran/ran-exit/docs/ran_exit_gender_specific_approaches_rome_22-23_102019_en.pdf

CultNEWS101 Articles: 2/18/2020

Hasidic Jewish, Deradicalization, NXIVM  

CBC News: Quebec knew about religious schools in Hasidic community for decades, trial hears

"For decades, the Quebec government was aware that schools in the Hasidic community of Tash, north of Montreal, were operating without a permit and failing to provide children with an adequate secular education, a courtroom heard Tuesday.
Bruce Johnston, a lawyer for 42-year-old Yohanan Lowen and his wife Shifra, 41, questioned an Education Ministry bureaucrat about the government's years of inaction on the second day of a trial pitting the former Hasidic Jewish couple against the province and the community they grew up in.
The Lowens, now married and living in Montreal, say they missed out on learning the basics, including French and English, math and geography, leaving them ill-prepared for life in the outside world.
They are seeking a declaratory judgment that would force the province to ensure children who attend private religious schools are taught the provincial curriculum." 

Montreal Gazette: Ex-Hasidic woman tells trial she was exempted from secular studies at age 13

"An ex-Hasidic Jewish woman who is seeking a judgment against the Quebec government for allegedly denying her a proper education told a Montreal trial she was terrified to speak out against her former community but came forward because she wants to help future generations of children.

Clara Wasserstein, a former member of the ultra-Orthodox Tash community north of Montreal, told a courtroom Wednesday she decided to bring legal action after seeing how her oldest son thrived when he was finally put into a public school, with access to classes such as gym.

"We had our children in the regular school where they had all these good things and I saw them blossom," she told Superior Court Justice Martin Castonguay.

"I thought it was selfish to think, 'my kids are good,' when so many others are suffering."

Wasserstein, 41, and her husband, Yochonon Lowen, are not seeking damages from the Quebec government. Instead, they want a declaratory judgment stating the Quebec government and several Boisbriand Hasidic schools violated provincial law by failing to ensure the couple received a proper education.

They are hoping a declaratory judgement will help ensure other children in Quebec's ultra-Orthodox schools are given an education that adheres to the provincial standard set for all students."

The Atlantic: Why Extremists Need Therapy

" ... The first part of deradicalization, then, is understanding individuals' psychological state, previous trauma, and personal circumstances—not just their political and religious beliefs. "We used to work with a group who worked in U.K. prisons," Moustafa Ayad, a deputy director at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, an international think tank, told me. "The way they described it was 'deconstructing the terrorist and rebuilding the human.' It's not anything that's set and planned."

One of the hallmarks of a terrorist worldview is its rigidity: us and them, the righteous and the unbelievers. Cracking that is key to deradicalization, according to Rashad Ali, a former member of Hizb al-Tahrir, an Islamist group that Britain has repeatedly considered banning. Ali, now a senior fellow at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, told me that creating a "cognitive opening" to allow people to reevaluate their beliefs was vital.

In the context of the penal system, this is difficult. Muslims are overrepresented in British prisons compared with the population at large, which a government report found "could chime with the radicalisers' message of the victimisation of Muslims." Following the July 7, 2005 bombings in London, the scope of terror offenses was widened to include "glorifying" and advocating terrorism. Those jailed for such offenses—overwhelmingly men—are prime targets for further radicalization in prison, to move them from glorification to action. As well as training prison imams in counter-extremism, the report recommended isolation for the most extreme prisoners."

CBC News: Dozens of Canadians included in lawsuit over alleged abuse by NXIVM sex-cult leadership

"A Vancouver woman who went public with allegations of sex slavery inside a cult-like self-empowerment group is among more than three dozen Canadians who are part of a lawsuit against the organization's inner circle.

Sarah Edmondson is suing the leaders of NXIVM — along with two heiresses of the Seagram's liquor fortune — for emotional and financial harm the actress claims to have suffered as a result of being intimidated and harassed as well as being branded with the initials of group leader Keith Raniere.

Edmondson and her husband are among a handful of named plaintiffs in a lawsuit together with 80 anonymous claimants — including 28 Canadian women and 13 Canadian men.

The lawsuit, filed at the end of January in the Eastern District of New York, claims Rainiere and others created and led a 'Ponzi scheme and coercive community' designed to financially and emotionally abuse followers.

The suit claims millionaire sisters Clare and Sara Bronfman served in leadership positions in NXIVM, investing their vast wealth 'to fund the operations and obstruct the ability of others to uncover the misconduct.'"

News, Education, Intervention, Recovery

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Intervention101.com to help families and friends understand and effectively respond to the complexity of a loved one's cult involvement.

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Why Extremists Need Therapy

Britain’s prisons struggle to deradicalize alienated young men. Those failures have wider lessons. 

Helen Lewis

The Atlantic

February 2020

How do you unmake a terrorist? It’s an urgent question, particularly for Britain. About 220 people are in prison for terror offenses in the country, the majority of whom are Islamists. Until recently, 20-year-old Sudesh Amman was one of them. He was released in January after serving half of a three-year sentence for possessing extremist material. Ten days later, he was shot dead by police after stabbing two people in South London.

It was the second such attack in just over two months. At the end of November, 28-year-old Usman Khan killed two people near London Bridge, also in a stabbing attack, and was also shot dead by police. He had completed two deradicalization programs as part of his 16-year sentence, of which he had also served half. His victims were fellow attendees at a conference on prisoner rehabilitation.

The political debate in Britain since the latest attack has focused heavily on why Amman was freed. He had qualified for automatic early release from prison, yet was considered enough of a threat to be given police surveillance. The government now wants to change the law so terror sympathizers serve longer sentences, and are subject to more stringent assessment before release. But that won’t entirely solve the problem. “If you’re not rehabilitating prisoners, whether you let them out in two or four years isn’t very important,” said Arthur Snell, the former head of the British government’s anti-extremist Prevent program at the Foreign Office who now runs a business -intelligence firm.

The courses Khan attended have not been fully evaluated, so their effectiveness is unknown. “I think we have to be very careful about saying someone has totally changed or has been cured,” the designer of one of them, Christopher Dean, said after the attack. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s view on deradicalization is perhaps too bleak—he told reporters after last weekend’s stabbings that “the instances of success are really very few”—but the programs are resource-intensive, and Britain’s poorly funded prisons are badly equipped to provide them.

The standard program involves multiple counseling sessions that encourage offenders to rethink their identity. The aim is not simply to provide inmates with an alternative, nonviolent version of their religion—Snell, who interviewed suspected terrorist detainees in Iraq, told me it was remarkable “how little your average Islamist knows about Islam.” The men, who had come from Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, and other countries, talked more like students taking a gap year than religious fanatics. “They almost universally were young men without much sense of direction or status, and by joining the insurgency in Iraq, they felt for the first time in their lives that they mattered, that they were doing something important, almost heroic,” he said. “So basically, it’s a mental health issue.”

The first part of deradicalization, then, is understanding individuals’ psychological state, previous trauma, and personal circumstances—not just their political and religious beliefs. “We used to work with a group who worked in U.K. prisons,” Moustafa Ayad, a deputy director at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, an international think tank, told me. “The way they described it was ‘deconstructing the terrorist and rebuilding the human.’ It’s not anything that’s set and planned.”

One of the hallmarks of a terrorist worldview is its rigidity: us and them, the righteous and the unbelievers. Cracking that is key to deradicalization, according to Rashad Ali, a former member of Hizb al-Tahrir, an Islamist group that Britain has repeatedly considered banning. Ali, now a senior fellow at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, told me that creating a “cognitive opening” to allow people to reevaluate their beliefs was vital.

In the context of the penal system, this is difficult. Muslims are overrepresented in British prisons compared with the population at large, which a government report found “could chime with the radicalisers’ message of the victimisation of Muslims.” Following the July 7, 2005 bombings in London, the scope of terror offenses was widened to include “glorifying” and advocating terrorism. Those jailed for such offenses—overwhelmingly men—are prime targets for further radicalization in prison, to move them from glorification to action. As well as training prison imams in counter-extremism, the report recommended isolation for the most extreme prisoners.

The recommendation to segregate extremists hints at one of the fundamental problems of tackling Islamist radicalization in prison: These are closed systems that can develop strong hierarchies. There have been reports of sharia councils in British jails, and of high-ranking terrorists appointing themselves as “emirs.” Hamas and other banned organizations have compiled manuals on surviving prison, Ayad said, and these “handbooks” include advice on how to fool deradicalization programs. The Hamas guide warns that “easy prey falls for the hunter’s rope” and tells prisoners not to engage with guards or admit guilt, while other documents give advice on staging what Ayad calls “a fabricated play co-ordinated with your brothers.” In other words, how to make false confessions. He adds, “Everybody running a ‘derad’ program needs to know that these strategies exist. We should never take people at face value.”

In fact, Ali said, confusion and uncertainty are often better signs that deradicalization is working than strong pledges that a person has changed. “You’re talking about people with black-and-white views on ethics; all their answers are put on a plate for them; they have strong identities and membership of a group,” he told me. “If someone breaks that black-and-white view—moral ennui, that’s what they’re going to face. It’s like leaving a cult. There’s a sense of having no community, an identity crisis, a morality crisis, maybe even becoming more isolated.” The question then, Ali said, was “how do we reconnect them, create a sense of belonging, help them re-find themselves?”

One place offering an answer is Saudi Arabia. The country is a world leader in deradicalization. (Of course, you could also argue that the kingdom, the original home of Osama bin Laden, is also a world leader in radicalization.) The Prince Mohammed Bin Nayef Centre for Counselling and Care, as the name suggests, adopts a very different approach from Britain’si incarceration of extremists in overstretched prisons. The center has a swimming pool, art-therapy classes, and intensive counseling. More than 3,000 men have passed through it since it opened, and they are offered housing and other support—including help finding a wife—when they leave. It claims an 80 percent success rate.

Even if you take the Saudi program’s advertized success at face value, the lessons that democratic, liberal countries can learn from Saudi Arabia are inevitably limited—“If we were giving cars to former terrorists, we’d look really stupid,” Ayad said—but its investment in therapy, and focus on post-incarceration support, do highlight the issues with the British approach. In the U.K., prison deradicalization programs are voluntary, and short sentences offer no time to complete them anyway. Those sentences are themselves a problem: Several experts said they did not just fail to deradicalize extremists, but in many cases made the situation worse by increasing their sense of persecution and grievance. On release, British prisoners are given a £46 ($60) discharge grant and, if they are lucky, a place at a bail hostel. They are then expected to rebuild their life and find work largely on their own, except now they bear the stigma associated with a terror conviction.

Clearly, deradicalization can work—several academics currently working in the field are former extremists, and for more than a decade, one of Britain’s leading counter-extremism programs was run by a former al-Qaeda sympathizer who had traveled to Afghanistan. Was there any obvious difference between those who were successfully deradicalized and the others, I asked Snell. “A lot of them are very bright,” he said. They got interested in new ideas, learned new information—and their stark worldview began to crumble. Others, though, were unable to understand the moral choices they had made or the effects of their actions. “Not every individual can be changed,” Ali said. “Just like we can’t stop every terrorist attack … and that’s the conflict. We want to maintain that open society. There will always be individuals we can’t reach.”

Perhaps the best way to think of it is that every terrorist sympathizer who reaches prison already represents a failure—a demonstration of society’s inability to stop extremist ideas from flourishing. Snell acknowledges that the Prevent program, which was designed to tackle extremism, instead left many British Muslims feeling that their whole community was being stigmatized. It also initially failed to address the growing threat of far-right terrorism, and it tried to recruit unrelated public-sector workers, such as teachers, to spot potential extremists. But, Snell said, it did force the government to recognize the root causes—the isolation, the lack of role models, the foreign-policy narratives—that contribute to extremism.

Amman’s journey to that street in Streatham, South London, was a long path, strewed with failures. As the government responds to the most obvious—the fact that he was released when probation staff still believed he was a threat—it should not forget others. Could he have been deradicalized? Unlike many of the Islamist fighters Snell encountered, Amman had a strong knowledge of the Koran, according to his father. But in other respects he fit a common pattern of would-be terrorists: minor criminal convictions for possessing cannabis and an offensive weapon, a controlling relationship with his girlfriend, feelings of grievance and alienation. The year and a half he spent in prison appears to have driven him deeper into an extremist mindset, rather than breaking it down.

“Punishment is in political vogue,” Snell told me. But punishment alone doesn’t unmake terrorists. No one in Britain would argue that extremists should be given an apartment, much less a spouse, but they do need a new life purpose to replace a perceived feeling of an existential struggle. They also need all the things that the British prison system struggles to give any inmate: mental-health support, education, training, and a future.HELEN LEWIS is a London-based staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights.

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/02/britain-london-terrorism-deradicalization/606376/

CultNEWS101 Articles: 10/1/2019

Film, Former Extremist, Waldorf School, Rudolf Steiner, Anthroposophy

Deadline: Director Zaida Bergroth On Cult Drama 'Maria's Paradise': "The Idea Was To Concentrate On The Love And Power" - Toronto Studio

"There were quite a few films about cults at this year's TIFF, and one of the more provocative meditations on human manipulation came from Finland. Titled Maria's Paradise, Zaida Bergroth's film was inspired by the true story of Maria Åkerblom, who ran a cult in rural Finland that caused a major scandal back in the 1920s.

'I got extremely intrigued by this main character, Maria Åkerblom," Bergroth told us when she came to the Deadline studio with her cast. "She lived in Finland in [the] 1920s, she was a leader of a Christian cult, and she was extremely charismatic, but she had a very dark side to her. After that, we started to write the script and explore her character, and then we came up with a story about Maria and her favorite girl follower, Salome, a young teenager who absolutely adored her, and didn't see anything negative about her actions. It was their relationship that really intrigued me.'"

The Atlantic: The Former Extremists Trying to Fight Extremism

" ... Deradicalization and counter-extremism programs, especially those involving former extremists, are relatively new in the United States, but they have a longer history in Europe, according to Lorenzo Vidino, the director of the Program on Extremism, who helped recruit Morton to work there as a researcher. The U.K.'s Quilliam—which describes itself as "the world's first counter-extremism organization"—was founded as a think tank in 2007 by three British former radical Islamists.

The Obama administration launched its own "countering violent extremism" initiative in 2011, with a variety of programs aimed at helping local law enforcement share information, do community outreach, and try to prevent attacks. The program was always a target for criticism, ranging from complaints about underfunding to accusations that it unfairly focused on and stigmatized Muslim communities. Right-wing extremism, moreover, was not a top priority then, and one organization dedicated to countering it got some funding under Obama but saw it lapse under Trump.

But there wasn't a systematic effort to recruit formers into that project early on. Vidino had observed the European experience and thought such a strategy might be useful in the United States, though he told me he was aware of 'some of the issues.'"

NDR: SWR-Doku: Author's proximity to Waldorf schools

(Google Translation)

Too close to the Waldorf school world?

" ... Because Esther Saoub was the author of a contribution in the Tagesthemen, which dedicated itself to the 100-year existence of the first Waldorf schools in Germany.  She is also the author of the 45-minute SWR documentary "Waldorf global - a school goes around the world", which is still in the ARD-Mediathekto see is . And: Esther Saoub was a Waldorf student herself, her children attend a Waldorf school, she is a board member of the school association of the "Waldorf School Uhlandshöhe", she appears on podiums of the Waldorf school celebrations and she was supposed to moderate the festive event last weekend. In short: Ms. Saoub seems to be closely associated with the Waldorf world. Should someone write reports on the topic for public media?

Is surprised that Esther Saoub has made the documentary about Waldorf schools: Volker Lilienthal, Professor of "Practice of quality journalism" at the University of Hamburg.

"No," says Professor Volker Lilienthal, the chair of the "Practice of Quality Journalism" at the University of Hamburg: "The fact that Esther Saoub herself appears as a writer, I'm very surprised." The author Saoub is indeed socialized in public service broadcasting, she knows the professional standards, she would have had to do without herself. " The contribution in the Tagesthemen was "an advertisement for the Waldorf schools," wrote the Humanistic Press Service (HPD).

Criticism of the Waldorf schools in 45 minutes documentation? None. Of course, there would be a lot of criticism about Rudolf Steiner, the founder of reform education. His statements on racial issues and Judaism have been widely criticized. Sure, such racial stereotypes were prevalent in their day, but they did not show up in 45 minutes of filming. A subordinate sentence in the film touches on this criticism marginally: "The Waldorf schools explicitly distanced themselves from its partly nationalist positions in the Stuttgart Declaration in 2007". More criticism is not found in Saoub's films."

BBC: Why are Steiner schools so controversial?

" ... Rudolf Steiner, the intellectual father of Steiner schools.

The Austrian-born #occultist, who died in 1925, left a vast body of work covering everything from biodynamic farming to alternative medicine.

It is known, collectively, as "anthroposophy".

The SWSF's guidelines from 2011 said that schools using the #Steiner name were obliged to prove "an anthroposophical impulse lies at the heart of planning for the school".

Since 2013, this has been made vaguer: they now need a commitment to "the fundamental principles of Waldorf education".

Those ideas are based in a belief in reincarnation.

Pupils may not have been sold this creed, but Steiner was very strict that teachers were not supposed to pass them on to children - just to act on them.

So, for example, the Steiner curriculum's focus on a late start to learning is driven by the pace at which souls incarnate.

An odd rationale, but not a very worrying result. Other consequences, however, are potentially more troubling.

For example, Steiner himself believed illnesses in our current lives could be explained by problems in the previous ones.

And in overcoming illnesses with a root in a previous life, individuals could gain "reinforced power" and improve their "karma".

Vaccination, in effect, gets in the way.

'Unvaccinated populations'

That may help explain the Steiner school attitude to vaccination.

The schools state that they have no formal policies and parents must choose for themselves.

But children in Steiner schools are less likely to get their jabs.

The Health Protection Agency - before its recent abolition - used to note that Steiner schools ought to be considered "unvaccinated populations" for measles.

Related ideas of the benefits of overcoming adversity emerge elsewhere.

The DfE memos report a complaint that a teacher allowed violence among children for karmic reasons, and cites teacher training resources that are sympathetic to this idea.

This karmic belief set also has a racial element.

As we reported last week, Steiner was, by any modern definition, a racist.

'Hierarchy in races'

He thought black people were distinguished by an "instinctual life", as opposed to Caucasians' "intellectual life".

He believed each race had a geographical location where they should live - black people in Europe were "a nuisance".

There was also a hierarchy in races; a soul with good karma could hope to be reincarnated into a race which is higher up in the hierarchy, Steiner argued.

The SWSF says: "While the superficial reading of a handful of Steiner's voluminous, extensive lectures present statements that appear racist in modern terms, none of these occur in his educational writings."

But some of these ideas have polluted some Steiner schools.

The SWSF was "horrified" by our report on a diversity training day at a private Steiner school, which had been triggered by a real issue around racism.

Four white teachers, asked to tick a box giving their ethnicity, ticked every box.

They believed that they had ascended through all the races.

Some Steiner schools also teach about the lost continent of Atlantis - a myth that, to Steiner, explained the origins of the hierarchy of the races."

News, Education, Intervention, Recovery

CultMediation.com   

Intervention101.com to help families and friends understand and effectively respond to the complexity of a loved one's cult involvement.

CultRecovery101.com assists group members and their families make the sometimes difficult transition from coercion to renewed individual choice.

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