Serious question about Cults. Has there ever been one that in the end didn't ask it's followers to basically give up their lives to show their dedication to their cult leader? QAnon is absolutely a cult. It checks every box. And it is 100% about propping up a messiah figure. It was created probably as a joke by a Trump staffer to see if Trump would jump into it, and like clockwork he couldn't resist jumping at the ability to believe that he was a messiah figure to save the world. But when that cult leader has their backs to the wall, they always every time seem to ask their followers to go down even before they do. If Trump feels like his back is against the wall if he loses the election, I'm genuinely terrified of what he's going to ask his followers to do for him. I have people in my family who are Qanon cult followers. I don't think they are going to do something stupid like Oleander leaves but at this point this are so freaking nuts, who knows.
I've always been kind of morbidly fascinated and horrified by cults, ever since I learned about the Children of God (after I bought that album by the Swans, which I loved). Then, spending all this time in the SF Bay Area, you get exposed to a lot of stories. Here's a microcosm that is maybe informative: https://culteducation.com/group/123...ening-look-inside-marins-the-family-cult.html I list this one because I know someone, a dear friend, who when she was was younger and feeling kind of low and alone, was almost recruited into this very cult. I mention this because she's no dope. Graduate degree, scientist, very successful in the end... Luckily, she got the creeps in her first meeting with them and never looked back, but she described how welcoming and supportive the other women were at first and how they didn't even mention the leader and the strict rules. They were just sitting around together doing arts and crafts type stuff, and then the leader appeared, and my friend watched everything change in what felt like a strange way. But it does seem like all cults, at some point, ask you to completely ignore common sense and external input of any kind. The world outside the cult is poisoned. You can bring people in, save them, but leaving would be worse than death. One's own identity is usually suppressed and/or latched onto the identity of the leader. We're a social-brained species, so maybe this is just totally natural at some level. I don't pretend to know.
