Hail Obama! Ode of the Obama Youth!

Written By: ppadin on December 27, 2009 No Comment

Arthur Goldwag lists an exhaustive range of weird cults and strange societies each with their own perverted twist, sometimes simply involving sex and drugs, sometimes hate and genocide, in his newest book: Cults, Conspiracies and Secret Societies: the Straight Scoop on the Freemasons, the Illuminati, Skull & Bones, Black Helicopters, the New World Order, etc.

Fanatics throughout history, both recent and familiar as well as ancient and obscure, have banded together united by misguided mystical beliefs and down-right crazy notions. Their explanations for why seemingly random incidents are all interconnected, as described by Goldwag, become fascinating symptoms of paranoia and pathology. Strange theories about the inner workings of power politics and divine interventions proliferate around historic events like 911, J.F.K. and Pearl Harbor. We are sucked in by the gravity of world affairs and cosmic fate, and feel like pawns in some grand game.

Author says “It’s A Little Bit Scary Out There”

Propaganda, prophecy and messianic figures play havoc with the minds of those who fall into suicidal doomsday cults and homicidal missionary clans. Fanatics look for explanations in patterns of evil and societies of evil-doers, and then, all too often, they set out to rectify things with their own brand of self-righteous wrong-doing. From Branch Davidians to the followers of Charles Manson, crazies get hell-bent on a mission that makes little sense to anyone else. “What makes a cult cultish,” Goldwag explains, “ is not so much what it espouses, but how much authority its leaders grant themselves—and how slavishly devoted to them its followers are.”

Modern World Cultivates Cults

Ironically, the propensity to see conspiratorial patterns in everything is perpetuated by the World Wide Web where everything IS inter-connected “whether deliberately, by overt links, or serendipitously, by Google’s and other search engine’s algorithms.” Internet content, much of it designed to draw people to a cause by inflaming panic or by vilifying an enemy, is sometimes posted anonymously with little regard for factuality–and such trash never seems to disappear! This author is very judicious in his use of online resources but still cautions the reader not to believe everything they read.

Also ironic is how Goldwag himself capitalizes on our fascination for fanaticism while at the same time warning us against it. Funny, sometimes, with fanatics, how it takes one to know one. What isn’t so funny is that cultishness can be contagious. During moments of crisis–in our personal lives as well as locally or globally–we can quickly jump onto the nearest political or religious bandwagon if we have not previously inoculated ourselves from the contagion by reading books like Cults, Conspiracies and Secret Societies.