I have unfortunately encountered a neo-pagan group that really is starting to smack of a nasty hate group with some cult tendencies.
The group claims to be Asatru. Most of the Asatru people I have known are pretty live and let live and don't buy into the "folkish" ideas.
These "folkish"groups range from claims that each group of people should practice their own indigenous religion, I find that of itself to be racist.
The worse end of these go into blatant very hateful racism and anti-antisemitism. But they are not the skinhead types you would assume to be
doing this kind of thing. On the surface they appear more "normal" and their writings and such are not really on the crazy end of things.

I don't know if they entire national network of groups is in as deep in the crazy end or if it is the local group. Someone in my family has gotten involved
with this group after finding them online. After they started exhibiting stranger and stranger behavior something finally clicked that this was where all the
crazy ideas were coming from. So I started doing some looking myself. What I found was that on the public surface it was presented in a very crafted way
that only tackles the racist views in a very "spun" way to try to make it look palatable and less overtly racist. They also have a "members only" section of their forum
that seems to be only for those vetted by the rest. That raised my suspicions.

It reminded me of the Promise Keepers. They used the same tactic in the 1990's and i knew a few people who fell in with them. The initial ideas of that group were fairly
palatable, being "godly men" and being good husbands, parents and members of the community. As people got in deeper they were introduced to different levels of educational
materials that got crazier. They went into some really misogynistic and anti-gay and anti-women ideas. Luckily the people I knew that were sucked into that eventually got out but
I bring it up because the structure for sucking people in looked so familiar.

The crazy in this Asatru group started as against Christians and how they had trashed old religions. Then it started to be really racist and how Mexicans were plotting to do something
horrible to the US with Democrats working with them as some big conspiracy. Then the antisemitism started. That circumcision is some jewish plot and an abusive crime perpetrated
upon men in the US. Another was that Judiaism should not allow anyone not "racially hebrew" to join their religion because people should all go stay with the religion of their ancestors.
Quite the load of crap eh? These are just some of the ones I remembered coming out of this family member. The context of these statements came that this group is the source of these
bizarre ideas.

What is cultish is that there is lots of ranting about the world falling apart, wishing it would. They had some great plan how they would start a private group somewhere and live without
anyone else or in some sort of fort when society falls apart. Lots of living out stupid apocalyptic he-man fantasies. Also lots of distrust for society and government like that they are being
somehow abused or humiliated by so many laws in their lives how you can't "pee off your own porch" anymore and wanting to go live away from people. It is interesting because it seemed
to be a combination of the he-man libertarian fantasy thing combined with cult actions where they get people to leave society and their support structures to live just with the cult.

This whole group is very authoritarian with one leader of it posting daily scripture type screeds on various topics. Not for debate but as instruction. This sooo all reminds me of some of the early things going on with the End Times group another family member ended up involved in up here in the 1980's. They got sucked into the whole thing and ended up down in Florida.

I guess my point is that I am seeing lots and lots of cult like tendencies and the charismatic religion/brainwashing thing but it is wrapped in a new wrapper and I think people don't suspect it right away. It is wrapped on the surface in somewhat benign paganism. As people get in deeper into the inner circle it turns into something very very different and ugly.

So how do I convince said family member they are being taken for a ride before it is too late?

The study was set up like this:
There was a man in a room hooked up to electrodes and there was a control room. The man hooked up with electrodes was an actor; there was no power going through the electrodes but when the lever was pushed in the control room he acted like he was in extreme pain.
He was set up in a desk and had a test in front of him...if he got the answers wrong then the real test subjects, volunteers would be told by an athoritative person in the control room to punish him by shocking him. There were higher and higher degrees of "shock" escalating for each wrong answer. The actor would scream and pound his fist, would shake violently at the higher levels of "shock".
They told the test subjects that there was no punishment for shocking him, and the person in charge of the control room was very demanding that the man be punished severely for wrong answers.