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Speaker 1: Trust me.

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Speaker 2: Trust me. I'm like a swat person. I've never lied

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Speaker 2: to you.

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Speaker 1: Do you think that one person has all the answers?

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Speaker 3: Don't welcome to trust me? The podcast on cult, extreme

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Speaker 3: belief and Abusive Power from two chicks who have actually.

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Speaker 1: Experienced a Chicks party on I Love It Today. We

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Speaker 1: are chicks.

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Speaker 4: I feel cool.

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Speaker 1: I'm taking back the term. Some people are offended by that.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, I'm taking back all terms all. You

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Speaker 5: can call me anything, and I'm taking I can call

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Speaker 5: you a cunt. Yeah, I take it back.

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Speaker 1: My cut, my cut, Megan, my co cut, my cocunt.

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Speaker 4: Uh.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm Lola Blanc. That other voice you're hearing is

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Speaker 3: Megan Elizabeth. And today we are talking to Steve Hassen,

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Speaker 3: cult expert and author of the book on Cult Combating

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Speaker 3: Cult mind Control, as well as a new book called

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Speaker 3: the Cult of Trump. We're gonna hear about how he

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Speaker 3: joined the Unification Church in the seventies, colloquially colloquially known

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Speaker 3: as the Moonies, though they don't like to be called that.

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Speaker 3: We'll talk about the cult leader like qualities that Trump has,

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Speaker 3: and then we actually brought Steve back on for an

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Speaker 3: extra tidbit at the end here to talk to us

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Speaker 3: about QAnon because things have changed a lot since we

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Speaker 3: first did the interview. So he'll tell us what to

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Speaker 3: do if someone in your life is falling into QAnon.

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Speaker 3: Well all right, so Megan, would you like to tell

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Speaker 3: me culty thing that happened to you this week?

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Speaker 4: The cultiest thing that happened to me this week? Okay, Well,

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Speaker 4: I'm in this Facebook group of a spiritual teacher that

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Speaker 4: I'm super obsessed with, of course, and I had an

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Speaker 4: opinion this week that was different from other people's opinions

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Speaker 4: and I got, you know, called out real quick and

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Speaker 4: lots of comments. And I didn't think the thing I

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Speaker 4: was saying was necessarily even slightly something that you could

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Speaker 4: disagree with, but you can apparently, So that's kind of culty.

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Speaker 1: Oh, I have been there.

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Speaker 3: I feel like Facebook groups are like prime territory for

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Speaker 3: a group thing.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's.

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Speaker 3: Literally a group where you where all you do is

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Speaker 3: share the thing that you have in common. So I

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Speaker 3: guess it makes sense, but like it's actually can get scary.

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Speaker 3: People can be scary.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, it got real. What happened with you? What

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Speaker 4: was the cultiest thing that happened to you this week.

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Speaker 3: Honestly, the cultiest thing that happened to me this week

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Speaker 3: was being an American living in America.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: As at the time of recording this, the election is

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Speaker 3: very soon. Amy Cony Barrett has just been confirmed. Well,

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Speaker 3: it's also upsetting. I like the past couple months have

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Speaker 3: been I mean, honestly, the past four years, let's be honest,

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Speaker 3: but I feel like, in particular the past few months

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Speaker 3: pandemic time have been so divided and people are getting

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Speaker 3: so extreme and everyone's like digging their heels in deeper

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Speaker 3: into the thing that they think, and I don't know,

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Speaker 3: it kind of feels like we're in such a polarized time.

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Speaker 3: It kind of feels like there are just America is

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Speaker 3: just a series of different cults.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, I mean politics in general, it's just

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Speaker 5: such a such a cult.

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Speaker 1: Well, we'll talk to him about that.

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Speaker 3: Hello, we are introducing Steve Has, a cult expert. Steve,

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Speaker 3: as I mentioned before, wrote like the book on cults

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Speaker 3: called Combating Cult Mine Control and has a book out

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Speaker 3: now called The Cult of Trump about how Trump is

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Speaker 3: his own kind of cult leader.

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Speaker 1: Welcome Steve.

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Speaker 2: I'm delighted to be with you.

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Speaker 1: Delighted to have you. I am so excited that you're

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Speaker 1: here because I was thirteen years old when my mom

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Speaker 1: gave me your book.

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Speaker 2: I'm an old fogie, no no way, sixty five going

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Speaker 2: on sixty six, going.

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Speaker 1: On twenty five.

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Speaker 4: Hey you puked a way younger age than me, because

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Speaker 4: I'm better than you.

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Speaker 1: Yeah fuck, okay, all right.

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Speaker 3: I read your book and I became fascinated with Colts

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Speaker 3: and it sort of went on a life mission to

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Speaker 3: understand these kinds of master manipulators and how it happens.

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Speaker 1: So thank you for resource.

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Speaker 3: For my honor, I want to talk about you and

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Speaker 3: how you what your first experience was in a cult,

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Speaker 3: because you were a member of the Moonies, which they

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Speaker 3: want us to call them the Unification Church.

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Speaker 1: Right.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. After Moon was sent to jail for felony conviction,

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Speaker 2: they hired a PR firm and spent thirty million dollars

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Speaker 2: and part of the advice was to rebrand, not allow

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Speaker 2: people to call them the moon even though when I

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Speaker 2: was in the cult, Moon loved to be called the Moon.

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Speaker 1: Oh interesting, even.

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Speaker 2: War T shirts. I am a Mooney and I love it.

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Speaker 1: Oh my god, that's hilarious. How did you get involved.

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Speaker 1: How old were you?

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Speaker 2: What happened? I was nineteen. I was an upper junior

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Speaker 2: at Queen's College. And I'll just say I grew up

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Speaker 2: one point three miles from Donald Trump, but we'll get

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Speaker 2: to that later. And I was in the poor side

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Speaker 2: of Queens. He was in Jamaica, States, other side of

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Speaker 2: Saint John's University and mansions. But essentially, I was a

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Speaker 2: poetry major in college. I had ambitions to write books

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Speaker 2: and to teach. And my girlfriend dumped me quite abruptly,

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Speaker 2: and I was had the blues and the new semester started,

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Speaker 2: and these three women smiled and approached me in the

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Speaker 2: cafeteria and asked to share my table. And I had

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Speaker 2: no idea that they were not students because they said

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Speaker 2: they were students.

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Speaker 4: And were they young or were they.

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Speaker 2: Oh they were pretty. Yeah, they were flirty, and it's

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Speaker 2: just what I wanted. I figured, of course, three I

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Speaker 2: would maybe get luck math you know, years old.

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Speaker 3: Right, what nineteen year old boy does not want three

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Speaker 3: hot girls to come up to him and try to

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Speaker 3: hang out, right, And.

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Speaker 2: You know, and they said they were students. So you're

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Speaker 2: part of a religious group. Oh no, not at all,

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Speaker 2: you know, in the meantime, they were bowing to an

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Speaker 2: altar with Moon's picture on it secretly on Sunday mornings.

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Speaker 2: But I didn't know that, and I was kind of,

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Speaker 2: you know, too self assured. I'm like most people who

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Speaker 2: says I'm too smart too, you know, anything like that.

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Speaker 2: I had bicycle cross country when I was sixteen, I

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Speaker 2: had worked on a dig in the Negive Dessert at seventeen,

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Speaker 2: drove cross Canada to alask at eighteen, and and I

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Speaker 2: got into a cult at nineteen, spent two and a

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Speaker 2: half years and was promoted very quickly and hand and

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Speaker 2: doctrinated by Moon's top leader, a Japanese man.

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Speaker 1: Is this all in New York?

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Speaker 2: Or yes, this is all in New York. I was

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Speaker 2: told to drop out of college, cut off from my

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Speaker 2: family and friends, to throw away my poetry. No, yes,

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Speaker 2: did you do that? I did? They read me the

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Speaker 2: Abraham sacrificing his beloved Isaacs.

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Speaker 6: Story and said, what is yours, Isaac Steve? I don't know,

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Speaker 6: We think you too poetry? Do you love God enough

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Speaker 6: to demonstrate you know your loyalty? And into the garbage?

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Speaker 2: Unlike unlike the biblical story where the sun wasn't killed exactly.

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Speaker 2: I never got my stuff back right, right, But it

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Speaker 2: serves mind controller's agenda to separate you from the things

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Speaker 2: that are you. You like uniquely you, how did it begin?

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Speaker 1: These girls come up to you and they're like, come

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Speaker 1: to this thing with us, Like, how did it all start?

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Speaker 2: So back in the old days, the seventies. This this

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Speaker 2: was nineteen seventy four, before there were cell phones, before

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Speaker 2: there was internet. For anyone listening to this, you can't

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Speaker 2: imagine some the thing existed. Recruiters needed to ask you

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Speaker 2: questions about your background to figure out how to recruit you.

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Speaker 2: And so they are very interested in everything about your

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Speaker 2: past and your background, and your parents and your relationship

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Speaker 2: with them, and your your siblings, and what you like,

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Speaker 2: what you don't like, what your religious upbringing is, so

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Speaker 2: they can tune in and press the right buttons. These days,

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Speaker 2: people can find out all about you on the Internet

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Speaker 2: and makes it that much more dangerous, right yeah, so

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Speaker 2: for me, So for me, it was an incremental recruitment.

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Speaker 2: They only tell you what they think. You're ready to

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Speaker 2: swallow and heavy doses of lying. And they found out

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Speaker 2: about me and they're like, well, what do you think

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Speaker 2: about all the problems in the world, Steve, what are

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Speaker 2: you going to do about it?

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Speaker 4: Oh, that's not a lot of pressure at all.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, And I'm like, well, you know, I believe in

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Speaker 2: creativity and I'm going to write poetry and I want

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Speaker 2: to know do good. I had an adopted daughter in

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Speaker 2: Chile that I was supporting even though I was a student.

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Speaker 2: I was working as a waiter. But they're like, Steve,

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Speaker 2: there's a movement that's going to bring the world together.

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Speaker 2: It's going to end war, it's going to end crime,

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Speaker 2: it's going to end poverty. Do you care about what's

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Speaker 2: happening in the world or do you want to just

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Speaker 2: like be a poet and be in a little corner

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Speaker 2: and miss this great thing is happening, right.

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Speaker 3: I see the appeal of that so much, especially right

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Speaker 3: now because everyone is so divided and it's so upsetting

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Speaker 3: all the time. And like, if someone were to come

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Speaker 3: to me and be like, there's this great political party

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Speaker 3: or this great movement where we're trying to unite people,

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Speaker 3: you know, like, I feel like it'd.

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Speaker 1: Be so hard not to be drawn in by that.

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Speaker 2: In the seventies, yeah, exactly, So I wasn't the last

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Speaker 2: draft lottery to go to Vietnam. Oh wow, so like

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Speaker 2: just the age myself. I had a ponytail when I

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Speaker 2: was approached. I was wearing work boots and blue jeans

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Speaker 2: as I was going to school, and I had been

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Speaker 2: raised believing we had to fight communism. And then I

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Speaker 2: find out it's all a sham. It was totally bs.

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Speaker 2: They knew we were, you know, losing the war and whatever.

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Speaker 2: And I was pretty you know, disillusioned. But you know,

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Speaker 2: cults will Basically, you don't ever join a cult. You

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Speaker 2: joined a social movement. You joined something to make yourself better,

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Speaker 2: to improve your performance as an actor, an actress, or

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Speaker 2: if you want to you know, be a speaker or

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Speaker 2: whatever you want to do. Yeah, And cults have hundreds

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Speaker 2: of front groups for special interests in order to catch

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Speaker 2: different people. And the bottom line, and this is my

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Speaker 2: life work is just mass education that the mind can

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Speaker 2: be manipulated. Absolutely, we are not perfect. And stop being

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Speaker 2: egotistical and think that you're too smart to be in

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Speaker 2: a mind control cult. Just go see a stage hypnotist

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Speaker 2: sometime and watch what they get people to do in

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Speaker 2: less than an hour.

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Speaker 4: Or look at any of your old love relationships, romantic relationships.

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Speaker 2: So that is another pattern of that I'm glad you

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Speaker 2: brought up, which I do a lot of consulting with,

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Speaker 2: which is somebody in a cult of one cult the

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Speaker 2: personality of a controlling male or a controlling female who

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Speaker 2: isolates you. That makes you dependent, right, It makes you

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Speaker 2: feel like everything a value of you comes from your

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Speaker 2: relationship with them and pleasing them and giving to supply.

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Speaker 3: For people who don't know about the Moon, He's like,

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Speaker 3: what were the destructive elements going on?

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Speaker 2: So Moon became really famous because people like me fasted

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Speaker 2: for Richard Nixon during Watergates because God wanted Nixon to

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Speaker 2: be president, just like what's happening today with Trump, no

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Speaker 2: way exactly. And the family that Michael pences in was

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Speaker 2: connected to Moon and Nixon. So we circle back to

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Speaker 2: the same experience that I had. But I became very

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Speaker 2: fanatical and came to be at like one hundred and

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Speaker 2: eighty degrees different than my beliefs prior. Not only did

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Speaker 2: I throw out my poetry, but I went to become

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Speaker 2: a right wing fascist. We thought democracy was satanic and

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Speaker 2: we had to take over the world, and if people

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Speaker 2: didn't want to do what we told them to do,

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Speaker 2: we'd be helping them by taking their physical bodies away

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Speaker 2: from them and sending them to the spirit world, which

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Speaker 2: is a This is a nice way of saying we

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Speaker 2: would murder people in mass.

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Speaker 1: Did anyone ever get murdered?

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Speaker 2: You know? I heard of someone being stabbed in Japan,

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Speaker 2: but I don't know if they died. The Moon's are

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Speaker 2: best known from mass weddings like Moon is in the

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Speaker 2: Guinness Book of a World record for thirty thousand couples

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Speaker 2: simultaneously matched and married in a stadium. Whoa and Moon,

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Speaker 2: who is clairvoyant and Claire audient and can see ten

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Speaker 2: generations of your ancestors would walk through rows of guys

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Speaker 2: and girls and go, you and you, you and you,

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Speaker 2: you and you, and You'd have five minutes whether you

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Speaker 2: accept God's choice for it. Wo. So, and Moon was

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Speaker 2: ten times greater than Jesus or Buddha or you know,

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Speaker 2: blah blah blah. So how did I get out? I

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Speaker 2: fell asleep at the wheel of a fundraising van in Baltimore, Maryland,

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Speaker 2: and drove into the back of a tractor trailer truck

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Speaker 2: at eighty miles an hour and lived through the experience.

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Speaker 2: Although it was very traumatic, but that got me in

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Speaker 2: the hospital where I couldn't be surrounded by moonies for

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Speaker 2: weeks and I was having surgery. And it was in

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Speaker 2: that period that I reached out to my sister, kind

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Speaker 2: of breaking the rules, and she said, you have a

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Speaker 2: nephew you haven't seen. I miss you, come and visit me.

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Speaker 2: And I was a leader, so I said, if you

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Speaker 2: don't tell the parents, I could probably arrange of visits.

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Speaker 2: Because I've had a big cast on my leg. I

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Speaker 2: was on crutches and I wasn't really doing much for

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Speaker 2: the group at that point as I was so banged up.

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Speaker 2: So my sister broke a word and told my parents

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Speaker 2: and they hired the programmers and I got to my

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Speaker 2: sister's house and they took my crutches away, and in

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Speaker 2: came the ex members. Oh, and I was sitting there

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Speaker 2: on the sofa going Satan, Satan is here. SG was like,

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Speaker 2: but I couldn't fight and I couldn't run away and

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Speaker 2: I and I was like, this is a test from God.

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Speaker 2: You have to be strong, Steve. And so anyway, it

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Speaker 2: took five days, but I finally started realizing, Hey, there

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Speaker 2: is such a thing as brainwashing.

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Speaker 4: What what was that crack through it, like do you

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Speaker 4: remember that moment when you first were like, oh shit.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. So there were two big moments. One was on

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Speaker 2: the fourth day and then the final day. The fourth day,

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Speaker 2: and I should say, they were going over the the

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Speaker 2: eight criteria of lifting and Chinese Communist brainwashing. And then

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Speaker 2: and as we were reading that, the X moonies were saying,

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Speaker 2: remember the workshops, they do this, and they do this,

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Speaker 2: and we remember that. And I wasn't saying anything outside,

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Speaker 2: but I was going, yeah, we were doing that. We

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Speaker 2: were doing that. We were doing that. We were doing that.

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Speaker 2: But left me confused because we were God and communism

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Speaker 2: was Satan. But we're doing the same brainwashing techniques.

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Speaker 1: Ah it's communist.

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Speaker 2: Wow. Right. But I still wasn't conscious yet of doubting.

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Speaker 2: But the last day they asked me to read one

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Speaker 2: of Moon's speeches to congressmen and senators, and in the

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Speaker 2: speech he said, you know, there's a controversy that I

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Speaker 2: am brainwashing American youth. I want to ask one question

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Speaker 2: to this audience of distinguished American ladies and gentlemen. Are

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Speaker 2: Americans really that foolish? Could they really be brainwashed by me?

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Speaker 2: Reverend Moon A Korean. I know your answer is no.

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Speaker 2: My answer is no too. No American is so foolish.

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Speaker 2: And one ex member was like, I was that foolish.

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Speaker 2: I was that foolish. I was that foolish. And I

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Speaker 2: just remembered how many hundred times I heard Moon personally

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Speaker 2: say how stupid Americans were brainwashed, we were by Satan,

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Speaker 2: and how he had a heavenly brainwashed us. And the

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Speaker 2: first negative thought that came into my mind was he's

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Speaker 2: a liar. He's a liar. If he's a liar, then

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Speaker 2: he's not telling the truth. That means I can't trust him. Well,

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Speaker 2: how I used to lecture the Divine principle his Bible

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Speaker 2: about we believe in a God of truth? But how

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Speaker 2: could he be a representative of God? So I started

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Speaker 2: like thinking again, And at that point, it felt like

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Speaker 2: someone just opened up the Venetian blinds and the light

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Speaker 2: was coming in. It was a dark room, and I

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Speaker 2: was like, whoa, Yeah, it almost.

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Speaker 4: Was like Dominos, like a psyche like.

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Speaker 2: It felt like it felt like a house of cards.

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Speaker 2: It felt like.

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Speaker 4: Crazy experience.

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Speaker 2: It was. And the term that was used for deprogramming

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Speaker 2: it was actually method. At that time, it was called

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Speaker 2: snapping where you would like pressure the person, like assault

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Speaker 2: them with critical dissonant information to kind of snap them

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Speaker 2: out of it. I come to learn as a mental

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Speaker 2: health professional that's really trauma, traumatizing to people. And then

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Speaker 2: you don't want to do that at all. You want

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Speaker 2: to do a lot of AHAs. You want to like

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Speaker 2: build small, little incremental steps of.

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Speaker 7: Awareness instead of like, yeah, I was going to ask you,

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Speaker 7: like deprogramming is now a lot of people talk about

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Speaker 7: how an ethical it was in the seventies, and you

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Speaker 7: actually experienced it.

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Speaker 2: Like what was and then I did it?

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Speaker 1: And then you did it?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, because that's all that was being done at the time.

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Speaker 4: Right.

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Speaker 2: You had to physically get access to the person, and

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Speaker 2: the person was trained to run away, so you had

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Speaker 2: to hold down them.

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Speaker 1: There it was kidnapping.

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Speaker 2: Well I know, it wasn't kidnapping in the sense that

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Speaker 2: nobody was asking for ransom. It was more like involuntary containments, right.

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Speaker 2: I never physically contained anybody. The family did that or

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Speaker 2: they hired, you know, people to help. But it was

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Speaker 2: very stressful because you're programmed with phobias in the moone

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Speaker 2: is satan, you know, Like we were taking to see

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Speaker 2: the Exorcist movie, and Moon said that this movie was

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Speaker 2: a prophecy of what would happen to you if you

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Speaker 2: leave the unification right right, and now you're in a

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Speaker 2: room and Satan is trying to do this to You's

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Speaker 2: so out, so very stressful, not therapeutic at all. I

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Speaker 2: did that for a year. I said, heck with this,

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Speaker 2: I'm not doing this anymore. I'll do voluntary meetings with people,

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Speaker 2: and I went back to college. But it was lyfting

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Speaker 2: that I credit who said you know, I just said

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Speaker 2: he did secondhand, and you lived it, and they did

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Speaker 2: it to you, and you did it to other people.

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Speaker 2: And what you're describing is so much more sophisticated than

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Speaker 2: what the chin these communists were doing in the fifties.

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Speaker 2: You should study psychology and explain it to people like me.

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Speaker 2: And there, I am, a college dropout, was a shamed

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Speaker 2: and embarrassed that I was in this cult for two

355
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Speaker 2: and a half years. And this Yale psychiatrist is saying

356
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Speaker 2: you have something of value that you can actually teach people.

357
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Speaker 2: And I was like, oh, okay, I'll make lemonade.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, so take back that narrative. That's great that you

359
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Speaker 1: had that person.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, definitely, I credit him.

361
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Speaker 5: I think one of the oddest things about doing this

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Speaker 5: podcast is almost everyone we've talked to, including us, you know,

363
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Speaker 5: we have we don't believe in the cult anymore, but.

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Speaker 4: We still have this like deep seated maybe it's true

365
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Speaker 4: kind of thing. Yeah.

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Speaker 3: That we were also raised very young like birth, which

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Speaker 3: I feel like is a different experience because yeah, because

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Speaker 3: we talked to a lot of people who were raised in.

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Speaker 2: Yeahs, So you have a lot of clients born in cults.

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Speaker 2: So I have a teach and I do a form

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Speaker 2: of consultation that teaches people how to repair their psyche.

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Speaker 4: You can see people totally, like totally recover.

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Speaker 2: Well, I want to empower people to control their own minds. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: and you have to. You have to repair the cult

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Speaker 2: self that's still indoctrinated and exit yourself.

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Speaker 4: Got it.

377
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Speaker 2: So there are many different strategies. Different people like different techniques,

378
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Speaker 2: but one common one is what's known as the time traveler.

379
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Speaker 1: Tell us about that.

380
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Speaker 2: So, Megan, you time travel back to a key moment

381
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Speaker 2: in your childhood where some heavy indoctrination.

382
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Speaker 4: Thing got it right now, and you.

383
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Speaker 2: Go back and you're buy your younger self and you're like, hey, Megan,

384
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Speaker 2: I'm from your future. You're going to be okay, you're

385
00:21:58,240 --> 00:22:01,080
Speaker 2: going to get out of this. Let me explain what

386
00:22:01,280 --> 00:22:06,080
Speaker 2: is actually happening here to the level of whatever age

387
00:22:06,080 --> 00:22:09,840
Speaker 2: you were doing this, right, it could be you know,

388
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Speaker 2: because you're using your imagination right, you're not the historical

389
00:22:14,320 --> 00:22:17,720
Speaker 2: thing is the historical thing. You'll never forget that. But

390
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Speaker 2: in terms of reclaiming your neuronal structures, you want to

391
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Speaker 2: get rid of the cult identity.

392
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Speaker 4: Wow.

393
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Speaker 5: Yeah, So you're like talking to that part of yourself

394
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Speaker 5: and kind of calm and your exit.

395
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Speaker 2: Counseling yourself is basically what I'm saying now. The next

396
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Speaker 2: step of that, instead of talking to your younger self

397
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Speaker 2: is actually, after you learn about brainwashing and mind control

398
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Speaker 2: and the bite model and the influence intinuuum and all

399
00:22:47,520 --> 00:22:51,960
Speaker 2: that other stuff, you go back into your body as

400
00:22:52,000 --> 00:22:57,320
Speaker 2: a child, knowing this stuff, And imagine if I knew

401
00:22:57,359 --> 00:22:59,800
Speaker 2: then what I know now, what I would have wanted

402
00:23:00,280 --> 00:23:03,320
Speaker 2: to do. Wow, I would have called the swat team.

403
00:23:03,520 --> 00:23:06,440
Speaker 2: They would have come in, they would have taken me out,

404
00:23:06,520 --> 00:23:09,840
Speaker 2: they would have arrested the bad people right away. I'd

405
00:23:09,880 --> 00:23:13,640
Speaker 2: be in the in the courthouse. Is there he's being

406
00:23:13,760 --> 00:23:17,959
Speaker 2: sentenced or whatever. You come up with your own salution,

407
00:23:18,040 --> 00:23:19,680
Speaker 2: and it's not you don't need to do it only

408
00:23:19,720 --> 00:23:21,919
Speaker 2: one time. You can do it a hundred different ways

409
00:23:22,600 --> 00:23:26,080
Speaker 2: until there's no part of you that's still believing. But

410
00:23:26,119 --> 00:23:29,040
Speaker 2: you have to get all of that crap out. Yeah,

411
00:23:29,240 --> 00:23:33,400
Speaker 2: otherwise you're you're living with that part that is still.

412
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Speaker 5: Like whoo yeah maybe yeah, oh absolutely, it's so crazy.

413
00:23:40,680 --> 00:23:43,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, but that's why it's valuable to learn about other

414
00:23:44,040 --> 00:23:48,080
Speaker 2: cults totally right, because there's no it's like, you believe

415
00:23:48,200 --> 00:23:53,320
Speaker 2: that and the Jehovah's with the Moonies scientology. It's like

416
00:23:53,600 --> 00:23:58,240
Speaker 2: when you get how it, the parallels are so direct.

417
00:23:59,040 --> 00:24:03,639
Speaker 2: It just takes all the magical mystical programming stuff and

418
00:24:03,880 --> 00:24:05,840
Speaker 2: flushes it down the toilet. Basically.

419
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Speaker 3: Yeah, oh so interesting, it really is. So I know

420
00:24:09,920 --> 00:24:11,560
Speaker 3: there's any great things in your book. You talk about

421
00:24:11,560 --> 00:24:16,679
Speaker 3: the byte model and liftin criteria. I think, tell us

422
00:24:17,119 --> 00:24:20,080
Speaker 3: what defines occult? This is something people ask me all

423
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Speaker 3: the time, and I have a general idea of it,

424
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Speaker 3: but I want to hear from the expert himself.

425
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Speaker 2: So there are lots of different people with lots of

426
00:24:29,680 --> 00:24:33,960
Speaker 2: different ways of explaining it. And I'll tell you my

427
00:24:34,160 --> 00:24:36,560
Speaker 2: way of explaining it. But first I'll say there are

428
00:24:36,800 --> 00:24:41,040
Speaker 2: theological definitions, but that's not what I use at all.

429
00:24:41,080 --> 00:24:48,000
Speaker 2: I use psychology, social psychology, and the baseline model is

430
00:24:48,119 --> 00:24:52,880
Speaker 2: Chinese communist brainwashing. So I have this influence continuum. Imagine

431
00:24:52,880 --> 00:24:56,800
Speaker 2: an arrow going in two directions. One direction is ethical

432
00:24:56,840 --> 00:25:02,520
Speaker 2: influence and one is unethical influence. So I say, there's

433
00:25:02,520 --> 00:25:06,800
Speaker 2: a lot of influence everywhere. We're constantly being influenced by

434
00:25:06,840 --> 00:25:11,520
Speaker 2: each other, et cetera, by the media, by families, but

435
00:25:11,640 --> 00:25:15,920
Speaker 2: there's a real distinction of ethical influence. You have informed consent,

436
00:25:17,000 --> 00:25:19,800
Speaker 2: you know what you're getting into. You're free to leave.

437
00:25:20,119 --> 00:25:22,240
Speaker 2: You can read whatever you want to read, you can

438
00:25:22,280 --> 00:25:25,399
Speaker 2: talk to whoever you want to talk to. It's love based,

439
00:25:25,440 --> 00:25:29,400
Speaker 2: it's conscience base. That's create you know, respecting your creativity

440
00:25:29,440 --> 00:25:31,760
Speaker 2: and your free will. So you can be in a

441
00:25:31,920 --> 00:25:37,080
Speaker 2: cult of like loving a particular band or sports team

442
00:25:37,359 --> 00:25:40,879
Speaker 2: or whatever and be like really fanatically into it. But

443
00:25:41,600 --> 00:25:44,840
Speaker 2: there's like no penalty if you leave it right. You

444
00:25:44,920 --> 00:25:47,879
Speaker 2: don't feel guilty if you you know, if you miss

445
00:25:47,880 --> 00:25:49,879
Speaker 2: a game because you're sick or you want to be

446
00:25:49,920 --> 00:25:53,280
Speaker 2: at your kid's soccer game, or something like that. But

447
00:25:53,560 --> 00:25:55,960
Speaker 2: what the bulk of my work and how I nik

448
00:25:56,040 --> 00:26:00,920
Speaker 2: a living is helping people who've been victimized by unethical influence.

449
00:26:01,000 --> 00:26:07,240
Speaker 2: So there's lying by withholding vital information, distorting information, or

450
00:26:07,320 --> 00:26:12,480
Speaker 2: outright lying to you fear information control, and that's where

451
00:26:12,480 --> 00:26:15,840
Speaker 2: we get into my byte model. Right. B stands for

452
00:26:15,960 --> 00:26:20,040
Speaker 2: behavior control, I stands for information control, T stands for

453
00:26:20,119 --> 00:26:24,320
Speaker 2: thought control, and E stands for emotional control. So, for example,

454
00:26:24,400 --> 00:26:28,159
Speaker 2: under emotional control, they make you feel special on the

455
00:26:28,160 --> 00:26:32,760
Speaker 2: one hand, like you're chosen, but mostly it's about guilt

456
00:26:32,800 --> 00:26:37,560
Speaker 2: and fear. And the universal is what I call phobia indoctrination,

457
00:26:38,280 --> 00:26:42,439
Speaker 2: which is the implantation of irrational fears that if you

458
00:26:42,520 --> 00:26:46,560
Speaker 2: ever leave the group or even question the leader, terrible

459
00:26:46,600 --> 00:26:49,680
Speaker 2: things are going to happen to you. You're gonna go insane,

460
00:26:49,760 --> 00:26:52,280
Speaker 2: you're gonna be possessed by demons, you're gonna be hit

461
00:26:52,320 --> 00:26:56,080
Speaker 2: by a car. I have in my book Freedom of Mind.

462
00:26:56,240 --> 00:26:59,639
Speaker 2: In chapter ten, I have four pages, single space of

463
00:26:59,680 --> 00:27:02,880
Speaker 2: the most common phobias that I've worked with oh wow,

464
00:27:03,320 --> 00:27:06,719
Speaker 2: forty years. But if you look at them, you know,

465
00:27:06,760 --> 00:27:09,679
Speaker 2: for ex members, it's like a revelation, Oh my god,

466
00:27:09,880 --> 00:27:12,000
Speaker 2: we did this one, we did this one, we did

467
00:27:12,040 --> 00:27:16,080
Speaker 2: this one, we did this one. But you know, because

468
00:27:16,480 --> 00:27:21,639
Speaker 2: it's psychological slavery is what authoritarian cult mind control does.

469
00:27:21,960 --> 00:27:26,360
Speaker 2: You don't have physical bars in many cases, just psychological

470
00:27:26,359 --> 00:27:30,560
Speaker 2: and emotional bars. So you can leave the cult anytime

471
00:27:30,600 --> 00:27:34,159
Speaker 2: you want, right the doors there, But the minute you

472
00:27:34,200 --> 00:27:37,320
Speaker 2: get up and you start walking, then you get surrounded

473
00:27:37,359 --> 00:27:42,920
Speaker 2: by members and they start to doing. But Satan is

474
00:27:43,080 --> 00:27:46,800
Speaker 2: coming or whatever that it is your own thoughts, like right,

475
00:27:47,000 --> 00:27:50,480
Speaker 2: So a lot of what my work is based on

476
00:27:50,680 --> 00:27:57,159
Speaker 2: is what's called modeling, and modeling very simplistically is taking

477
00:27:57,160 --> 00:28:00,359
Speaker 2: an example of something that works and comparing it with

478
00:28:00,480 --> 00:28:04,439
Speaker 2: something that doesn't work, and comparing and contrasting. So like

479
00:28:04,520 --> 00:28:07,040
Speaker 2: what's a good tennis player and a bad tennis player,

480
00:28:07,119 --> 00:28:09,600
Speaker 2: A good singer, good songwriter? I know you were a

481
00:28:09,600 --> 00:28:14,040
Speaker 2: good songwriter a bad songwriter? Like, what are the distinctions?

482
00:28:14,800 --> 00:28:18,480
Speaker 2: So you can apply that to healthy groups, healthy relationships,

483
00:28:18,480 --> 00:28:22,600
Speaker 2: and unhealthy groups, and once you really understand the behaviors

484
00:28:22,640 --> 00:28:25,920
Speaker 2: and what to watch out for for former members, it's

485
00:28:25,960 --> 00:28:29,840
Speaker 2: a toolbox where we can trust our ability to discern

486
00:28:30,119 --> 00:28:35,040
Speaker 2: anything because we know what to watch out for. It's like, no,

487
00:28:35,160 --> 00:28:37,240
Speaker 2: I want to be in my body, in the here

488
00:28:37,280 --> 00:28:41,360
Speaker 2: and now, with a positive future orientation, with the locus

489
00:28:41,400 --> 00:28:45,040
Speaker 2: of control in me, not with some external authority figure

490
00:28:45,120 --> 00:28:46,600
Speaker 2: defining reality for me.

491
00:28:48,960 --> 00:28:49,240
Speaker 4: Nice.

492
00:28:49,360 --> 00:28:53,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's my that's my frame when I help when

493
00:28:53,560 --> 00:28:57,240
Speaker 2: people people come to my office and we do intensive work.

494
00:28:57,720 --> 00:29:01,640
Speaker 2: I find with people who've been in born cults or

495
00:29:01,760 --> 00:29:06,880
Speaker 2: recruited into intense cults, doing an hour a week doesn't

496
00:29:07,360 --> 00:29:11,800
Speaker 2: do it. Sitting for six hours a day, three hours

497
00:29:11,800 --> 00:29:14,360
Speaker 2: in the morning, three hours in the afternoon, just like

498
00:29:14,520 --> 00:29:18,680
Speaker 2: drilling down and really do it your personal narrative and

499
00:29:18,760 --> 00:29:24,120
Speaker 2: redoing it, and watching videos about other cults and brainwashing

500
00:29:24,240 --> 00:29:27,720
Speaker 2: and such and connecting the dots. You can do in

501
00:29:27,760 --> 00:29:32,480
Speaker 2: a week like life changing work twenty four hours, but

502
00:29:32,560 --> 00:29:36,959
Speaker 2: it's twenty four hours. It's like six hours Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday,

503
00:29:37,000 --> 00:29:39,440
Speaker 2: Wednesday off for me and.

504
00:29:39,360 --> 00:29:44,040
Speaker 1: Them, because it's almost it's like reverse indoctrination. You're doing

505
00:29:44,120 --> 00:29:46,400
Speaker 1: kind of the same things, but just giving.

506
00:29:46,240 --> 00:29:50,040
Speaker 2: So the differences. All of my work is empowering people

507
00:29:50,320 --> 00:29:54,040
Speaker 2: to be themselves and to question and to have an

508
00:29:54,080 --> 00:29:58,520
Speaker 2: internal locus of control, whereas authority of Arrian mind control

509
00:29:58,600 --> 00:30:01,960
Speaker 2: wants you to have a fall self. A cult self

510
00:30:01,960 --> 00:30:04,560
Speaker 2: that's in the image of the cult leader and is

511
00:30:04,640 --> 00:30:08,000
Speaker 2: wanting to program you with a set groups of beliefs

512
00:30:08,000 --> 00:30:08,640
Speaker 2: and values.

513
00:30:08,800 --> 00:30:10,720
Speaker 5: Do you know what's weird is that the probably like

514
00:30:10,920 --> 00:30:14,400
Speaker 5: the highest level of like succeeding is at that is

515
00:30:14,400 --> 00:30:16,600
Speaker 5: when a client is able to question you at the

516
00:30:16,680 --> 00:30:17,800
Speaker 5: end of it, because.

517
00:30:17,560 --> 00:30:22,560
Speaker 2: Are you I want them to, yeah, exactly throughout the thing,

518
00:30:22,600 --> 00:30:26,400
Speaker 2: and they're like, well, tell me what I should believe exactly.

519
00:30:26,480 --> 00:30:30,120
Speaker 2: I say, read books on the history of religion, like

520
00:30:30,320 --> 00:30:35,680
Speaker 2: read Karen Armstrong The History of God. You know, figure

521
00:30:35,720 --> 00:30:38,200
Speaker 2: out what you want to believe, what you like, because

522
00:30:38,200 --> 00:30:39,800
Speaker 2: that's what I had to do when I got out

523
00:30:39,840 --> 00:30:42,480
Speaker 2: of the moonies. I had to go back to Judaism

524
00:30:42,560 --> 00:30:47,600
Speaker 2: and Christianity and anyway. So I make people do homework,

525
00:30:47,840 --> 00:30:50,000
Speaker 2: like it's your life, what do you want to believe?

526
00:30:51,440 --> 00:30:53,520
Speaker 2: And I have people who are born in cults are like,

527
00:30:53,600 --> 00:30:55,720
Speaker 2: I don't know who I am. I said, great, so

528
00:30:56,080 --> 00:30:58,880
Speaker 2: figure it out. What do you like to do? When

529
00:30:58,880 --> 00:31:01,360
Speaker 2: do you feel the most you That's one of my

530
00:31:01,920 --> 00:31:06,200
Speaker 2: main therapeutic questions. And then I wait and then go, well,

531
00:31:06,240 --> 00:31:10,440
Speaker 2: when I'm playing guitar, or when I'm dancing, or when

532
00:31:10,440 --> 00:31:14,080
Speaker 2: I'm with you know, walking in nature whatever, And I'm like, okay,

533
00:31:14,280 --> 00:31:18,680
Speaker 2: let's use that as an anchor for you that creating

534
00:31:19,280 --> 00:31:22,960
Speaker 2: your identity of who you want to be and don't

535
00:31:23,000 --> 00:31:27,200
Speaker 2: have the past as the orientation for your identity. Construct

536
00:31:27,240 --> 00:31:29,800
Speaker 2: one going to the future totally. How do you want

537
00:31:29,800 --> 00:31:30,560
Speaker 2: to evolve to?

538
00:31:31,200 --> 00:31:35,800
Speaker 3: It's lucky you're you're setting out to in an ethical

539
00:31:35,840 --> 00:31:38,480
Speaker 3: way because someone in your position could potentially have so

540
00:31:38,560 --> 00:31:41,280
Speaker 3: much power. Do you know who Teal Swan is? So

541
00:31:41,360 --> 00:31:43,320
Speaker 3: I went to a Teal Swan workshop and one of

542
00:31:43,360 --> 00:31:46,360
Speaker 3: the people that came up and asked for her help

543
00:31:46,600 --> 00:31:48,960
Speaker 3: with someone who had come out of a Buddhist cold

544
00:31:49,640 --> 00:31:51,720
Speaker 3: and is here on the stage with Teal Swan and

545
00:31:51,880 --> 00:31:55,160
Speaker 3: is like, Teal, what do I do? And Teal says,

546
00:31:56,680 --> 00:31:59,320
Speaker 3: don't go back to that. That's they're manipulating you.

547
00:31:59,640 --> 00:32:03,400
Speaker 2: Listen to me, you know, like I'm familiar with her,

548
00:32:03,520 --> 00:32:06,360
Speaker 2: I've been interviewed about her. And then she claims to

549
00:32:06,400 --> 00:32:09,960
Speaker 2: help people with suicide and she really needs to stop. Yes,

550
00:32:10,560 --> 00:32:14,640
Speaker 2: direct people's.

551
00:32:13,120 --> 00:32:15,400
Speaker 4: The worst insult you can give. You really need to

552
00:32:15,400 --> 00:32:17,240
Speaker 4: stop what you're.

553
00:32:17,080 --> 00:32:20,479
Speaker 2: Talking about it. You need to get sue and go

554
00:32:20,560 --> 00:32:25,080
Speaker 2: to jail. Yeah, keep messing with absolutely, Yeah, but I

555
00:32:25,160 --> 00:32:28,440
Speaker 2: and then then I saw Tony Robbins has a documentary

556
00:32:28,560 --> 00:32:31,800
Speaker 2: I Am Not Your Guru. Tony Robbins, the NLP person

557
00:32:31,840 --> 00:32:34,320
Speaker 2: who does call it NLP, and there's a woman who

558
00:32:34,360 --> 00:32:37,000
Speaker 2: was born in the Children of God and he says

559
00:32:37,040 --> 00:32:39,160
Speaker 2: to I am not your Guru. And then by the

560
00:32:39,240 --> 00:32:42,120
Speaker 2: end of the documentary he's saying, well, I'll mentor you

561
00:32:42,160 --> 00:32:43,120
Speaker 2: come and work for me.

562
00:32:43,960 --> 00:32:47,320
Speaker 1: So it's so classic. You're always like, don't listen to me.

563
00:32:47,520 --> 00:32:49,640
Speaker 1: I don't know, but then listen to me.

564
00:32:50,240 --> 00:32:52,080
Speaker 2: That's why you got to keep your eye on the

565
00:32:52,120 --> 00:32:54,960
Speaker 2: behaviors and not what people are saying.

566
00:32:55,440 --> 00:32:57,960
Speaker 1: Oh interesting, Yeah, yeah, so you do you want to

567
00:32:58,000 --> 00:32:59,880
Speaker 1: ask your question? Now I do, but.

568
00:33:01,520 --> 00:33:04,040
Speaker 5: I have a really quick question before I ask that question.

569
00:33:04,400 --> 00:33:06,480
Speaker 5: Don't do you think that we come into this world

570
00:33:06,520 --> 00:33:09,240
Speaker 5: with the personality and a person we're meant to be

571
00:33:09,600 --> 00:33:11,480
Speaker 5: and we have to find it again or do we

572
00:33:11,520 --> 00:33:14,480
Speaker 5: have the free agency to kind of anchor into what

573
00:33:14,520 --> 00:33:17,160
Speaker 5: we like and just create it.

574
00:33:17,320 --> 00:33:21,360
Speaker 2: Neither we're both. Yeah, so I think we have a

575
00:33:21,400 --> 00:33:27,480
Speaker 2: genetic inheritance. But then depending on our environment, certain genes

576
00:33:27,560 --> 00:33:33,360
Speaker 2: turn on, certain genes don't turn on. And in the

577
00:33:33,400 --> 00:33:39,440
Speaker 2: study of psychopaths, for example, there are social, socially benevolent

578
00:33:39,680 --> 00:33:46,040
Speaker 2: psychopaths who would never harm anybody, but their wire different

579
00:33:46,280 --> 00:33:51,640
Speaker 2: from neurotypical people interesting, and that if they were raised

580
00:33:51,640 --> 00:33:57,640
Speaker 2: in a warm, nurturing, coherent family system with good values,

581
00:33:57,840 --> 00:33:59,880
Speaker 2: they grow up and they do good work, and they

582
00:34:00,080 --> 00:34:04,480
Speaker 2: often can explain psychopapaths to other people in a way

583
00:34:04,520 --> 00:34:05,920
Speaker 2: that anyone else can't.

584
00:34:06,040 --> 00:34:06,800
Speaker 1: Huh.

585
00:34:06,920 --> 00:34:09,399
Speaker 2: So I have a I'm in the doctoral program right now,

586
00:34:09,440 --> 00:34:13,680
Speaker 2: and I have one of my professors is a behavioral scientist,

587
00:34:13,760 --> 00:34:18,439
Speaker 2: and he is ideologically one hundred percent there's no free

588
00:34:18,480 --> 00:34:23,440
Speaker 2: will like period. It's all our genes and our environment,

589
00:34:23,800 --> 00:34:26,560
Speaker 2: and you think you have choices, but ever and I

590
00:34:27,080 --> 00:34:29,760
Speaker 2: just don't choose to live in that.

591
00:34:29,760 --> 00:34:31,520
Speaker 1: That story I am tempted by.

592
00:34:31,719 --> 00:34:34,399
Speaker 3: I'm definitely tempted by that narrative, just because the more

593
00:34:34,400 --> 00:34:37,800
Speaker 3: that I learn about priming in the world and the

594
00:34:38,800 --> 00:34:41,920
Speaker 3: degree to which our circumstances shape us, it can be

595
00:34:41,960 --> 00:34:43,919
Speaker 3: really hard for me to believe in free will.

596
00:34:44,560 --> 00:34:47,279
Speaker 1: But I'm going to cling to it. I'm going to try.

597
00:34:47,360 --> 00:34:50,440
Speaker 2: You know, you have choices. You can't say you know what,

598
00:34:50,680 --> 00:34:53,600
Speaker 2: I feel like a beer, But I'm going to drive

599
00:34:53,960 --> 00:34:57,560
Speaker 2: and right I don't want I don't want to drink

600
00:34:57,560 --> 00:34:59,839
Speaker 2: and drive, so I'm not going to have the beer. Well,

601
00:35:00,080 --> 00:35:02,200
Speaker 2: you may have friends was saying, well, come on, we're

602
00:35:02,200 --> 00:35:04,319
Speaker 2: having a beer, and you still can say, you know what,

603
00:35:04,400 --> 00:35:06,560
Speaker 2: they don't feel like it, right, And then if your

604
00:35:06,560 --> 00:35:08,960
Speaker 2: friends keep pressuring you, you get new friends.

605
00:35:09,280 --> 00:35:13,360
Speaker 1: I mean, I had. This is kind of not related really,

606
00:35:13,440 --> 00:35:13,879
Speaker 1: but I had.

607
00:35:14,000 --> 00:35:15,680
Speaker 3: I'm just thinking about, like, I had a conversation with

608
00:35:15,680 --> 00:35:19,200
Speaker 3: my boyfriend last night about something that I needed to

609
00:35:19,200 --> 00:35:21,680
Speaker 3: talk to him about. And the reason I felt empowered

610
00:35:21,680 --> 00:35:23,800
Speaker 3: to have that conversation was because of a conversation I

611
00:35:23,840 --> 00:35:27,040
Speaker 3: had with someone else that influenced me, Like, and I

612
00:35:27,160 --> 00:35:29,680
Speaker 3: was a direction I was leaning in already. But I'm like,

613
00:35:29,719 --> 00:35:32,719
Speaker 3: if I hadn't had like those particular influences, would I

614
00:35:32,760 --> 00:35:33,880
Speaker 3: have made that choice?

615
00:35:34,320 --> 00:35:36,520
Speaker 1: This is just like, this is going a little bit.

616
00:35:36,960 --> 00:35:39,319
Speaker 4: It's the Matrix. You can go so deep with that.

617
00:35:39,480 --> 00:35:44,000
Speaker 2: Yes, so you're mentioning the Matrix. You know, the Matrix

618
00:35:44,080 --> 00:35:47,640
Speaker 2: movie has been used by more cults really any other

619
00:35:47,760 --> 00:35:53,839
Speaker 2: movie as a device for indoctrination. And the brothers who

620
00:35:53,840 --> 00:35:57,760
Speaker 2: did that apparently were in st or Landmark Forum.

621
00:35:58,160 --> 00:35:58,600
Speaker 4: Sisters.

622
00:35:58,680 --> 00:36:03,280
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and uh where you create your own reality?

623
00:36:03,360 --> 00:36:05,320
Speaker 1: Oh, they went to landmarks. Oh that's so.

624
00:36:05,160 --> 00:36:08,640
Speaker 2: Interesting the information that I have. But the thing, the

625
00:36:08,680 --> 00:36:11,719
Speaker 2: point is is that that is not real. It is

626
00:36:11,760 --> 00:36:18,759
Speaker 2: a Hollywood story and you know, yeah, be careful, Yeah,

627
00:36:18,920 --> 00:36:24,920
Speaker 2: be careful. A million other cults use that.

628
00:36:25,200 --> 00:36:26,760
Speaker 1: Well, So let's talk about Trump.

629
00:36:26,960 --> 00:36:31,160
Speaker 3: Yes, give us the rundown of what the qualifications are

630
00:36:31,400 --> 00:36:35,719
Speaker 3: for cult leader and how Trump meets them in your mind.

631
00:36:36,160 --> 00:36:46,000
Speaker 2: So essentially, if you study Mansnge, Jim Jones, Hubbard, Moon Warren,

632
00:36:46,160 --> 00:36:50,440
Speaker 2: Jeff's You, Shoko Sahara, David koresh all down the line

633
00:36:50,440 --> 00:36:54,600
Speaker 2: of cult leaders, they all have what's known as a

634
00:36:54,800 --> 00:37:02,440
Speaker 2: malignant narcissistic personality. So narcissism has certain qualities like lack

635
00:37:02,480 --> 00:37:08,719
Speaker 2: of empathy, grandiosity, everything's about them a sense of entitlement.

636
00:37:09,640 --> 00:37:13,320
Speaker 2: But the key thing is lack of empathy. So everything's

637
00:37:13,360 --> 00:37:17,680
Speaker 2: about making them feel better and them unable to step

638
00:37:17,680 --> 00:37:22,240
Speaker 2: into anybody else's shoes and actually imagine what they're going through.

639
00:37:22,800 --> 00:37:25,880
Speaker 2: And if you don't have empathy, you basically can't have love,

640
00:37:26,239 --> 00:37:29,400
Speaker 2: like the real love. And it comes down to the

641
00:37:29,480 --> 00:37:33,040
Speaker 2: latest theories is the first two years of life and

642
00:37:33,080 --> 00:37:36,680
Speaker 2: whether or not you had secure attachment with a mother

643
00:37:36,800 --> 00:37:40,400
Speaker 2: or father, or both or some other adult so that

644
00:37:40,960 --> 00:37:47,000
Speaker 2: you have a baseline self where you're hungry, you get fed,

645
00:37:47,160 --> 00:37:51,680
Speaker 2: you're fearful, you get soothed, you get your needs met,

646
00:37:51,800 --> 00:37:57,560
Speaker 2: and you bond with that adult person. But where the

647
00:37:57,640 --> 00:38:02,760
Speaker 2: malignant part comes in is the side pathology, the anti

648
00:38:02,840 --> 00:38:07,560
Speaker 2: social stuff, the pathological lying, the feeling that they're above

649
00:38:07,640 --> 00:38:15,040
Speaker 2: the law, sadism, revenge, inability to trust anybody, even allies

650
00:38:15,120 --> 00:38:18,040
Speaker 2: or friends. So in chapter three of my book, The

651
00:38:18,080 --> 00:38:21,279
Speaker 2: Cult of Trump, I have all of these attributes. I

652
00:38:21,320 --> 00:38:26,440
Speaker 2: have evidence words that Trump has used or specific things,

653
00:38:26,440 --> 00:38:29,320
Speaker 2: and then I compare them with Jim Jones and Moon

654
00:38:29,440 --> 00:38:33,160
Speaker 2: and Hubbert and other cult leaders, and it matches one

655
00:38:33,200 --> 00:38:37,760
Speaker 2: hundred percent. Now if you and I've read biographies about

656
00:38:37,800 --> 00:38:42,000
Speaker 2: Trump prior to taking over the GOP and becoming President

657
00:38:42,040 --> 00:38:44,400
Speaker 2: of the United States, and he basically had a cult

658
00:38:44,400 --> 00:38:46,880
Speaker 2: of personality. He would get rid of you if you

659
00:38:47,040 --> 00:38:49,440
Speaker 2: disagreed with him, he didn't like you. But if you

660
00:38:49,520 --> 00:38:52,200
Speaker 2: sucked up to him and did and were loyal. And

661
00:38:52,200 --> 00:38:55,000
Speaker 2: that's the key thing with any mind controller, they want

662
00:38:55,040 --> 00:38:58,240
Speaker 2: loyalty and obedience like that's the that's the.

663
00:38:58,120 --> 00:39:00,520
Speaker 4: Goal, and they don't care who it is.

664
00:39:00,600 --> 00:39:02,880
Speaker 2: Well, they would rather have a wealthy person who can

665
00:39:02,920 --> 00:39:04,000
Speaker 2: give them a lot of money.

666
00:39:04,239 --> 00:39:07,719
Speaker 4: But if it isn't that, That's what's baffling to me,

667
00:39:07,840 --> 00:39:10,400
Speaker 4: is that I will see narcissists that I know just

668
00:39:10,480 --> 00:39:12,719
Speaker 4: like be like cool. I mean, this person worships me,

669
00:39:12,760 --> 00:39:14,719
Speaker 4: so they're part of the right thing.

670
00:39:14,960 --> 00:39:17,319
Speaker 2: They have a hole in their sense of self, so

671
00:39:17,360 --> 00:39:20,520
Speaker 2: they're trying to look outside to fill it. But it

672
00:39:20,560 --> 00:39:22,600
Speaker 2: never works, of course, not right.

673
00:39:23,200 --> 00:39:25,160
Speaker 3: I have a few things. So first of all, just

674
00:39:25,200 --> 00:39:28,440
Speaker 3: the term mind control. When I was younger, I think

675
00:39:28,440 --> 00:39:30,800
Speaker 3: a thought of mind control as like this very movie

676
00:39:30,920 --> 00:39:35,000
Speaker 3: version of mind control where you're like a robot who cannot,

677
00:39:35,480 --> 00:39:37,920
Speaker 3: you know, no ability to think for yourself.

678
00:39:38,600 --> 00:39:42,400
Speaker 1: But it's not quite that correct, cinematic.

679
00:39:42,640 --> 00:39:46,000
Speaker 2: You haven't found a good term yet. Yeah, but it

680
00:39:46,080 --> 00:39:49,600
Speaker 2: is mind control in the sense that in my model

681
00:39:49,640 --> 00:39:53,920
Speaker 2: way I think about it is it's a dissociative disorder

682
00:39:54,440 --> 00:39:57,320
Speaker 2: where you have your authentic self and your cult self,

683
00:39:57,480 --> 00:40:00,279
Speaker 2: and your cult self is suppressing your real self, so

684
00:40:00,360 --> 00:40:03,040
Speaker 2: you're split within your psyche. Even if you're born in

685
00:40:03,080 --> 00:40:05,960
Speaker 2: a cult, you still have a real self. That's my

686
00:40:06,440 --> 00:40:09,560
Speaker 2: that's my experience, and all the people that I work with,

687
00:40:10,480 --> 00:40:15,560
Speaker 2: and the idea is that instead of healthy development, where

688
00:40:15,920 --> 00:40:20,200
Speaker 2: parenting has done developmentally appropriate and the goal is to

689
00:40:20,239 --> 00:40:25,120
Speaker 2: help the child become an independent adult, in mind control

690
00:40:25,280 --> 00:40:30,120
Speaker 2: authoritarian things. They want people to be always dependent and obedient,

691
00:40:30,239 --> 00:40:34,399
Speaker 2: little children, doing whatever they're told and believing whatever they're

692
00:40:34,400 --> 00:40:37,400
Speaker 2: told to believe, even if the beliefs flip one hundred

693
00:40:37,440 --> 00:40:41,640
Speaker 2: and eighty degrees. So they don't want people to grow

694
00:40:41,760 --> 00:40:47,040
Speaker 2: up and develop an internal locus of control for their lives.

695
00:40:47,719 --> 00:40:51,560
Speaker 2: So that's what I mean by destructive mind control. And

696
00:40:51,600 --> 00:40:55,080
Speaker 2: what I say is, hey, it's your mind. You should

697
00:40:55,120 --> 00:40:58,520
Speaker 2: control it big and you should control your mind lowly.

698
00:40:58,600 --> 00:41:01,040
Speaker 2: You control your mind, control my mind.

699
00:41:01,120 --> 00:41:04,920
Speaker 1: Now I'll control your mind, and you control his mind exactly.

700
00:41:08,360 --> 00:41:10,880
Speaker 2: We don't want to be controlled by our thoughts, right,

701
00:41:10,920 --> 00:41:12,800
Speaker 2: because we're bigger than our thoughts. We don't want to

702
00:41:12,800 --> 00:41:15,600
Speaker 2: be controlled by our feelings. If we're feeling depressed and

703
00:41:15,680 --> 00:41:19,640
Speaker 2: our depression is taking over everything where we can't get

704
00:41:19,640 --> 00:41:22,480
Speaker 2: out of bed, that's not healthy either. So you have

705
00:41:22,560 --> 00:41:28,200
Speaker 2: to start understanding how to regulate your emotions and your

706
00:41:28,239 --> 00:41:32,279
Speaker 2: behaviors and your thought patterns. And I say, if you

707
00:41:32,400 --> 00:41:36,319
Speaker 2: have the same negative thought three times and there's no

708
00:41:36,480 --> 00:41:40,440
Speaker 2: action element, why do you keep having that thought, like

709
00:41:40,520 --> 00:41:46,080
Speaker 2: if it's not informing you or making your life better interesting, change.

710
00:41:45,760 --> 00:41:50,360
Speaker 1: Your thought easier said than done, but it is, but once.

711
00:41:50,120 --> 00:41:53,800
Speaker 2: You understand how to do it, it's great.

712
00:41:54,239 --> 00:41:55,000
Speaker 1: Update update.

713
00:41:55,080 --> 00:41:58,799
Speaker 3: Okay, so here is where the updated interview begins. So

714
00:41:58,960 --> 00:42:02,000
Speaker 3: when we recorded our original interview, we talked about your book,

715
00:42:02,040 --> 00:42:05,240
Speaker 3: The Cult of Trump, and we talked about how Trump's

716
00:42:05,239 --> 00:42:08,160
Speaker 3: followers are in a cult of sorts, and the reason

717
00:42:08,239 --> 00:42:09,560
Speaker 3: I wanted to talk to you again.

718
00:42:10,160 --> 00:42:13,279
Speaker 2: There it is, and it came out in paperback since

719
00:42:13,280 --> 00:42:13,920
Speaker 2: I talked.

720
00:42:13,680 --> 00:42:17,399
Speaker 3: With you last, available on paperback. The reason I wanted

721
00:42:17,400 --> 00:42:18,920
Speaker 3: to talk to you about it again was because I

722
00:42:18,960 --> 00:42:21,560
Speaker 3: feel like the Cult of Trump has sort of changed

723
00:42:21,880 --> 00:42:25,120
Speaker 3: meanings since we first talked. Because originally, when we were

724
00:42:25,160 --> 00:42:28,120
Speaker 3: talking about cult as a Trump leader has a cult

725
00:42:28,200 --> 00:42:33,280
Speaker 3: is a Trump leader as a cult leader, we're talking

726
00:42:33,280 --> 00:42:36,000
Speaker 3: about sort of maybe more in terms of justice followers.

727
00:42:36,040 --> 00:42:40,719
Speaker 3: But now with the rise of QAnon, it's kind of

728
00:42:40,760 --> 00:42:44,200
Speaker 3: taken on a new meanings. It's not just regular followers.

729
00:42:44,200 --> 00:42:47,800
Speaker 3: There are also these people who religiously believe that Trump

730
00:42:47,840 --> 00:42:50,319
Speaker 3: is destined to save the world and q is all

731
00:42:50,360 --> 00:42:52,480
Speaker 3: knowing and they're going to end human trafficking and all

732
00:42:52,480 --> 00:42:58,560
Speaker 3: this crazy stuff. So I first of all, like, thanks

733
00:42:58,600 --> 00:43:02,560
Speaker 3: for coming back. Yeah, So before we get into it,

734
00:43:02,600 --> 00:43:05,000
Speaker 3: for anyone who doesn't know what QAnon is, which kind

735
00:43:05,000 --> 00:43:07,080
Speaker 3: of seems crazy at this point, but I'm sure there's

736
00:43:07,120 --> 00:43:10,359
Speaker 3: someone out there who doesn't know. QAnon is a far

737
00:43:10,560 --> 00:43:15,640
Speaker 3: right anti Semitic conspiracy theory group centered around a conspiracy

738
00:43:15,680 --> 00:43:19,040
Speaker 3: theory that a secret deep state group of Satan worshiping

739
00:43:19,080 --> 00:43:22,120
Speaker 3: pedophiles is running a child sex trafficking rank and that

740
00:43:22,280 --> 00:43:26,479
Speaker 3: Donald Trump was elected to stop them. Many QAnon people

741
00:43:26,480 --> 00:43:29,120
Speaker 3: believe that all kinds of celebrities, from Ellen to Oprah

742
00:43:29,160 --> 00:43:32,400
Speaker 3: to the Pope not only molest children, but kill and

743
00:43:32,440 --> 00:43:34,160
Speaker 3: eat them in order to get some kind of like

744
00:43:34,239 --> 00:43:39,680
Speaker 3: life extending property from their blood. Very very fun, fun ideas,

745
00:43:40,440 --> 00:43:43,280
Speaker 3: fun ideas for like a horror movie. There are basically

746
00:43:43,400 --> 00:43:46,359
Speaker 3: endless different conspiracy theories that kind of get folded in,

747
00:43:46,360 --> 00:43:50,160
Speaker 3: including Pizzagate, and it's very outlandish, very over the top,

748
00:43:50,239 --> 00:43:56,000
Speaker 3: extremely disconnected from reality. But it's scary because we all

749
00:43:56,040 --> 00:43:58,200
Speaker 3: dismissed it at first as a tiny fringe group of

750
00:43:58,280 --> 00:44:00,719
Speaker 3: ridiculous people. But for reasons that we're going to talk about,

751
00:44:00,760 --> 00:44:02,960
Speaker 3: its numbers just keep growing, and it's becoming more and

752
00:44:03,000 --> 00:44:06,640
Speaker 3: more of a real thing, and people are actually committing

753
00:44:06,719 --> 00:44:09,080
Speaker 3: violent acts because of it. And it all started from

754
00:44:09,120 --> 00:44:11,960
Speaker 3: an anonymous account posting on Fortune who calls himself Q

755
00:44:12,640 --> 00:44:16,200
Speaker 3: and posts cryptic coded messages called drops.

756
00:44:16,000 --> 00:44:18,719
Speaker 1: Which feels like what is that show gossip Girl? Yeah,

757
00:44:18,760 --> 00:44:19,960
Speaker 1: but scarier.

758
00:44:20,160 --> 00:44:22,279
Speaker 2: You know, I've done a lot of research in the

759
00:44:22,320 --> 00:44:25,120
Speaker 2: last few months. I actually did a ted X last

760
00:44:25,200 --> 00:44:29,759
Speaker 2: week where we did ninety minutes deep dive on actually

761
00:44:30,080 --> 00:44:34,120
Speaker 2: what is QAnon? And I can honestly say it is

762
00:44:34,160 --> 00:44:37,840
Speaker 2: a syop and it's a cult. It's a destructive cult.

763
00:44:37,840 --> 00:44:40,960
Speaker 2: I actually did a byte model, you know, behavior control,

764
00:44:41,080 --> 00:44:45,799
Speaker 2: information control, thought control, and emotional control analysis of it

765
00:44:45,880 --> 00:44:49,560
Speaker 2: as a destructive cult. And before we go further, I'll

766
00:44:49,640 --> 00:44:55,760
Speaker 2: just say that I watched three documentaries recently that everyone

767
00:44:55,840 --> 00:44:58,160
Speaker 2: needs to watch, in my opinion, if you want to

768
00:44:58,280 --> 00:45:04,400
Speaker 2: understand how people can be mind controlled remotely. A Great Hack,

769
00:45:04,920 --> 00:45:09,600
Speaker 2: which is about Cambridge Analytica scraping people's personal data for

770
00:45:09,680 --> 00:45:15,759
Speaker 2: the twenty sixteen election. The Social Dilemma, which talks with

771
00:45:16,080 --> 00:45:21,200
Speaker 2: former executives of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram talking about how the

772
00:45:21,239 --> 00:45:26,080
Speaker 2: algorithms and the AI is designed to make people addicted

773
00:45:26,160 --> 00:45:32,160
Speaker 2: to their attention and to the algorithms to radicalize. But

774
00:45:32,320 --> 00:45:35,600
Speaker 2: the more recent one that's very disturbing is called People

775
00:45:35,680 --> 00:45:41,799
Speaker 2: You May Know that talks about multimillion dollar entities that

776
00:45:41,880 --> 00:45:45,520
Speaker 2: are taking the deep data mind and there are five

777
00:45:45,680 --> 00:45:50,960
Speaker 2: thousand information points on every voting American right now, five

778
00:45:51,239 --> 00:45:55,600
Speaker 2: thousand and in this particular documentary, they were talking about

779
00:45:55,640 --> 00:45:59,600
Speaker 2: people with mental health issues, whether they were depressed, whether

780
00:45:59,640 --> 00:46:04,080
Speaker 2: they're on medication, whether they've gone through a divorce, or

781
00:46:04,320 --> 00:46:07,680
Speaker 2: moving to a new city, state, or country, where they're

782
00:46:07,719 --> 00:46:11,960
Speaker 2: selling this data to churches, many of which are named

783
00:46:11,960 --> 00:46:16,800
Speaker 2: in the Cult of Trump, to invite them to innocuous

784
00:46:16,840 --> 00:46:21,040
Speaker 2: sounding front group meetings, many of which are online now,

785
00:46:21,560 --> 00:46:25,520
Speaker 2: in order to co opt them. So the dramatic difference

786
00:46:25,640 --> 00:46:30,560
Speaker 2: for me in studying QAnon, this whole phenomenon is not

787
00:46:31,000 --> 00:46:34,440
Speaker 2: the person to person recruitment on the street corner or

788
00:46:34,719 --> 00:46:37,879
Speaker 2: like I was recruited at a college campus. But now

789
00:46:37,880 --> 00:46:42,279
Speaker 2: there's online recruitment and it's using a lot of very

790
00:46:42,360 --> 00:46:48,040
Speaker 2: sophisticated manipulation techniques, and all citizens have to understand this

791
00:46:49,080 --> 00:46:53,239
Speaker 2: and protect themselves. I think the solution is more an

792
00:46:53,320 --> 00:46:59,040
Speaker 2: awareness movement about mind control. Really exists that intelligent, educated

793
00:46:59,080 --> 00:47:03,840
Speaker 2: people can be dived and manipulated and indoctrinated. But the

794
00:47:03,880 --> 00:47:07,520
Speaker 2: most important thing is people get out. In fact, we're

795
00:47:07,520 --> 00:47:12,440
Speaker 2: doing this hashtag movement that called I Got Out. Hashtag

796
00:47:12,480 --> 00:47:16,880
Speaker 2: I Got Out. We're asking everyone who's experienced this directly,

797
00:47:17,719 --> 00:47:22,960
Speaker 2: including a controlling relationship, to start sharing their stories and

798
00:47:23,040 --> 00:47:27,320
Speaker 2: normalizing it. In fact, I just published a piece minutes

799
00:47:27,360 --> 00:47:33,319
Speaker 2: ago on Medium calling out the qan on media circus.

800
00:47:33,680 --> 00:47:38,839
Speaker 2: That's unwittingly amplifying q andon in the wrong way in

801
00:47:38,840 --> 00:47:42,560
Speaker 2: my opinion, because there's they say, oh, there's stupid crazy,

802
00:47:43,080 --> 00:47:47,719
Speaker 2: Can you believe those conspiracy theorists not who believe in QAnon.

803
00:47:47,960 --> 00:47:52,040
Speaker 2: That's making things worse, not helping people to reflect and

804
00:47:52,960 --> 00:47:53,439
Speaker 2: get out.

805
00:47:54,080 --> 00:47:57,239
Speaker 3: So in your mind, it's kind of like an all

806
00:47:57,280 --> 00:47:59,880
Speaker 3: press is good press situation, because even when the press,

807
00:48:00,040 --> 00:48:02,239
Speaker 3: even when the media is saying look how crazy these

808
00:48:02,280 --> 00:48:04,880
Speaker 3: people are, it's still amplifying their message and it's still

809
00:48:05,520 --> 00:48:08,120
Speaker 3: giving them a bigger platform, no matter what the tone is.

810
00:48:08,320 --> 00:48:12,080
Speaker 2: So I'm saying they should stop calling it a conspiracy

811
00:48:12,200 --> 00:48:16,160
Speaker 2: theory that's crazy, and start talking about it as a

812
00:48:16,239 --> 00:48:22,399
Speaker 2: destructive online cult that's entered reality where people are protesting

813
00:48:22,480 --> 00:48:27,080
Speaker 2: in the streets and doing violent activities in real life.

814
00:48:27,280 --> 00:48:31,880
Speaker 2: It really was based on alternate reality gaming platform and

815
00:48:31,960 --> 00:48:37,080
Speaker 2: this addictive you know game, and it's worldwide, by the way,

816
00:48:37,120 --> 00:48:41,560
Speaker 2: It's in eighty countries. Eighty countries. This is not just

817
00:48:41,640 --> 00:48:44,759
Speaker 2: the local phenomenon in the US, right, So.

818
00:48:44,840 --> 00:48:47,560
Speaker 3: I am this book took me so long to read it,

819
00:48:47,600 --> 00:48:50,600
Speaker 3: and it was my second attempt, But I'm finally just

820
00:48:50,680 --> 00:48:53,799
Speaker 3: about done with the origins of totalitarianism by Hannah errand

821
00:48:55,280 --> 00:48:59,360
Speaker 3: the parallels between the way that she describes totalitarian movements

822
00:48:59,480 --> 00:49:02,440
Speaker 3: and cults and I think this group in particular are

823
00:49:02,480 --> 00:49:06,200
Speaker 3: striking to me. So she talks about how mass movements

824
00:49:06,239 --> 00:49:09,200
Speaker 3: are formed on large numbers of what she calls atomized

825
00:49:09,239 --> 00:49:12,840
Speaker 3: individuals or lonely people who feel isolated and feel like

826
00:49:12,880 --> 00:49:15,200
Speaker 3: they don't have a place in the world are met

827
00:49:15,239 --> 00:49:17,560
Speaker 3: with an ideology that helps them make sense of the

828
00:49:17,640 --> 00:49:21,560
Speaker 3: reality and escape from the unpleasant, messy reality that they

829
00:49:21,640 --> 00:49:24,839
Speaker 3: would rather not deal with. What do you I mean,

830
00:49:24,880 --> 00:49:26,319
Speaker 3: first of all, do you agree with that? And second

831
00:49:26,360 --> 00:49:29,480
Speaker 3: of all, what conditions do you think are happening today

832
00:49:29,480 --> 00:49:31,560
Speaker 3: that are driving so many people to this sort of

833
00:49:31,600 --> 00:49:33,120
Speaker 3: extreme ideology?

834
00:49:33,880 --> 00:49:38,360
Speaker 2: Sure? Good questions so it's very important to go back

835
00:49:38,400 --> 00:49:44,920
Speaker 2: to Nazism and Hitler and propaganda and big lies and

836
00:49:45,320 --> 00:49:50,960
Speaker 2: Gerbels who studied Edward Bernese, who is the nephew of Freud,

837
00:49:51,080 --> 00:49:54,560
Speaker 2: who was the first to put propaganda. He wrote it

838
00:49:54,600 --> 00:49:57,600
Speaker 2: to nineteen twenty eight book Propaganda. And what I can

839
00:49:57,719 --> 00:50:01,720
Speaker 2: say is that over forty four years of my career

840
00:50:01,760 --> 00:50:04,879
Speaker 2: as a mental health professional and helping people get out

841
00:50:04,920 --> 00:50:10,680
Speaker 2: of cults, people are especially vulnerable during transitional moments in

842
00:50:10,760 --> 00:50:17,279
Speaker 2: their life, death of a loved one, breakup of a relationship, illness, pandemic.

843
00:50:17,920 --> 00:50:21,280
Speaker 2: So I was getting to that, yeah, But the point

844
00:50:21,440 --> 00:50:25,279
Speaker 2: is is that everybody has vulnerabilities if you're human. So

845
00:50:25,400 --> 00:50:31,520
Speaker 2: the global pandemic and the economic collapse is creating extraordinary

846
00:50:31,760 --> 00:50:37,600
Speaker 2: anxiety and stress and having a president who lies hundreds

847
00:50:37,640 --> 00:50:42,520
Speaker 2: of times a day and all kinds of confusing messaging

848
00:50:42,719 --> 00:50:48,880
Speaker 2: on social media platforms. You know, humans like certainty, you know,

849
00:50:49,040 --> 00:50:52,720
Speaker 2: or at least something they can trust. And for those

850
00:50:52,880 --> 00:50:57,000
Speaker 2: people who have a close friend or a sibling or

851
00:50:57,080 --> 00:51:01,320
Speaker 2: a coworker who says, check out the EP up times

852
00:51:01,360 --> 00:51:04,719
Speaker 2: it's amazing, and they don't do their research to find

853
00:51:04,760 --> 00:51:08,720
Speaker 2: out who's behind this, it's easy to get co opted,

854
00:51:09,120 --> 00:51:12,759
Speaker 2: and that's why it's so critical in my opinion, that

855
00:51:12,840 --> 00:51:17,840
Speaker 2: people understand the influence continuum, the bite model and actually

856
00:51:18,719 --> 00:51:22,000
Speaker 2: educate themselves instead of thinking I'm too smart, I would

857
00:51:22,040 --> 00:51:26,839
Speaker 2: never fall for that, adopt a humility position and go,

858
00:51:26,960 --> 00:51:28,839
Speaker 2: you know what, I don't know what I don't know,

859
00:51:29,760 --> 00:51:33,239
Speaker 2: And it's really important in this day and age to

860
00:51:33,320 --> 00:51:39,319
Speaker 2: protect myself and draw a close circle of friends who

861
00:51:39,480 --> 00:51:42,040
Speaker 2: help each other. And when I say close circle of friends,

862
00:51:42,040 --> 00:51:44,480
Speaker 2: I don't mean just people who think the way you do.

863
00:51:45,040 --> 00:51:48,920
Speaker 2: I include people who think differently than you do, different

864
00:51:49,000 --> 00:51:55,520
Speaker 2: religious upbringings, different perspectives, and conservative values and not just

865
00:51:55,600 --> 00:51:59,640
Speaker 2: progressive values, to really hear other points of view and

866
00:51:59,760 --> 00:52:04,759
Speaker 2: way the merits and the merits of each position, right.

867
00:52:04,800 --> 00:52:08,120
Speaker 3: I do actually think that's important, and it's something I

868
00:52:08,120 --> 00:52:09,920
Speaker 3: think we're all getting worse and worse at in the

869
00:52:09,920 --> 00:52:10,880
Speaker 3: age of social media.

870
00:52:11,080 --> 00:52:15,480
Speaker 2: I have close family and friends who say, I don't care,

871
00:52:15,760 --> 00:52:19,839
Speaker 2: I'm going to cancel my friendships with Trump believers. I

872
00:52:19,880 --> 00:52:23,160
Speaker 2: can't stand them, And I say, but you have to understand.

873
00:52:23,640 --> 00:52:29,200
Speaker 2: They're getting algorithms that only reinforce that Trump's a great person,

874
00:52:29,440 --> 00:52:35,200
Speaker 2: and they're getting distortions around that. Yeah, stop stop cutting

875
00:52:35,239 --> 00:52:37,360
Speaker 2: off from them, because the way to help them is

876
00:52:37,440 --> 00:52:39,879
Speaker 2: to stay in their life. In a case, say hey,

877
00:52:39,920 --> 00:52:43,319
Speaker 2: if you understand something, I don't, explain it to me

878
00:52:43,440 --> 00:52:47,239
Speaker 2: and convince me, and I'll join you more of that posture,

879
00:52:47,640 --> 00:52:51,120
Speaker 2: but only if you understand mind control first.

880
00:52:51,280 --> 00:52:53,719
Speaker 1: So this brings me to a question I think is

881
00:52:53,760 --> 00:52:54,360
Speaker 1: really important.

882
00:52:54,400 --> 00:52:57,080
Speaker 3: So I think it can be very tempting for people

883
00:52:57,239 --> 00:53:02,640
Speaker 3: to think that fact are going to, you know, snap

884
00:53:02,719 --> 00:53:07,120
Speaker 3: somebody out of something like QAnon. They're like, if you

885
00:53:07,239 --> 00:53:09,200
Speaker 3: just look at this information, you would see and that

886
00:53:09,200 --> 00:53:11,960
Speaker 3: that doesn't actually work. And I want to hear a

887
00:53:12,000 --> 00:53:14,279
Speaker 3: little bit about why that doesn't work and what does work.

888
00:53:14,480 --> 00:53:15,279
Speaker 1: If someone in your.

889
00:53:15,200 --> 00:53:19,080
Speaker 2: Loved my question, great question, so I would come back

890
00:53:19,200 --> 00:53:22,799
Speaker 2: to some of the basics of my work. And of

891
00:53:22,840 --> 00:53:26,160
Speaker 2: course Combat and Cult, Mind Control and Freedom of Mind

892
00:53:26,360 --> 00:53:28,879
Speaker 2: are our books that I've written a long time ago

893
00:53:29,040 --> 00:53:33,720
Speaker 2: that have been updated. But one critical notion that I

894
00:53:33,760 --> 00:53:38,440
Speaker 2: write about is this dissociative disorder. In other words, there

895
00:53:38,520 --> 00:53:41,920
Speaker 2: was the Steve Hassen who grew up in Flushing, Queens

896
00:53:42,000 --> 00:53:47,680
Speaker 2: and was a conservative Jew and liked girls and played basketball,

897
00:53:47,840 --> 00:53:50,799
Speaker 2: And then I became Steve Hassen the son of the

898
00:53:50,880 --> 00:53:54,880
Speaker 2: Messiah and his wife who wanted to take over the world,

899
00:53:55,200 --> 00:53:59,319
Speaker 2: who thought democracy was satanic and that the Holocaust was

900
00:53:59,400 --> 00:54:04,040
Speaker 2: necessary because the Jews didn't accept Jesus, and you know,

901
00:54:04,120 --> 00:54:07,799
Speaker 2: thought lying was fine because the world was populated by

902
00:54:07,880 --> 00:54:12,000
Speaker 2: satanic people who needed to be converted to God. So

903
00:54:12,120 --> 00:54:17,760
Speaker 2: this dual identity notion is critical to understanding cultism because

904
00:54:17,800 --> 00:54:22,560
Speaker 2: I keep hearing media people saying and politicians saying, oh,

905
00:54:22,640 --> 00:54:27,960
Speaker 2: those Trump supporters, they're hopeless, like there's nothing you can

906
00:54:28,040 --> 00:54:31,960
Speaker 2: say with information that can help them. And it's just

907
00:54:32,040 --> 00:54:36,439
Speaker 2: not true because people, deep down inside, if they were

908
00:54:36,680 --> 00:54:40,640
Speaker 2: moral people before and cared about truth and cat cared

909
00:54:40,680 --> 00:54:45,160
Speaker 2: about their integrity, there's a lot to work with. But

910
00:54:45,200 --> 00:54:48,920
Speaker 2: you've got to get past the cult identity that's trained

911
00:54:48,960 --> 00:54:54,120
Speaker 2: to block thought, stop emotion, block any criticism of the leader,

912
00:54:54,239 --> 00:54:57,840
Speaker 2: the doctrine, or the group. So like I would advise

913
00:54:57,880 --> 00:55:01,520
Speaker 2: a family whose loved one isn't science ptology, for example,

914
00:55:02,640 --> 00:55:05,440
Speaker 2: telling them that Hubbard was a was a big amiss

915
00:55:05,640 --> 00:55:10,840
Speaker 2: and a drug user, you know, and the hypnotist, they're

916
00:55:10,880 --> 00:55:14,880
Speaker 2: going to label it as n theta. That's their loaded language.

917
00:55:15,040 --> 00:55:18,200
Speaker 2: Trumps have fake news and he is the enemy of

918
00:55:18,280 --> 00:55:22,080
Speaker 2: the people. So what I teach is you need to

919
00:55:22,120 --> 00:55:26,320
Speaker 2: have rapport in trust with the cult member. Talk about

920
00:55:26,400 --> 00:55:32,440
Speaker 2: social psychology like the Milgrim Experiment, the Ash Conformity Experiment,

921
00:55:32,560 --> 00:55:36,880
Speaker 2: the Zimbardo prison Experiment. You know, I love the Hidden Brain.

922
00:55:37,040 --> 00:55:41,720
Speaker 2: It's an NPR podcast on social psychology. People will listen

923
00:55:41,760 --> 00:55:44,600
Speaker 2: to things like that because it's not attacking the group

924
00:55:44,640 --> 00:55:48,080
Speaker 2: that they're in, but you're starting to educate them on

925
00:55:48,200 --> 00:55:54,000
Speaker 2: how the mind works and how people can be influenced unconsciously.

926
00:55:55,239 --> 00:55:58,320
Speaker 2: And then you go to cults that they would agree

927
00:55:58,400 --> 00:56:01,640
Speaker 2: or bad, And the most effective things to use with

928
00:56:01,760 --> 00:56:06,160
Speaker 2: Trump and QAnon is trafficking and talk about pimp mind

929
00:56:06,239 --> 00:56:12,160
Speaker 2: control and trafficker mind control or Chinese communist brainwashing, which

930
00:56:12,200 --> 00:56:16,000
Speaker 2: is actually what was used to help me be deprogrammed

931
00:56:16,120 --> 00:56:19,359
Speaker 2: back in nineteen seventy six. They will listen to that,

932
00:56:20,160 --> 00:56:23,840
Speaker 2: so you're laying a foundation. But then you're also having

933
00:56:23,880 --> 00:56:27,120
Speaker 2: a respectful dialogue with them. And I should say this

934
00:56:27,160 --> 00:56:29,880
Speaker 2: is you can't do this in one conversation with a

935
00:56:29,960 --> 00:56:33,160
Speaker 2: cult member who's been indoctrinated for days and weeks and

936
00:56:33,239 --> 00:56:38,600
Speaker 2: months and years. It's a process to open up their thinking.

937
00:56:40,040 --> 00:56:44,440
Speaker 2: The number one technique is asking a good question and

938
00:56:44,520 --> 00:56:48,680
Speaker 2: waiting for an answer and following up when they do

939
00:56:48,760 --> 00:56:50,000
Speaker 2: give an answer.

940
00:56:50,200 --> 00:56:52,160
Speaker 3: Right, instead of just waiting to make a bunch of

941
00:56:52,160 --> 00:56:54,000
Speaker 3: points and like sort of assault them with yes.

942
00:56:54,160 --> 00:56:56,920
Speaker 2: So it's not a win lose. I'm going to persuade

943
00:56:56,960 --> 00:57:01,400
Speaker 2: you model I'm right, you're wrong, tell you why you're wrong.

944
00:57:01,560 --> 00:57:05,719
Speaker 2: This is more like, hey, you're intelligent. I respect you.

945
00:57:06,400 --> 00:57:11,000
Speaker 2: I think I'm intelligent, Please respect me. The truth will stand,

946
00:57:11,640 --> 00:57:16,520
Speaker 2: let's test, let's examine stuff, and if you have the

947
00:57:16,600 --> 00:57:21,440
Speaker 2: evidence that persuades me, I will join you in this endeavor.

948
00:57:22,280 --> 00:57:26,280
Speaker 2: And if I have the evidence, you might decide you

949
00:57:26,360 --> 00:57:29,840
Speaker 2: have a different future than the one that you're currently believing.

950
00:57:30,280 --> 00:57:33,280
Speaker 2: But you start with the basics, which is being nice

951
00:57:33,320 --> 00:57:37,080
Speaker 2: to them, because they're typically programmed that anyone who isn't

952
00:57:37,120 --> 00:57:39,720
Speaker 2: part of our church or our part of our group

953
00:57:40,360 --> 00:57:44,280
Speaker 2: are evil and bad people, right, And this is this

954
00:57:44,600 --> 00:57:48,400
Speaker 2: I've talked to many people who've left Light Power neo

955
00:57:48,480 --> 00:57:54,360
Speaker 2: Nazi groups, and some of the most famous exit exitees

956
00:57:54,840 --> 00:57:58,959
Speaker 2: were helped by Jews who helped you know, who gave

957
00:57:59,000 --> 00:58:02,040
Speaker 2: them food or gave them a job and were nice

958
00:58:02,080 --> 00:58:07,760
Speaker 2: to them, and it created dissonance between their indoctrination and

959
00:58:07,840 --> 00:58:13,439
Speaker 2: their experience, and honestly, human beings like to be liked,

960
00:58:13,960 --> 00:58:18,080
Speaker 2: and they like to be helped, and they want meaning

961
00:58:18,120 --> 00:58:22,480
Speaker 2: and they want connection. And it's very exhausting, is what

962
00:58:22,640 --> 00:58:26,680
Speaker 2: I'm told to be in a hate group. Hating all the.

963
00:58:26,720 --> 00:58:30,440
Speaker 1: Time sounds exhausting. Yeah, so much energy.

964
00:58:30,800 --> 00:58:34,000
Speaker 2: A lot of these people have their moment of truth

965
00:58:34,120 --> 00:58:38,120
Speaker 2: when they have a child and the kid is zig heiling,

966
00:58:39,200 --> 00:58:42,520
Speaker 2: you know, and it's like, do I really want my

967
00:58:42,680 --> 00:58:46,280
Speaker 2: kid to grow up this way? Yeah? But understand, this

968
00:58:46,320 --> 00:58:49,080
Speaker 2: is a very important concept that I wrote about in

969
00:58:49,120 --> 00:58:53,480
Speaker 2: the Cult of Trump, and it's called fourth generation warfare,

970
00:58:53,840 --> 00:58:57,280
Speaker 2: and it was actually written about formally in the nineteen

971
00:58:57,360 --> 00:59:02,280
Speaker 2: eighties by an American military stratug. Just what it essentially

972
00:59:02,400 --> 00:59:06,760
Speaker 2: is as a psiah aimed at not converting people to

973
00:59:06,880 --> 00:59:11,680
Speaker 2: your way of thinking. It's aimed at deconstructing people. Again

974
00:59:11,840 --> 00:59:16,000
Speaker 2: that the answer is really stepping back and going whoa

975
00:59:16,760 --> 00:59:20,840
Speaker 2: you know, let's go back in time before the twenty

976
00:59:21,120 --> 00:59:25,720
Speaker 2: sixteen election and remember what our values were and what

977
00:59:25,800 --> 00:59:30,400
Speaker 2: we thought about who Donald Trump was is almost you know,

978
00:59:30,480 --> 00:59:33,640
Speaker 2: the vast number of Republicans thought he was a creep

979
00:59:34,160 --> 00:59:38,360
Speaker 2: and a misogynist, and you know, on and on and on,

980
00:59:38,600 --> 00:59:44,280
Speaker 2: and now they're they're they're they're doing everything to keep

981
00:59:44,320 --> 00:59:44,960
Speaker 2: them in power.

982
00:59:45,200 --> 00:59:45,960
Speaker 1: Let's hope not.

983
00:59:46,120 --> 00:59:47,760
Speaker 3: By the time this comes out, I think the election

984
00:59:47,800 --> 00:59:49,600
Speaker 3: will have happened, but oh god, let's hope not.

985
00:59:49,920 --> 00:59:52,720
Speaker 4: I was just going to ask about actual government cover

986
00:59:52,840 --> 00:59:56,000
Speaker 4: ups or actual things that our government does that they're

987
00:59:56,080 --> 00:59:59,800
Speaker 4: lying to us about. You know, how do we differentiate

988
01:00:00,000 --> 01:00:04,720
Speaker 4: between letting them get away with everything and going down

989
01:00:04,760 --> 01:00:06,640
Speaker 4: these rabbit holes that are super dangerous.

990
01:00:06,840 --> 01:00:09,680
Speaker 2: So good question. I think we need to get out

991
01:00:09,680 --> 01:00:13,120
Speaker 2: of black and white, all or nothing thinking, first of all,

992
01:00:13,200 --> 01:00:17,720
Speaker 2: and realize the intelligence agencies are comprised of, you know,

993
01:00:17,920 --> 01:00:20,800
Speaker 2: hundreds of thousands of people. I think it was my

994
01:00:20,920 --> 01:00:25,800
Speaker 2: interview with the former head of FBI negotiations, Gary Nessner,

995
01:00:26,880 --> 01:00:29,560
Speaker 2: who is in charge of the Waco siege, which is

996
01:00:29,640 --> 01:00:33,200
Speaker 2: a big, you know, rallying cry for a lot of

997
01:00:33,200 --> 01:00:38,360
Speaker 2: white power groups. He said, when there's an option to

998
01:00:39,280 --> 01:00:44,120
Speaker 2: think conspiracy or incompetence, always go with incompetence when you're.

999
01:00:44,040 --> 01:00:48,560
Speaker 8: Thinking about the government. And I think that's really wise. Again,

1000
01:00:48,680 --> 01:00:51,880
Speaker 8: I don't want people to listen to this and then

1001
01:00:52,000 --> 01:00:55,120
Speaker 8: say forget it. I don't trust anybody, and I'll never

1002
01:00:55,200 --> 01:00:58,000
Speaker 8: have a relationship again, and I never want to be in.

1003
01:00:57,960 --> 01:01:01,320
Speaker 2: A group again. No, they're ethical groups and I can

1004
01:01:01,760 --> 01:01:05,440
Speaker 2: hold up. I think you may remember my influence, continuum

1005
01:01:05,480 --> 01:01:10,320
Speaker 2: of ethical and unethical influence. People need to be able

1006
01:01:10,400 --> 01:01:15,640
Speaker 2: to really understand what's happening, who's doing it, what are

1007
01:01:15,680 --> 01:01:19,480
Speaker 2: their credentials, and how to protect themselves and so.

1008
01:01:20,240 --> 01:01:24,800
Speaker 3: In conclusion, we should just like try to stay connected

1009
01:01:24,840 --> 01:01:27,360
Speaker 3: to people who seem to be kind of falling into

1010
01:01:27,400 --> 01:01:30,360
Speaker 3: the dark side, because it's the relationship with them that

1011
01:01:30,400 --> 01:01:32,840
Speaker 3: could potentially be their lifeline.

1012
01:01:32,920 --> 01:01:35,840
Speaker 2: Right and say, hey, you're my friend or I've known

1013
01:01:35,880 --> 01:01:38,600
Speaker 2: you your whole life. Let's be friends no matter what

1014
01:01:39,360 --> 01:01:43,520
Speaker 2: you know, I care about you. Or to share a

1015
01:01:43,640 --> 01:01:46,360
Speaker 2: video that you may come across where you were together

1016
01:01:46,520 --> 01:01:50,560
Speaker 2: playing soccer, you know, twenty years ago or whatever. Stay

1017
01:01:50,600 --> 01:01:56,200
Speaker 2: in common grounds where their authentic self can relate to you. Right,

1018
01:01:56,360 --> 01:02:00,920
Speaker 2: and take this humble posture of you know what, I

1019
01:02:00,960 --> 01:02:06,360
Speaker 2: don't know everything. I'm open to learning. How about you?

1020
01:02:08,000 --> 01:02:11,440
Speaker 2: Are you open to learning? Let's seek out what's real,

1021
01:02:11,560 --> 01:02:16,240
Speaker 2: because if something is legitimate, it will stand up to scrutiny.

1022
01:02:16,440 --> 01:02:18,720
Speaker 2: Here's one more important thing that I say in my

1023
01:02:18,880 --> 01:02:23,200
Speaker 2: counselings with people and cults is that when somebody or

1024
01:02:23,240 --> 01:02:27,040
Speaker 2: some group makes an outrageous claim, the burden of proof

1025
01:02:27,120 --> 01:02:29,720
Speaker 2: is on them to prove it, not on us to

1026
01:02:29,840 --> 01:02:34,480
Speaker 2: disprove it. So if Hubbard says that Xenu was a

1027
01:02:34,520 --> 01:02:38,320
Speaker 2: galactic dictator who seventy five million years ago flew to

1028
01:02:38,400 --> 01:02:43,200
Speaker 2: the Planetigiak, dropped millions of beings into volcanoes and detonated

1029
01:02:43,240 --> 01:02:47,120
Speaker 2: a hydrogen bomb, and all these aliens are now invisibly

1030
01:02:47,160 --> 01:02:50,600
Speaker 2: attached to our bodies, and that's why we need scientology.

1031
01:02:51,640 --> 01:02:55,600
Speaker 2: I say, wow, what an amazing sci fi story. And

1032
01:02:55,680 --> 01:03:00,640
Speaker 2: Hubbard was a science fiction writer. What's your evidence? And

1033
01:03:00,680 --> 01:03:04,400
Speaker 2: again it's about us who've exited saying to the hey,

1034
01:03:05,680 --> 01:03:08,680
Speaker 2: I'm out. Life's good, you know, come and join us.

1035
01:03:08,760 --> 01:03:12,080
Speaker 2: You know, life in a cult sucks, It really does.

1036
01:03:12,320 --> 01:03:16,440
Speaker 2: Cults don't produce what they promise. They have the beautiful

1037
01:03:16,520 --> 01:03:20,160
Speaker 2: idyllic you know, oh you're going to be saved, You're

1038
01:03:20,160 --> 01:03:23,280
Speaker 2: going to heaven. It's like, oh, this group in ten

1039
01:03:23,360 --> 01:03:27,080
Speaker 2: thousand other groups that are promising heaven, Right, which one

1040
01:03:27,080 --> 01:03:32,560
Speaker 2: should I choose? How come you think Jirhovah's Witnesses are

1041
01:03:32,600 --> 01:03:35,440
Speaker 2: a cult or the Mormons are a cult. Let's talk

1042
01:03:35,520 --> 01:03:38,320
Speaker 2: about it. Because I have a friend who's a Mormon

1043
01:03:38,400 --> 01:03:42,280
Speaker 2: and they want me to join their church there JW

1044
01:03:42,360 --> 01:03:45,720
Speaker 2: and they want me to join there. Help me out here.

1045
01:03:46,720 --> 01:03:50,320
Speaker 2: I want to end by just saying, while we hope

1046
01:03:50,440 --> 01:03:54,560
Speaker 2: Trump will be trounced in the election, there's going to

1047
01:03:54,600 --> 01:03:57,160
Speaker 2: be millions of people who are still in the belief

1048
01:03:57,280 --> 01:04:01,920
Speaker 2: system and reading the book, we'll give you the basic

1049
01:04:02,680 --> 01:04:07,880
Speaker 2: education and information I think to really protect yourself, but

1050
01:04:08,000 --> 01:04:13,120
Speaker 2: also know how to be good activists citizens and build

1051
01:04:13,160 --> 01:04:14,760
Speaker 2: a rebuild America.

1052
01:04:15,240 --> 01:04:18,480
Speaker 3: Right The Cult of Trump by Steve Hassen Go buy

1053
01:04:18,520 --> 01:04:22,160
Speaker 3: it now. Thank you, Thank you so much, Steve. It

1054
01:04:22,200 --> 01:04:23,520
Speaker 3: was great to talk to you again.

1055
01:04:23,680 --> 01:04:25,720
Speaker 2: Oh and I want to just say I got out

1056
01:04:25,880 --> 01:04:28,439
Speaker 2: hashtag I got out.

1057
01:04:28,760 --> 01:04:32,080
Speaker 1: All right. So Megan, do you want to tell us

1058
01:04:32,240 --> 01:04:34,880
Speaker 1: what would you join QAnon?

1059
01:04:35,480 --> 01:04:40,560
Speaker 4: Oh? No, no, no I wouldn't. But you know, if

1060
01:04:40,600 --> 01:04:43,840
Speaker 4: it was the opposite of everything that it is, maybe

1061
01:04:43,840 --> 01:04:48,320
Speaker 4: I could find myself getting sucked in. But no, I

1062
01:04:48,320 --> 01:04:48,720
Speaker 4: would not.

1063
01:04:49,080 --> 01:04:51,240
Speaker 3: No, it doesn't seem like a Megan kind of cult.

1064
01:04:51,520 --> 01:04:55,960
Speaker 3: No need more more nudity, more forest, yeah, yeah, more.

1065
01:04:55,880 --> 01:04:59,600
Speaker 4: Drugs for sure. Just this is opposite of everything that

1066
01:04:59,680 --> 01:04:59,920
Speaker 4: I like.

1067
01:05:00,280 --> 01:05:04,200
Speaker 3: All right, well, you can find me on Instagram at

1068
01:05:04,400 --> 01:05:06,840
Speaker 3: Ula Lola oh o h l A l O.

1069
01:05:07,040 --> 01:05:09,840
Speaker 4: L A, and you can find me Vibe Hire bitch.

1070
01:05:10,240 --> 01:05:13,840
Speaker 4: So remember to follow your gut, watch out for red flags,

1071
01:05:14,120 --> 01:05:16,440
Speaker 4: and never ever trust me,