Además de historias listas para vender, los medios también pueden producir guiones para formas más agresivas de control estatal.
Brainwashing
Beyond the Leader. 4. The Human Cost of Guilt by Association
Campaigns targeting “cults” for their leaders’ real or alleged wrongdoings cause massive unnecessary and innocent suffering.
Beyond the Leader. 2. The Legal Effects of Guilt by Association
In addition to ready-made stories for sale, the media can also produce scripts for more aggressive forms of state control.
Unification Church: Japan’s Dissolution Order and International Law. 4. Brainwashing Redux?
The High Court surreptitiously reintroduced the discredited and pseudoscientific theory of mind control.
“Brainwashing,” Steven Hassan, and the OneTaste Case. 2. The Prosecution of Nicole Daedone
The anti-cult movement needed a “legal precedent” to reintroduce the discredited idea that “cults” use “mental manipulation.”
“Brainwashing,” Steven Hassan, and the OneTaste Case. 1. Weaponizing Anti-Trafficking Laws
Anti-cultists persuaded prosecutors to reintroduce discredited mental manipulation theories by interpreting anti-prostitution and forced labor statutes.
France, Famille Missionnaire de Notre-Dame: When Ninety Percent Is Not Enough
Despite broad acquittals, the lone conviction for “psychological subjection” risks turning France’s justice system into an arbiter of acceptable spirituality.
The Tokyo High Court Unification Church Decision. 2. The Ghost of “Brainwashing”
A key theme of the decision is the discredited pseudo-scientific theory that “cults” victimize their members through “mental manipulation.”
Twisted TV: How a Documentary Bent the Facts Out of Shape. 4. Either “Victims” of “Brainwashed”
Not even one of the women “liberated” by the French police in 2023 admitted she was a “victim.” The Apple TV series ignored them.
The Truth, Please, About Steven Hassan. 4. The “Cult” of “Hassanology”
Leading anti-cultist Dr. Cathleen A. Mann expressed her doubts that Hassan was an “expert on cults” and indeed “an expert in anything,” except “Hassanology.”