The Cult Of Shock And Awful
I think I’ll drink the Kool-Aid once again. — Post Malone
I’m uniquely positioned to evaluate cults. I did a stretch in a real one then upgraded to a pretend cult. But there are cults and there are CULTS. For instance, the cult of Apple isn’t a real cult like Scientology because it’s cheaper to buy into and relatively harmless. It is, however, an entry level enchantment like Keto evangelism, blockchain zealotry, or obsessive wellness (pace Gwyneth). Moving up the ladder a step or ten you run into proper cults like congregants of the short-eyes Warren Jeffs, followers of yoga poseur Baba Ramdev, or the Westboro homophobes for Jesus. Normally I don’t contemplate cult life but recently the Way brothers six-part documentary Wild Wild Country jolted me. If you’re interested in film, watch it; if you’re interested in American history, watch it; and if you’re interested in cults, definitely watch it.
Wild Wild Country catalogues an episode in the life of the Rajneesh cult as it swoops into a small town in Oregon (takes it over), then executed a series of ambitious projects, including attempted murder and bio-terrorism. Rajneesh (later rebranded Osho) was an Indian godman with an American hustle. He marketed his path to enlightenment as the reconciliation of hedonism and spirituality. At his height, Rajneesh had five hundred thousand followers. His lawyer - Swami Prem Niren - claims that Rajneesh has even more followers today. Anything is possible. His hundred book titles on Amazon continue to sell briskly, albeit under the moniker Osho. His former name was devalued by multiple crimes and deportation from the United States.
Watching Wild Wild Country I had the same reaction many others did. How could these people not have known they were in a cult? It seemed so obvious. Otherwise sincere and idealistic seekers were duped into beliefs foreign to rational people. But that was part of the plan. A sign at the original Rajneesh meditation hall in Pune, India, read: Leave Your Shoes And Minds At The Door. I imagined a jumble of sandals outside the meditation hall’s entrance casting a shadow on as many empty heads inside. During my own days in a religious cult I remember many of my friends being glazed over, very sweet, and also very out of it. Anger was virtually unheard of. The worst that could be said of the community was that it was gossipy. It was common for followers to snitch on one another for petty transgressions often resulting in expulsion. In my case none of this held because I left with the belief that this particular path — even though there were benefits from meditation and healthy living — was not for me.
The cults of the New Age movement emerged from the sixties against the backdrop of the civil rights movement, Vietnam, feminism, and the dawn of the digital age. Institutions of every kind were losing credibility and society was coming unglued. The promise that Rajneesh — and every other guru — made was they could offer salvation. Follow my path and you can escape this chaos. Who wouldn’t want to be happy and free? I have to admit that I got sucked in; so did a lot of people. We were young and idealistic, and there was community. All of a sudden we fit in and believed that we weren’t the crazy ones. They were. They being everyone who wasn’t us or who criticized what we were doing. At first it was a wonderful feeling. Then cracks started to appear. Questions were encouraged but absolutely none that challenged the guru’s infallibility. I never achieved the fawning obeisance required to ascend to the inner circle.
As I compared my own experience with the Rajneeshis I got a feeling of déjà vu. Where had I recently seen this? There are still religious cults but I was getting a different sense. It seemed like there was a rising tide of fanaticism; echo chambers of belief where dissenting voices were locked out. Then it hit me: 9/11 truthers, anti-vaxxers, and birthirism, to name a few. The internet — and social media in particular — had spawned new forms of rigid belief that appeared cultish. This trend was first explored by Erik Davis in his book, TechGnosis. He noted that, “… the digital imaginary is chock-full of images drawn from the depths of myth, cult, and popular religion.” And like the New Age movement that had been shaped by the massive change of the sixties, this current iteration had likewise been pounded with social upheaval. One big difference, however: This is not the age of peace and transcendence. It’s the epoch of anger and resentment, and it’s a big deal with the American right.
Fanatics can’t agree on what constitutes a fact. Independent, trusted sources no longer exist for them driving online cults to embrace epistemology bias. Even traditional conservatives are being tainted with more far reaching — and loaded — content in their search queries. They design their worldview from a palette of supporting opinions comparable to selecting complimentary colours. Everything else clashes. And from inside these echo chambers, every attempt is made to discredit opposing opinions and to isolate believers from outside sources. The American right is particularly adept at incubating online cults, as outside the box as Rajneesh, and as potentially dangerous as the suicide preacher, Jim Jones.
Everything goes back to the sixties. It was the birth of the computing era and when the Left dramatically shifted gears. It pivoted from the reformist left (of economics and class struggle) to the cultural left (of critical theory and identity politics). This shift was observed in 1995 by Richard Rorty in his masterful, Achieving Our Country, but was noticed ten years earlier by another master of a kind, Lee Atwater. He was a Republican strategist who knew how to play on peoples’ fears. Atwater was grateful to Democrats for giving him wedge issues he exploited, especially heartland resentment. As a Southerner, he knew first hand what it was like to be unheard and suffer condescension from the coastal establishment. Race and patriotism were other Atwater favourites, just as they are for today’s angry online mobs.
Once Roger Stone — the reigning prince of dirty tricks — took a bollocking from Atwater for being “too much of a pussy”. He was afraid to go to the same lengths as Atwater on race campaigning. As a reward for winning the presidency for Bush, Sr. in 1988, he was appointed Chairman of the Republican National Committee. Atwater, in spite of being a brutal campaigner, had incredible panache. He was a star-quality showman and released a fine blues album the year before his death. It featured his signature song, Bad Boy. Atwater reinvented the GOP in his own image. It was no longer the party of establishment conservatives. It became the party of red-meat Republicans attacking the left for every perceived slight, from lack of patriotism to wanting to turn America into a socialist state. They also had no problem with lying, something Atwater used to giggle about. Had he not passed away in 1991 who knows what other mischief Atwater might have gotten up to. But we do know that same year the World Wide Web went public, and the anger that Atwater had channeled was becoming unmanageable.
By the time that social media sites started taking off in the late nineties, online anger was approaching fever pitch. Today it’s a virus. Some media scholars speculate that happiness is an emotion more easily shared with those whom we are closest, whilst anger is more easily bonded with strangers. It’s been said more than once that angry people click. There is an undeniable strain of the extreme right that has taken to social media like brownshirts to the night. The new belief systems in the digital age couldn’t have been more different from their New Age antecedants: anger is the new love; notifications are the new call to prayer; and white privilege is the new salvation.
As Rorty predicted, “One thing that is very likely to happen is that the gains made in the past forty years by black and brown Americans, and by homosexuals, will be wiped out. Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion. The words ‘n****r’ and ‘k*ke’ [pejoratives redacted] will once again be heard in the workplace. All the sadism which the academic Left has tried to make unacceptable to its students will come flooding back. All the resentment which badly educated Americans feel about having their manners dictated to them by college graduates will find an outlet.”
Just as Lee Atwater remade the GOP in his image, Donald Trump has remade it in his. The oddly-coiffed fraud is a master of manufacturing controversy. Every word out of Trump’s mouth is a lie, including the pauses, shrugs and grimaces. Whilst many Republicans hold their nose and look the other way, Trump’s most ardent supporters have bought these fabrications wholesale. They’re not only angry, they’re also not the brightest lights on the porch. We assume that the so-called fake news phenomenon is spread by political partisans. But it’s primarily people with low cognitive abilities who compound the conspiracies. It’s like watching a dumpster fire at the jackass factory. These people are a reflection of Trump himself and share a level of narcissism that is humorless and unrelenting in its anger.
We all know what happens with online anger when it spills into the streets. Charlottesville was a tragic example. I sometimes wonder what Lee Atwater would have made of the awful cult he spawned. We do know that he had a come to Jesus moment as a he reckoned with his impending death. Numerous apologies were made. But this had little impact on his disciples who continue his brand of repine Republicanism. Anger is a horrible and potent motivating force online, and how it will continue to manifest itself moving forward is anyone’s guess. But there is one thing I know about cults from my own experience. More people remain than leave.
