Again, Lifton defined a cult as having the following three characteristics:
1. A charismatic leader, who increasingly becomes an object of worship as the general principles that may have originally sustained the group lose power.Jacque Fresco birthday is a global holiday for Zeitgeist called ZDAY.
[
zdayglobal.org]
They have tshirts,mugs, and other items with the likeness of Jacque Fresco:
[
www.printfection.com]
They have created small idols that represent the likeness of jacque fresco:
[
thezeitgeistmovement.com]
2. A process [is in use] call[ed] coercive persuasion or thought reform.This is a repost from the main thread on this forum discussing TZM:
Destructive Cult Control
How can cults use communication to control people?
"One example is through "loading the language," a feature of thought reform, characterized by thought terminating cliches. Such cliches are easily memorized phrases and terms that essentially become communication shortcuts or "ultimate terms." This can have the effect of stopping critical thinking and independent analysis, essentially restricting and ultimately often constricting the mind." [
www.culteducation.com]
Here is a prime example of the founder of zeitgeist movement Peter Joseph creating a "thought terminating cliche":
Hey Everyone.
Please note that my response actually has nothing to do with the writer in question as he is really an abstraction within a larger context. [We all understand what it means to be a victim of culture and circumstance.] My expression here is contextual to "The Circus" which Sam is "on tour" with. I haven't read his new response nor will I as it is irrelevant here. My overall point is to encourage others to simply recognize this pattern of thought we are seeing grow.
In time, NBC, ABC or the like will be toting this same "cult" rhetoric or something very close to it. So, rather than be surprised by "The Circus" when it comes to town, please expect it/understand it and look at it as a form of entertainment.
For those who do not know what "The Circus" is, it has to do with blatantly derogatory rhetoric which, rather than addressing a governing principle of a RBE, which TZM and TVP are seeking to create awareness of and institute, it attacks angles which are irrelevant and/or out of context - propping them up as though they mean something - always avoiding the core positions presented by The Movement.
Tell-tale signs of The Circus are labels/contexts like "cult" "conspiracy theorist" "communist" "new world order" "Marxist" "satanist" "theosophist" "anti-freedom" "anti-semetic" "racist" and other blanket distinctions which are both ambiguous and culturally objectionable on average.
What you don't hear from The Circus is anything that is specific to the tenets of the work itself. Such as recognition of the problems we consider or the viability of the solutions we offer in a specific way. The Circus will not discuss the Debt Collapse which is not stopping and why. The Circus will not present the gross negligence of having a Market system based on unneeded/yet demanded Cyclical Consumption. The Circus will not consider the impediment of an Infinite Growth Economy and the dangerously wasteful/unsustainable nature of such a practice. The Circus doesn't seem to care that 1% of the world owns 40% of the planet's wealth and that a global Plutocracy is at hand as one child dies every 5 secs of starvation. The Circus will not evaluate the monetary driven psychosocial pressures which generate generation after generation of addiction, mental health issues, violence, familial deprivation and countless other issues.
The Circus doesn't care about Public Health or anything that has to do with social improvement. -Peter Joseph Merola [
www.thezeitgeistmovement.com]
Another loaded language phrase includes the classic Zeitgeist, "the movie is not the movement" thought terminating cliche. Basically, the members have been instructed to not consider any arguments about the namesake film of the movement, "Zeitgeist". Here is a member obviously drunk with indoctrination using this cliche in a youtube video:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVKKE8tu8p8]
How is "coercive persuasion" really different from normal persuasion?
Essentially, coercive persuasion relies largely upon thought reform techniques and may also utilize unreasonable fear to compel people to change. Through such a process many can be changed without their knowledge and/or informed consent. This is done in a rigid way that frequently precludes any meaningful exchange of ideas, is fairly one-sided and seems to have little respect for differences. Margaret Singer clinical psychologist and author of the book "Cults in Our Midst" made distinctions between various types of persuasion such as education, advertising, propaganda, indoctrination and thought reform. [
www.culteducation.com]
The fear tactics Zeitgeist uses is conspiracy. Basically, these people have been convinced that the economic end is near and the goal is to prepare for a violent introduction of a new peaceful unified global order Peter Merola calls "Perfection" and Jacque Fresco calls "Heaven on Earth". A example of fear tactic based propaganda as presented by Stacy McCain:
[
theothermccain.com]
What "unreasonable fears" do many cult members have?
These are fears often not based upon objective reality, such as bizarre conspiracy theories, baseless projections of an impending catastrophe, crisis and/or physical danger. [
www.culteducation.com]
How can cults control information?
Information is controlled in many cults by creating strict rules and/or guidelines regarding such things as books and outside reading, television, movies, radio, music and often even restricting associations with anyone who might express independent ideas, doubts or negative feelings about the group. The group and its leader(s) thus may become much like a filter, supposedly needed to help eliminate the "pollution", "poisons" and negativity of the outside world. [
www.culteducation.com]
The Zeitgeist forums for discussion is a heavily filtered and censored forum. People will get immediately banned and IP blocked for raising criticisms considered hostile to the movement ( On Jan 14th 2011 blocked and banned: [
forum.culteducation.com]). In some cases, complete threads will be erased, or in the case of the radio program used by zeitgeist, complete radio episodes will be removed. In addition, the common use of "thought terminating cliches" by the zeitgeist movement is the biggest form of information control.
Destructive Cult Recruitment
Are cults and other controversial groups deceptive when they recruit people?
Yes, they often are. They may employ deception in the recruitment process by using front organizational names and/or not clearly identifying themselves or their purpose. For example, a religious cult may not even initially advise potential recruits that it has a religious agenda. Groups with controversial leaders may withhold that information and also keep their more radical beliefs hidden or secret until they achieve more influence and compliance thorough their indoctrination process. [
www.culteducation.com]
When recruiting members, Zeitgeist does not share its conspiracy aspects and hides its disdain for God and Christianity as a whole. If confronted about the film, the members resort to the thought terminating cliche "THE MOVIES ARE NOT THE MOVEMENT". According to Peter Joseph, the growth of the Zeitgeist Movement is in fact due to the first film, "Zeitgeist". These members who do in fact agree with the conspiratorial and religious beliefs of the founder then use the Venus Project as a tool for recruiting. If you research Zeitgeist "activism" on youtube, you will find them spreading the "positive" outer layers (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RK3IpvahQqc) while completely avoiding the Zeitgeist Movement inner core beliefs of religion, spirituality, conspiracy, etc.
ZEITGEIST MEMBER ENGAGED IN DECEPTIVE RECRUITING:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfGHYW-aErM&feature=player_embedded]
Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism
The Demand for Purity
In the thought reform milieu, as in all situations of ideological totalism, the experiential world is sharply divided into the pure and the impure, into the absolutely good and the absolutely evil. The good and the pure are of course those ideas, feelings, and actions which are consistent with the totalist ideology and policy; anything else is apt to be relegated to the bad and the impure. Nothing human is immune from the flood of stern moral judgments. All "taints" and "poisons" which contribute to the existing state of impurity must be searched out and eliminated.
Thought reform bears witness to its more malignant consequences: for by defining and manipulating the criteria of purity, and then by conducting an all-out war upon impurity, the ideological totalists create a narrow world of guilt and shame. This is perpetuated by an ethos of continuous reform, a demand that one strive permanently and painfully for something which not only does not exist but is in fact alien to the human condition.
The individual thus comes to apply the same totalist polarization of good and evil to his judgments of his own character: he tends to imbue certain aspects of himself with excessive virtue, and condemn even more excessively other personal qualities - all according to their ideological standing. He must also look upon his impurities as originating from outside influences - that is, from the ever-threatening world beyond the closed, totalist ken. Therefore, one of his best way to relieve himself of some of his burden of guilt is to denounce, continuously and hostilely, these same outside influences. The more guilty he feels, the greater his hatred, and the more threatening they seem. In this manner, the universal psychological tendency toward "projection" is nourished and institutionalized, leading to mass hatreds, purges of heretics, and to political and religious holy wars. Moreover, once an individual person has experienced the totalist polarization of good and evil, he has great difficulty in regaining a more balanced inner sensitivity to the complexities of human morality. For these is no emotional bondage greater than that of the man whose entire guilt potential - neurotic and existential - has become the property of ideological totalists. [
www.culteducation.com]
The fundamental premise behind Peters Joseph motives is the "perfect" society and Jacque Frescos includes "heaven on earth". Typically, when confronted with the word "Utopia" however, Zeitgeist members tend to resort to the thought terminating cliche "not a utopia, just something better than we have now". An example of zeitgeist dividing the absolute good from the absolute evil includes a segment (audio was made exclusive only to members that downloaded the program from the official site; once the segment was exposed, the complete radio broadcast was removed) where Douglas Mallette represents "pure evil" as any organization that would target a food producing "facility", these people "need to die". This scenario was in anticipation of what Douglass Mallette thought was going to be a chance for the Venus project to create a test city in Africa with United nations funding in which Dougas Mallette would be in charge of said facility. Douglas Mallette went as far as speaking directly to the United Nations as a representative of the Venus Project. The Zeitgeist movement believes that everything in the world today is destructive, including families, laws, governments, currency, nations, cultures, states, languages, religions, god, the list goes on and on. Everything is destructive except for The Venus Project which is "perfection" and "heaven on earth". So they strive to painfully for the non existent "perfect" venus project and "heaven on earth" by spreading the name "zeitgeist" and the movies made by Peter Joseph to everybody they know (this is called "awareness").
ZEITGEIST "PERFECTION"-Peter Joseph:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFL7dz2iKyw&feature=channel_video_title]
ZEITGEIST "Heaven on Earth"-Jacque Fresco:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/user/anon11allofus#p/u/6/2m3fP3hNt2o]
ZEITGEIST "EVIL AND BAD PEOPLE who attack Venus project, Need to Die" (note, the video was not taken out of context, in fact, the whole audio was removed from the venus project spokesman's VTV's radio program list once i exposed this hidden section of a radio program.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2Y9KO-l-T0]
ZEITGEIST PREPARE FOR VIOLENCE:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VI2o0L8Z4xc]
The "Sacred Science"
The totalist milieu maintains an aura of sacredness around its basic dogma, holding it out as an ultimate moral vision for the ordering of human existence. This sacredness is evident in the prohibition (whether or not explicit) against the questioning of basic assumptions, and in the reverence which is demanded for the originators of the Word, the present bearers of the Word, and the Word itself. While thus transcending ordinary concerns of logic, however, the milieu at the same time makes an exaggerated claim of airtight logic, of absolute "scientific" precision. Thus the ultimate moral vision becomes an ultimate science; and the man who dares to criticize it, or to harbor even unspoken alternative ideas, becomes not only immoral and irreverent, but also "unscientific." In this way, the philosopher kings of modern ideological totalism reinforce their authority by claiming to share in the rich and respected heritage of natural science.
The assumption here is not so much that man can be God, but rather that man's ideas can be God: that an absolute science of ideas (and implicitly, an absolute science of man) exists, or is at least very close to being attained; that this science can be combined with an equally absolute body of moral principles; and that the resulting doctrine is true for all men at all times. Although no ideology goes quite this far in overt statement, such assumptions are implicit in totalist practice.
At the level of the individual, the totalist sacred science can offer much comfort and security. Its appeal lies in its seeming unification of the mystical and the logical modes of experience (in psychoanalytic terms, of the primary and secondary thought processes). For within the framework of the sacred science, and sweeping, non-rational "insights." Since the distinction between the logical and the mystical is, to begin with, artificial and man-made, an opportunity for transcending it can create an extremely intense feeling of truth. But the posture of unquestioning faith - both rationally and non-rationally derived - is not easy to sustain, especially if one discovers that the world of experience is not nearly as absolute as the sacred science claims it to be.
Yet so strong a hold can the sacred science achieve over his mental processes that if one begins to feel himself attracted to ideas which either contradict or ignore it, he may become guilty and afraid. His quest for knowledge is consequently hampered, since in the name of science he is prevented from engaging in the receptive search for truth which characterizes the genuinely scientific approach. And his position is made more difficult by the absence, in a totalist environment, of any distinction between the sacred and the profane: there is no thought or action which cannot be related to the sacred science. To be sure, one can usually find areas of experience outside its immediate authority; but during periods of maximum totalist activity (like thought reform) any such areas are cut off, and there is virtually no escape from the milieu's ever-pressing edicts and demands. Whatever combination of continued adherence, inner resistance, or compromise co-existence the individual person adopts toward this blend of counterfeit science and back-door religion, it represents another continuous pressure toward personal closure, toward avoiding, rather than grappling with, the kinds of knowledge and experience necessary for genuine self-expression and for creative development. [
www.culteducation.com]
Sacred Science is a fundament aspect to the Zeitgeist Movement. Altho when confronted with this information, members will usually say the material is "metaphorical", "conceptual", or "poetic" and not meant to be taken literal in context. First, in the zeitgeist orientation guide, the final chapter called "Functional Spirituality" teaches members "science and technology is divinity in action". Merola teaches people that "science is the tool for functional spirituality". The ultimate moral vision an ultimate science, science running the world and all of humanity thru a unified cybernated computer system and cities built by robots where people will no longer do manuel labor or any other form of job. The founder of the "movement" Peter Joseph himself believes man is god and mans ideas can be godly. In addendum he describes mans divine potential when the create the nuclear bomb. This movement does go so far in overt statement. The idea is that the human "oneness" spiritual beliefs of zeitgeist will eventually lead to this perfect scientific society. Zeitgeist lays the foundation for sacred science in the movie most members like people to watch, but not associate with the movement, the first film. In it, the founder of the movement Peter Joseph teaches that all religions are man made and that the biggest fraud is christianity, namely Jesus Christ. Merola teaches these same principles in radio interviews. So he teaches that god is artificial and man made. In the orientation he gives this exact statement then deferes back to his "divine science". The whole scientific approach has been twisted by the movement that members do not apply the test aspect to ANY notions of the venus project. The leadership has made it very well known that NO RESEARCH IS BEING CONDUCTED and NO TEST CITY IS BEING BUILT. So where is the scientific method being applied? It is not, it is the common belief of the group that sacred science will prevail. Counterfeit science and backdoor oneness religion.
SACRED ZEITGEIST SCIENCE "Science is Divinity in Action":
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRtX7rYh5ag]
PETER JOSEPH BELIEVES MAN IS GOD (first two minutes)
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYc7ZkloPIE&NR=1]
The Dispensing of Existence
Are not men presumtuous to appoint themselves the dispensers of human existence? Surely this is a flagrant expression of what the Greeks called hubris, of arrogant man making himself God. Yet one underlying assumption makes this arrogance mandatory: the conviction that there is just one path to true existence, just one valid mode of being, and that all others are perforce invalid and false. Totalists thus feel themselves compelled to destroy all possibilities of false existence as a means of furthering the great plan of true existence to which they are committed. [
www.culteducation.com]
The Zeitgeist do believe man is god and they do believe there is just one path to true existence "divine science and technology". Zeitgeist wished to destroy all current modes of false existence to create a great plan of true existence, "the venus project".
And if no peak experience occurs, ideological totalism does even greater violence to the human potential: it evokes destructive emotions, produces intellectual and psychological constrictions, and deprives men of all that is most subtle and imaginative - under the false promise of eliminating those very imperfections and ambivalences which help to define the human condition. This combination of personal closure, self-destructiveness, and hostility toward outsiders leads to the dangerous group excesses so characteristic of ideological totalism in any form. It also mobilizes extremist tendencies in those outsiders under attack, thus creating a vicious circle of totalism.[
www.culteducation.com]
3. Economic, sexual, and other exploitation of group members by the leader and the ruling coterie.
The goal is for economic and fame for the founders.
The Spokesmen, VTV, sells stuff for financial gain on his site:
[
www.printfection.com]
The Spokesmen VTV, seeks financial donations:
[
v-radio.org]
The Venus project sells $295 packages
[
www.thevenusproject.com]
Fresco sells his book " the best that money cant buy" to members:
[
www.youtube.com]
[
www.thevenusproject.com]
The Zeitgeist Movie sells movies and Tshirts:
[
zeitgeistmovie.com]
Zeitgeist opposes all other RBE economy objectives, because it is "dangerous" to donate to anybody else, but the venus project:
[
www.thezeitgeistmovement.com]
Peter Joseph thinks by using his followers to push his film he can get nominated for a academy award (atho they claim it is not a "ego" issue, its simply for "awareness"):
[
zeitgeistmovements.files.wordpress.com]
PS, if you need more examples let me know.