It is difficult to convince a person who is in a cult that they are in one. But there are telltale signs that a person can notice if they know to look for them.
One such sign involves how cults use language. If the language your group employs is designed to stir up a strong emotional reaction, and shut down critical thinking, then you’re likely in a cult.
We all like comical examples. You probably remember Jamaal Bowman, the Democrat representative who pulled a fire alarm, disrupting a house vote in progress, then said he thought that that was how one opened a door.
He’s been in damage control since, but his team has managed to find a solution to keep the heat off him: by calling Republicans Nazis:
What Jamaal didn’t count on was for this brilliant plan to leak out. So being ever the diplomat, he took the opportunity to take the moral high ground, throwing his own strategists under the bus:
Which may seem like he’s making himself out as being above such abuse of language, until you consider that a significant portion of his constituents are sincere in their beliefs that their political rivals are not legitimate, but instead, actual Nazis.
The left has been trying for years to connect the right to the National Socialist German Workers Party, with no consideration for the sincerely held ideological beliefs of either the right or the Nazis, or for the left’s own alliance of convenience with actual Nazis in the Ukraine.
On the surface, it seems damnably idiotic. However, it does succeed in fooling the intellectually deficient among us. And, as it so happens, the intellectually deficient have votes that count just as much as the votes of those of us who can tie our shoes without getting distracted into furious masturbation.
You see, the left knows how to abuse language. And one of the ways that cultish movements like the western political left abuses language is by using emotionally charged language that is designed to bypass better judgement, and get you to assume the worst of the people that they describe.
Such as when they wage frivolous accusations of sexual misconduct against those who get to be a bit too influential, in an effort to snipe their careers and cause a chilling effect that serves to dissuade anyone who might consider taking up their cause.
So, while damnable, their approach is not necessarily idiotic.
Amanda Montell, the author of Cultish: the Language of Fanaticism, made an interesting contrast between how language is used by scientists and how it’s used by cultists:
“My parents, they’re scientists and they will use jargon that I don’t understand. But that jargon is there to make communication clearer. Cultish language has these ulterior motives and it’s there to make communication hazier.
“It’s there to divide people, to shut down independent thinking.
“And that’s how you know that language is cultish, when it causes strong emotional response, but you yourself have trouble translating what it is that you’re saying.”
Amanda Montell
Those of us who are sufficiently well studied are aware of what composes the Nazi ideology, how central Socialism was to it, and how its theology is a smattering of German folklore and dialectic philosophy. If you were aware of these things, the left’s divisive abuse of accusations of Nazism is much less likely to have an effect on you.
When it comes down to it, the intended use of language is to communicate clearly and concisely. However, what cultists see in language is an instrument of control. And to this end, they’ll craft mantras and load words so when they use them they’ll have the desired effect, regardless of their original definitions. A cultist may have the same vocabulary, but they don’t have the same dictionary.
Knowing this, do you think you’re in a better position to recognize a cult?
Magnetricity 
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