Quote
Rothaus
Yesterday I was watching a programme on musicians in North Korea. Apart from the fact that ‘their beloved great leader’ has personally written most of the music and operas performed in North Korea (yea right), I was shocked by the terms used by those interviewed. Okay it’s a dictatorship, but one could not get rid of the feeling that some of those interviewed (certainly selected before) were seriously brainwashed and you know what people? It sent shivers down my spine, because it was so extremely similar to the SGI jargon. Have you not heard too, that some felt as if Ikeda was like a father to them? One singer showed the western beauty products the ‘beloved leader’ had sent her - it reminded me a bit of the Danish biscuits Ikeda always ‘sent’.
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Evergreen and Rothaus, I think that comparing SGI to North Korea or the Jehovah Witnesses is quite apt. When I read threads on the "New Cults, Sects and Religious Movements" it is amazing how similar so many of these groups and leaders are. The Rick Ross archive has some interesting articles about North Korea.
--Dictators and cult leaders are often very charismatic, power seekers with enormous egos and a huge sense of entitlement. Kim Jong Il feasts on imported lobster and caviar while North Korean peasants starve. Ikeda, a billionaire, has no problem asking for donations from members struggling from paycheck to paycheck.
--Ikeda has met with, and praised dictators -- Noriega of Panama, Fidel Castro of Cuba, officials of the People's Republic of China, and Ceaucescu of Romania.
--Both Kim and Ikeda have amazing propaganda machines that crank out their praises. Both men are given practically mythologic, and heroic life stories -- Kim as "The Dear Leader," Ikeda as the great mentor. At the same time, they're also portrayed as Daddy-like, being concerned with the smallest details of their subjects' lives -- Kim would buy make-up for a singer, Ikeda would send cookies to a meeting. Both SGI members and North Koreans are constantly fed stories of how much the Great Man is doing for them.
--Both Kim and Ikeda control the flow of information to their subjects and control through fear. With Kim, this is literal and heavy-handed: banning cellphones, foreign media and the internet from North Korea, and subjects who won't cooperate are executed or thrown into gulags. With SGI, members are told only what Ikeda wants them to know about SGI, and are kept too busy to think much about what they're being told. Members who still question can be pressured by friends and family who are in SGI -- and told that all sorts of calamities will fall upon them if they leave or criticize SGI. Yes....it is very scary outside of North Korea/SGI! There are wicked people, enemies all around ready to attack poor innocent SGI/North Korea!
--Kim and Ikeda manage to get a great deal of free labor from their underlings.
--Both men are the chosen heir of a great leader -- Kim Il Sung, previous dictator of North Korea and father of current dictator Kim Jong Il, and of course, Josei Toda, mentor of Ikeda.
--I think it was both Nichijew and Antony Elmore (www.proudblackbuddhist.com) who described the old NSA (Soka Gakkai) conventions as "Stalinist." Huge pictures and posters of Ikeda everywhere, cheering crowds, performances, just like the video I once saw of some North Korean festival. No roller-skating pyramid of young men in North Korean festivals, though. Ikeda gets an extra point here.
--North Koreans have pictures of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il in their homes; SGI members have pictures of Mr. and Mrs. Ikeda in theirs. North Koreans are required to wear buttons with either Kim Il Sung or Kim Jong Il's pictures on them. SGI members aren't doing that -- at least as far as I know. The point goes to Kim Jong Il in this round.
Cousin Rufus would be utopia, a perfect-strife-free world where everyone is equal? Funny, some people thought that communism would be like that too.