I guess it was convenient for my mental evolution when leaving the cult that virulent misogynists are always incredibly bigoted about other things.

[artemis@dice.camp]

But also, the good news is that these bigoted extremists can't keep everyone trapped, not even when they control the environment someone is in from birth onwards.

Even when children are raised strictly around people who look, believe, & act all exactly alike, all enforcing the same messages of hatred & exclusion—EVEN THEN—some of them will escape.

[artemis@dice.camp]

Sure, it helped that my parents were never all-in on the worst expressions of bigotry, but I got the Christian "education" (propaganda), the isolation of being homeschooled, while living in a very, very white town, attending church & religious conferences, & much more.

I topped it off by going to a right-wing Christian college in the South, followed by an equally extreme seminary (by the time I was in seminary, I was already on my way out).

I received the full indoctrination package.

[artemis@dice.camp]

I received the full indoctrination package, & I left. I can't even count the number of other people I know of who have the same story.

Even when they control people's entire environment, even when they get to be the ones constructing someone's mental world from childhood, even then, people still break free.

[artemis@dice.camp]

So that's worth something, I think.

Proponents of hateful, supremacist ideologies desperately strive to control people, but they can't, not even when all the cards are stacked in their favor.

[artemis@dice.camp]

It can be really scary looking at some of these extremist communities & seeing the way they indoctrinate people, but so, so, so many of us have left such spaces & such beliefs & behaviors & so many people will continue to leave.

They would like you to believe that the programming is flawless & there are no cracks in the armor, but that's propaganda too. They leak people constantly. The total control is a lie.

[artemis@dice.camp]

They lie to each other "if you raise your children this way (God's way), they will always believe exactly as you do."

That is not how human beings work, & my life experience bears that out. I wish a lot more people would fucking get out, but I'm not special here. I am one of many, many people who were raised deep inside this world who then left at the first opportunity we got.

[artemis@dice.camp]

The authoritarians would like to believe—and they would like *you* to believe—that they've got this, that they can program a person as if they're a fucking robot.

That's one of their silly fictions.

Brainwashing, cult tactics, & other forms of manipulation can be extremely powerful, but they will never be all-powerful or foolproof.

[thetenuousorder@meow.social]

@artemis here too

[artemis@dice.camp]

So yeah, one thing to remember is that when the fash brag about how all-powerful they are, how they control people, that is propaganda intended to make them, the in-group, feel reassured & to make us, the out-group, give up.

They will ALWAYS try to tell you they are stronger than they actually are. They lie.

[johnzajac@dice.camp]

@artemis

This is part of why it's important to point out how incompetent and impotent they are, and how badly they fuck everything up. It's hard to be scared of ridiculous losers; being scared of them is their only really effectively scalable weapon.

Every other one is way to minuscule to subdue the United States, incl the military.

[artemis@dice.camp]

@johnzajac
Sometimes I think my older brother misinterpreted the line from 1984 about picturing the future as a boot stamping on a human face forever as a prediction rather than propaganda. Sometimes I wonder if a lot of people make the same mistake.

[sayonaraminasan@urusai.social]

@artemis wish I could type in a small font to make it known I am not talking over you here, because on this matter I absolutely can't but I will say this: FIRE as usual. This is one of those details that a lot of us non-white people know, (and lament) but rarely see spoken. You are spilling the TEA here.

[johnzajac@dice.camp]

@artemis

Propaganda is kind of like Miss Cleo telling eager listeners that nothing is possible and the future has been determined by powerful forces over which they have no control.