Just One Slice
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The title makes the point:
"To Understand Pizzagate, It Helps to Understand Cults"↱
The same dynamics are at play regardless of the specific ideology in question. "Both politics and religion seem to have similar effects," said Nathaniel Wade, a psychologist at Iowa State who studies religion and spirituality. "They induce strong passions. They are often framed as 'us against them' (which, by the way, such thinking patterns have a series of psychological correlates that are mostly not healthy). They attempt to solve basic problems in living. They occur in groups that often reinforce those beliefs and shelter against alternate views."
So how much of this applies to Welch and other true believers in Pizzagate and other conspiracy theories? There certainly appear to be similarities. "In many ways what makes fake news possible are the same things that make people believe (and act) in ways that many people think is downright ridiculous," said Wade.
All this becomes clearer when you understand that Pizzagate sits in a wider ecosystem of beliefs and conspiracies propagated by the alt-right. Key to all these beliefs and conspiracies is mistrust in the Establishment. The media are lying to you, politicians are lying you, and it takes brave truth-sayers―Alex Jones or Mike Cernovich or whoever―to tell it to you how it is. The media and political elites are just so corrupt you can't believe anything they say.
Imagine what it must be like to be a confused or frustrated or identity-lacking young person who stumbles upon the alt-right and its ideas about how the world works. Those ideas offer a lot of clarity. They offer, through social media, at least something of a sense of social identity, and no shortage of culprits―elites and feminists and minorities and globalists and (in some corners of the alt-right) Jews―to explain why you have been held down and prevented from leading a meaningful or successful life. And the alt-right, by dint of its operating theory about the corruptness of the Establishment, has a built-in mechanism to slowly cut you off from traditional news sources. What's going to happen if you post a Washington Post article debunking the latest conspiracy theory? "It's the Post―they're lying."
But it's the alt-right concept of so-called red-pilling where this subculture appears more similar to "traditional" cults and extremist groups. Adapted from The Matrix, "taking the red pill" or "getting red-pilled" simply means seeing the world as it really is. In the online subcultures that gave rise to the alt-right, its most famous meaning is in reference to feminism: After you take the red pill, the scales fall from your eyes and you can see that feminism is really just an attempt to emasculate and bully men, to allow social-justice warriors to run rampant over masculine (and traditional) values and ideals in favor of a shrill and judgmental far-left radicalism. Recently, the definition has expanded a bit2015 these days, in an alt-right context "getting red-pilled" probably means something more like "understanding that progressivism is a lie and part of a large-scale effort to hurt you and people like you." But the basic point is the same: This is the moment at which you start to see things as they really are.
This is exactly the sort of transformative experience offered by cults and extremist movements: After this, things won't ever be the same for you. After this, you will have a role to play in an important battle that will determine the fate of the world. Your life will take on an enhanced meaning. Whether or not Welch explicitly thought he had been "red-pilled," Goldman says that "what's really interesting is he fits [extant ideas about radicalization] perfectly, because what he felt was 'this is a turning point in my life and I have to do something.'" Reading the text messages Welch sent to a friend that were released as part of the criminal complaint against him, as reported by the Daily Beast, it's hard to disagree with Goldman's assessment. Welch wrote that he was planning on "Raiding a pedo ring, possibly sacraficing [sic] the lives of a few for the lives of many. Standing up against a corrupt system that kidnaps, tortures and rapes babies and children in our own backyard … defending the next generation of kids, our kids, from ever having to experience this kind of evil themselves[.]" It was clear he saw himself in somewhat heroic terms: "I'm sorry bro, but I'm tired of turning the channel and hoping someone does something and being thankful it's not my family. One day it will be our families. The world is too afraid to act and I'm too stubborn not to[.]"
It also occurs to me that
The Matrix is well on its way to a seat in a special pantheon of a Strange American Mythos, right alongside the work of Ayn Rand.
Nonetheless, it might be more important to note that despite our years of occasionally breaking out the phrase, "American Taliban", as a pejorative against certain American conservatives, we might actually be witnessing the inchoate stirrings of actual American radicalization.
These years later, I still get a creepy feeling about the Poplawski shooting, when a man gunned down police in an ambush after getting in a dispute with his mother but what was really bothering him was how President Obama stole his job, apparently well before ever becoming president. In the sense that it is emblematic for me, it is true that I could not have predicted the bloodbath we've seen in these United States since.
Edgar Maddison Welch↑ doesn't feel quite the same. True, he's a more violent tool than his NYT interview article would suggest. Still, if American insurrectionism is becoming a cult unto itself, the Welch incident could eventually stand out in a similar context.
And that's the thing. There's the bit with Trump supporters
picking weird fights↱ with people by announcing that they are being discriminated against for being Trump supporters. It seems really, really weird to the witnesses because the first sign that one is a Trump supporter anyone has is apparently when they complain of discrimination. Unfortunately, trying to figure it out only makes these people sound downright paranoid; their complaint works if we all are in on it, you know, like, we know they're Trump supporters and are out to get them before they ever say anything about it.
Cultism starts to seem an obvious question. Then again, we
are trying to describe the larger phenomenon as somehow
populist; personality cult suffices.
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Notes:
Singal, Jesse. "To Understand Pizzagate, It Helps to Understand Cults". Science of Us. 14 December 2016. NYMag.com. 15 December 2016. http://sciof.us/2hwda8V