Replies to post #262752 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[BOREALIS]

Dangerous Cult Leaders
Dangerous Traits of Cult Leaders

Spycatcher Aug 25, 2012
Joe Navarro M.A.

One of the questions that I am often asked by students of criminology and psychology is how do you know when a cult leader is “evil” or “bad”? These of course are vague descriptors to some extent but I get the question, “When is a cult leader pathological or, better said, a danger to others?” This is a valid question in view of the historical record of suffering and hurt caused by various cult leaders around the world.

I am sure others have addressed this issue before and I realize that it comes with its own minefield as many religions started out as cults - I am simply not going to enter that fray. But the question is valid from the point of view that there are people out there who are cult leaders and who do great harm to others emotionally, psychologically, spiritually, physically, or financially.

From my studies of cults and cult leaders during my time in the FBI, I learned early on that there are some things to look for that, at a minimum, say caution, this individual is dangerous, and in all likelihood will cause harm to others.

Having studied at length the life, teachings, and behaviors of Jim Jones (Jonestown Guyana), David Koresh (Branch Davidians), Stewart Traill (The Church of Bible Understanding), Charles Manson, Shoko Asahara (Aum Shinrikyo), Joseph Di Mambro (The Order of the Solar Temple aka Ordre du Temple Solaire), Marshall Heff Applewhit (Heaven’s Gate), Bhagwan Rajneesh (Rajneesh Movement), and Warren Jeffs (polygamist leader), what stands out about these individuals is that they were or are all pathologically narcissistic. They all have or had an over-abundant belief that they were special, that they and they alone had the answers to problems, and that they had to be revered. They demanded perfect loyalty from followers, they overvalued themselves and devalued those around them, they were intolerant of criticism, and above all they did not like being questioned or challenged. And yet, in spite of these less than charming traits, they had no trouble attracting those who were willing to overlook these features.

These personality traits [ https://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/personality ] stand out as the first warning to those who would associate with them, but there are many others. Here is a collection of traits that I have collected over the years about cult leaders that give us hints as to their psychopathology. This list is not all-inclusive nor is it the final word on the subject; it is merely my personal collection based on my studies and interviews that I conducted in my previous career.
If you know of a cult leader who has many of these traits there is a high probability that they are hurting those around them emotionally, psychologically, physically, spiritually, or financially. And of course this does not take into account the hurt that their loved ones will also experience.

Here are the typical traits of the pathological cult leader (from Dangerous Personalities) you should watch for and which shout caution, get away, run, or avoid if possible: 

1. He has a grandiose idea of who he is and what he can achieve.
2. Is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, or brilliance.
3. Demands blind unquestioned obedience.
4. Requires excessive admiration from followers and outsiders.
5. Has a sense of entitlement - expecting to be treated special at all times.
6. Is exploitative of others by asking for their money or that of relatives putting others at financial risk.
7. Is arrogant and haughty in his behavior or attitude.
8. Has an exaggerated sense of power (entitlement) that allows him to bend rules and break laws.
9. Takes sexual advantage of members of his sect or cult.
10. Sex is a requirement with adults and sub adults as part of a ritual or rite.
11. Is hypersensitive to how he is seen or perceived by others. 
12. Publicly devalues others as being inferior, incapable, or not worthy.
13. Makes members confess their sins or faults publicly subjecting them to ridicule or humiliation while revealing exploitable weaknesses of the penitent.
14. Has ignored the needs of others, including: biological, physical, emotional, and financial needs.
15. Is frequently boastful of accomplishments.
16. Needs to be the center of attention and does things to distract others to insure that he or she is being noticed by arriving late, using exotic clothing, overdramatic speech, or by making theatrical entrances.
17. Has insisted in always having the best of anything (house, car, jewelry, clothes) even when others are relegated to lesser facilities, amenities, or clothing.
18. Doesn’t seem to listen well to needs of others, communication is usually one-way in the form of dictates.
19. Haughtiness, grandiosity, and the need to be controlling is part of his personality.
20. Behaves as though people are objects to be used, manipulated or exploited for personal gain.
21. When criticized he tends to lash out not just with anger but with rage.
22. Anyone who criticizes or questions him is called an “enemy.”
23. Refers to non-members or non-believers in him as “the enemy.”
24. Acts imperious at times, not wishing to know what others think or desire.
25. Believes himself to be omnipotent.
26. Has “magical” answers or solutions to problems.
27. Is superficially charming.
28. Habitually puts down others as inferior and only he is superior.
29. Has a certain coldness or aloofness about him that makes others worry about who this person really is and or whether they really know him.
30. Is deeply offended when there are perceived signs of boredom, being ignored or of being slighted.
31. Treats others with contempt and arrogance.
32. Is constantly assessing for those who are a threat or those who revere him.
33. The word “I” dominates his conversations. He is oblivious to how often he references himself.
34. Hates to be embarrassed or fail publicly - when he does he acts out with rage.
35. Doesn’t seem to feel guilty for anything he has done wrong nor does he apologize for his actions.
36. Believes he possesses the answers and solutions to world problems.
37. Believes himself to be a deity or a chosen representative of a deity.
38. Rigid, unbending, or insensitive describes how this person thinks.
39. Tries to control others in what they do, read, view, or think.
40. Has isolated members of his sect from contact with family or outside world.
41. Monitors and or restricts contact with family or outsiders.
42. Works the least but demands the most.
43. Has stated that he is “destined for greatness” or that he will be “martyred.”
44. Seems to be highly dependent of tribute and adoration and will often fish for compliments.
45. Uses enforcers or sycophants to insure compliance from members or believers.
46. Sees self as “unstoppable” perhaps has even said so.
47. Conceals background or family which would disclose how plain or ordinary he is.
48. Doesn’t think there is anything wrong with himself – in fact sees himself as perfection or “blessed.”
49. Has taken away the freedom to leave, to travel, to pursue life, and liberty of followers.
50. Has isolated the group physically (moved to a remote area) so as to not be observed.

             When the question is asked, “When do we know when a cult leader is bad, or evil, or toxic?” this is the list that I use to survey the cult leader for dangerous traits. Of course the only way to know anything for sure is to observe and validate, but these characteristics can go a long way to help with that. And as I have said, there are other things to look for and there may be other lists, but this is the one that I found most useful from studying these groups and talking to former members of cults.
           
When a cult or organizational leader has a preponderance of these traits then we can anticipate that at some point those who associate with him will likely suffer physically, emotionally, psychologically, or financially. If these traits sound familiar to leaders, groups, sects, or organizations known to you then expect those who associate with them to live in despair and to suffer even if they don’t know it, yet.

Joe Navarro, M.A. is 25 year veteran of the FBI and is the author of What Every Body is Saying, as well as Dangerous Personalities. For additional information and a free bibliography please contact him through www.jnforensics.com or follow on twitter: @navarrotells or on Facebook.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/spycatcher/201208/dangerous-cult-leaders

==================


What a Top FBI Profiler Taught Me About Extreme Narcissists Like Donald Trump
“Flawed individuals will victimize you."

By Joe Romm / AlterNet
December 7, 2016

The Cult of Donald Trump?

I came across a 2012 article for Psychology Today Navarro wrote listing “the typical traits of the pathological cult leader… you should watch for and which shout caution, get away, run, or avoid if possible.”

I recently spoke with former FBI agent Joe Navarro about Donald Trump. Navarro was one of the FBI’s top profilers, a founding member of their elite Behavioral Analysis Unit, and author of several books on human behavior, including Dangerous Personalities: An FBI Profiler Shows You How to Identify and Protect Yourself from Harmful People.

To be clear, at no time did Navarro diagnose Trump as having a narcissistic or predator personality. He says we should leave formal diagnoses to professionals?—?but that each of us still needs to be able to identify and protect ourselves from harmful people in our lives. And so he created behavior checklists and published them in his book to let you do just that.

Navarro’s book warns that if a “person has a preponderance of the major features of a narcissistic personality,” then he “is an emotional, psychological, financial, or physical danger to you or others.” As the book The Narcissism Epidemic explained, “A recent psychiatric study found that the biggest consequences of narcissism—especially when other psychiatric symptoms were held constant—was suffering by people close to them.”

It’s even more important for journalists to decide if Trump behaves like a narcissist—as James Fallows explains in his must-read post at The Atlantic, “How to Deal With the Lies of Donald Trump: Guidelines for the Media.” Fallows cites a reader’s note to him “on how journalism should prepare for Trump, especially in thinking about his nonstop string of lies.”

[...]

The Cult of Donald Trump?

I came across a 2012 article for Psychology Today [ https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/spycatcher/201208/dangerous-cult-leaders ] Navarro wrote listing “the typical traits of the pathological cult leader… you should watch for and which shout caution, get away, run, or avoid if possible.”

[...]

http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/what-top-fbi-profiler-taught-me-about-extreme-narcissists-donald-trump

[BOREALIS]

How 2016 is turning into George Orwell's '1984'

By Sher Watts Spooner
Sunday Dec 11, 2016 · 6:40 PM CST


A scene from the 1956 film version of '1984.' Post-truth, anyone?

No one would ever argue that the election of Donald Trump equals the dystopian result in George Orwell’s 1984. But there sure are a lot of frightening similarities.

For those who haven’t read the 1949 book or seen a movie version since high school or college (or if you missed it completely), the story is set in a bombed-out world divided into three superstates after a global war. The story’s protagonist, Winston Smith, lives in Airstrip One (what used to be Great Britain) in Oceania, England having been swallowed up by North America. He’s in the middle tier of citizenry, a member of the “Outer Party” (the elite top two percent make up the “Inner Party,” and the other 85 percent, the workers, or “Proles,” are the vast uneducated masses). Winston has a bureaucratic job altering and rewriting history to fit the Party’s narrative as part of the Ministry of Truth—basically the propaganda department.

Orwell wrote the book after World War II in response to the Cold War and the idea of a totalitarian state. 1984 came after Animal Farm, his definitive fictional work on Communism. But 1984 and its ideas grew in popular culture so that its references have become commonplace.

So many phrases and ideas from the story are now a part of our everyday language. Even those who haven’t read the book know that “Big Brother is watching you” refers to an authoritarian government, like the omnipresent telescreens in public places and in the homes of every Party member. We recognize terms like “thought police” and “doublespeak” from context without realizing their origins. When we forget something, it goes down the “memory hole,” to be lost forever, just like the papers Winston Smith uses to rewrite history or the people who are vaporized into non-persons. If anything goes down the hole, it never existed. From the novel:

“Who controls the past,” ran the Party slogan, “controls the future: who controls the present controls the past. And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. “Reality control,” they called it: in Newspeak, “doublethink.”

Language from 1984 also resonated in the 2016 election. The fake news, euphemisms, lies, and “post-truth” we experienced from President-elect Donald Trump and his campaign surrogates, the false planted stories in social media from Russian agents or wherever all bring to mind the “Newspeak” used in the novel. The national media’s normalization of terms and ideas from the Trump campaign only further blurred the truth, and we’re left with a country picking and choosing “post-truth” facts and believing outright lies.

Welcome to Donald Trump’s America.

Words in 1984 often mean the opposite of what they appear to mean. The Ministry of Love is the home of the authoritarian law and order arm of the Party. The Ministry of Plenty is in charge of rationing. The Ministry of Peace orchestrates the ever-present war. Words also get shortened to dilute their meaning: Using a phrase like “Minitru” for the Ministry of Truth doesn’t create the full negative connotation of the definition, in the same way that “alt-right” is a way of neutralizing and declawing the terms white supremacist or white nationalist.

When Trump uses projection to criticize an opponent, whether it was a fellow Republican, Hillary Clinton, the media, or anyone or anything on the receiving end of his tweets and bombastic tirades, he is transferring his own shortcomings to them: they are at fault, not him; they are guilty, not him. This is his version of Newspeak.

And his voters believe him, just as the citizens believe the Party in 1984. From the novel:

Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten.

A look at some of the ways George Orwell’s ‘1984’ has come true today
A story from The New York Daily News gives several examples of parallels between 1984 and the Trump campaign.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/ways-george-orwell-1984-true-article-1.2662813

Doublethink is an inherently contradictory part of Newspeak and 1984 Party politics. According to the novel, doublethink is, "To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it."

In other words, it's pretty much the basis of Donald Trump's campaign.

The Proles — the lower-class people who make up the majority of Oceania's population — are largely ignored by the government. They don't face the same kind of indoctrination that the Inner and Outer Party members do and for the most part they're kept under control by rumors spread by the Thought Police and easy access to various vices.

"Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbours, films, football, beer, and above all, gambling, filled up the horizon of their minds," Orwell wrote. They're also placated with easy access to Party-produced porn and certain crimes — including prostitution, drug-dealing and racketeering — go pretty much unchecked in the prole portions of town. Basically, the idea is to keep the proles placated and distracted, so that they don't pay any attention to the political machinations moving the world around them.

Today, in a world where a naked Kardashian selfie can attract more attention than the State of the Union, it's not hard to see some parallels.

A commentary from WBUR, one of Boston’s public radio stations, [ http://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2016/02/24/make-oceania-great-again-julie-wittes-schlack ] during the Republican primaries now seems eerily prescient about Trump’s appeal and success. TV footage and recordings of Trump’s words and contradictory positions didn’t matter if he disowned them later, over and over again. A lie told one day could be denied the next day, over and over again.

As Orwell noted, “… if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”

Like all great demagogues before him, that’s a principle that Donald Trump understands and embraces. ...

Assert anything often enough and with enough vigor, Trump believes, and people will accept it. But he goes a step farther than his equally cynical brethren in this and past political races. Trump has intuited that by constantly repeating that he’s a winner, that people love him, that his poll numbers are better than anyone else’s, he can marginalize the non-believers. If the majority of people say that he is the best, then that is the de facto truth, just as in Orwell’s Oceania, if the party says 2+2=5 and enough citizens repeat it, the dissenter — the statistical outlier — is, by definition, insane. After all, in Oceania and presumably in TrumpWorld, “Sanity is statistical.”

There have been several movie and made-for-TV versions of this book. There were TV versions in 1953 (CBS) and in 1954 (BBC). The original film was in 1956 and featured Edmund O’Brien as Winston Smith.

This clip is from the 1984 version (yes, one was made in … 1984) featuring John Hurt as Winston Smith. This is from the daily “Two Minutes Hate” in which all Party members must participate in an exercise designed to harden them against the enemy. This enemy, Emmanuel Goldstein, supposedly the leader of the underground Brotherhood, is shown onscreen, his words drowned out by a crowd growing more and more agitated, crying, “Kill him!” and “Death!”

1984 (1/11) Movie CLIP - Two Minutes Hate (1984) HD
https://youtu.be/XvGmOZ5T6_Y

Really, how different is that from the chants of “Lock her up!” and “Hang the bitch!” from crowds at the Republican National Convention and at Trump rallies? How different is that from demands from Trump surrogates to execute Hillary Clinton? All for using a private email server?

There were so many lies told during the 18 months of this election—Politics USA reported that 91 percent of Trump’s utterances were false—that fact-checkers couldn’t keep up with him. Media played his words verbatim without any context, and those words have been accepted as gospel by true Trump believers. When people point out Trump’s lies now, TrumpleThinSkin reacts with a childish, insulting tweet. The truth-tellers are vilified and threatened. How long before one of Trump’s rabid supporters turns to violence?

When the president of a United Steelworkers local at the Indiana Carrier plant said on TV that Trump “lied his ass off” to Carrier workers about jobs, the union president began receiving threats. The recent example of “Pizzagate” had a would-be vigilante carrying an unlicensed AR-15 assault rifle into a Washington, D.C., pizza parlor to “self-investigate” a “child sex-trafficking ring” supposedly led by Hillary Clinton. The scenario is so ludicrous that it reads like a bad TV script, but the only reason tragedy was averted was that the loser gunman fired his rifle but didn’t hit anyone—the restaurant’s employees had fled in terror. Yet those conspiracy theories about the supposed sex ring were widely spread on social media before the election and were even retweeted by the man Trump chose to be his national security adviser.

“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind,” Orwell wrote.

Pure wind, with no substance. It’s going to be a long four years.

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/12/11/1608266/-How-2016-is-turning-into-George-Orwell-s-1984

[F6]

Huckabee Thinks His Cinco De Mayo Tweet Is Funny

Gov. Mike Huckabee
@GovMikeHuckabee
For Cinco de Mayo I will drink an entire jar of hot salsa and watch old Speedy Gonzales cartoons and speak Spanish all day. Happy CdMayo!
4:52 AM - 5 May 2017
[

For Cinco de Mayo I will drink an entire jar of hot salsa and watch old Speedy Gonzales cartoons and speak Spanish all day. Happy CdMayo!

— Ambassador Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) May 5, 2017

(with {over 8,000} comments)
05/05/2017
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/mike-huckabee-cinco-de-mayo_us_590ccd54e4b0104c734edd6e

---

(linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=131110508 and preceding and (upcoming) following

[fuagf]

Trump the Troll

"230 Things Donald Trump Has Said and Done That Make Him Unfit to Be Presiden"

By Rich Lowry

May 24, 2017

If President Donald Trump has acted as his own worst enemy in the Russia controversy, as everyone says, he’s been baited into it.

Rush Limbaugh a couple of weeks ago said he was laughing over Trump’s “epic troll” of the Democrats by firing FBI Director James Comey (and meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov the next day). It was really the other way around. Trump wasn’t the troller; he was the trollee.

An internet troll lobs bombshells to get a rise out of the other side, for his own enjoyment, or to get attention, or to make a point.

Limbaugh isn’t wrong to identify Trump with this species of provocation. In fact, it’s possible to see Trump’s entire campaign in 2016 as one long troll of respectable opinion. He routinely stoked the outrage and disgust of the media and the establishment in a way that boosted him in the eyes of his supporters. It’s no accident that among his most ardent admirers were fellow practitioners, like Ann Coulter and Milo Yiannopoulos.

Trump was a troll long before anyone had coined the term. He’s a natural at it — fearless, shameless, and a genius at identifying and exploiting the psychological and emotional weaknesses of others.

How did the hunter become the hunted in the Russian controversy? Trump’s critics stumbled on a couple of his greatest weaknesses — namely, an extreme sensitivity to slights over his status (in this case, as winner of last year’s election) and to negative media coverage.

It’s not as if the Democrats and the media consciously sought to drive Trump over the edge. Their obsession about Russia is genuine enough: in part, a reaction to legitimate questions about the hacking last year; in part, a way to vent shock and outrage over the outcome of the election. But their focus on Russia has, for all intents and purposes, been an inspired act of trolling.

The most successful trolls are those that elicit self-damning reactions. E.g., Bret Stephens writes his inaugural column for The New York Times mildly suggesting that the Left has become irrationally immune to challenges to its climate change orthodoxies, leading to calls from the Left for his immediate dismissal — for the offense of challenging its climate change orthodoxies. Case closed.

It’s hard to imagine Trump’s enemies scripting a better reaction from Trump to the Russia story than his ham-handed attempts to tamp it down. With a limited understanding of the workings of government and of Washington politics, Trump didn’t realize that an investigation in a highly charged political environment is like quicksand; the more you fight it, the deeper you sink. More press coverage. More witnesses to be called. Yet more investigation.

Trump has flailed his way all the way into the appointment of a special counsel and a press corps whipped up into a near-Watergate-level frenzy. Now, it doesn’t necessarily matter whether Trump’s campaign colluded with the Russians or not. If Democrats take the House with anything like a comfortable majority, they may well impeach him based on an obstruction case — i.e., all the things he did in reaction to the Russia story rather than the Russia story itself.

It’s possible that Trump’s campaign actually had nefarious dealings with the Russians, and Trump is trying to cover it up. All this theory lacks at the moment is any real evidence that we’re aware of, despite one of the leakiest investigations known to man. For now, it looks as though Trump’s handling of the Russia story is his reaction to the inaugural crowd-size controversy last January writ large — a lashing out at a perceived insult that he believes diminishes him and his achievement. Foolish? Yes. Immature? Uh-huh. Criminal? No.

Regardless, there’s no unspooling the damage of the past few weeks. An administration never wants a special counsel investigation. The potential upside of the appointment of Robert Mueller, though, is that it will force a professionalization of the administration’s scandal management, and perhaps — although one doesn’t want to get too carried away — a muzzling of Trump on the controversy.

On the other hand, the calls for impeachment, the even more intense and negative (if that’s possible) media coverage, and Comey’s public testimony may elicit more damaging eruptions by Trump in a spiral downward. It may be that the trolling has just begun.

Rich Lowry is editor of National Review and a contributing editor with Politico Magazine.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/05/24/trump-the-troll-215188

See also:

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https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=131639876

Advertisers Pull Ads From Sean Hannity’s Fox News Show
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=131641552

dropdeadfred -- well, for one, that it's not the least bit surprising to see you and
your Christo-fascist fellow travelers still grinningly gobbling down moldy shit in public
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=131639057

With Gift and in Conversation, Vatican Presses Trump on Climate Change
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=131644350

I get it... You're a traitor and a bootlicker
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=131611816