the nature of cult recruitment -
jihadi bombers

site map

what is a cult?

One definition is a group of people who follow a leader with (often expansionist) objectives, that has a set of core beliefs and instructions, or dogmas, to achieve those objectives, and which provides rewards for obedient group members. To ensure the cohesion and effectiveness of group members in the chosen objectives, there are documents (manual, bible, company code) detailing objectives, methods and rewards, and rituals to that are used to reinforce willingness, cooperation and effectiveness by group members in achieving the objectives.

By this definition, even a large commercial company could be regarded as a cult, with a managing director, paid employees and the objective to make and sell as many widgets as possible, so spreading the company’s reach and influence.

Then there are many religious cults/sects. Catholic christianism is one. Islam is another. Socialism is another, and there are more minor cults like the Moonies or Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Suicide bombing is another cult, but one whose chosen objective is to kill.

Killing cults include groups from many eras. Today there are Islamic Jihad and other similar groups, Aum Shinrikyou in Japan, even the Moors murderers Brady and Hindley. In the last century, one looks to the Mafia, the Nazi Party, the Manson ‘family’.

A suicide bombing organisation is not a special, mysterious, esoteric grouping or an enigma. It is a business whose product is human bombs and dead citizens. Here normal business mechanisms: recruiting, training, service providing, are directed to stupid, insane ends, but the social mechanisms are not essentially different.

As in other religious cults, (mostly) young people are recruited and groomed (brainwashed?) to blindly follow the wishes and demands of their recruiters until the follower loses what objective judgment they may have had and acts in a violently criminal fashion - visiting crowded areas with bombs strapped to themselves which are then exploded.

How is this done?

how to recruit?

There is no other effective method than advertising for recruiting. The Hare Krishna sect recruits by dancing and chanting down busy shopping streets, by opening a restaurant and running evening talks that includes free food ... and chanting.

You would not ask for bombers, you would put it in code and start small. You would offer spiritual training. You would attempt to enrol them on ‘courses’. You would teach ‘self-defence’ You would watch for potential fanatics, you would watch for the alienated.

Westerners live in a very psychologically unsophisticated society, Islam is far more educated in such understanding. It is an error to regard Western culture as ‘advanced’ in social areas.

With the July 2005 bombing in London, there are supposedly at least 4 associates. Why not suppose that there are 1000 or more others at various stages of induction?

the cult mind

The aim of such groups is to isolate individuals psychologically from the wider culture. There is also always a them and us. Us/we are good guys, We have ‘the truth’. Nobody but “a complete fool”or lunatic would possibly think any other way. We are the children of light, them are the children of darkness [dead sea scrolls - check]

We mix among ourselves, we marry among ourselves. ‘Our’ children are exclusively taught the dogmas of the cult and are encouraged to mix and work only with each other, as far as possible. We have our own clubs, or even businesses, where we trade, as far as possible, with each other.

learning dogmatism

How is dogmatism is inculcated?

The leftist cult is endemic in the ‘universities’ of the West.
Until very recently, Catholics led a very separate psychological life.
Mormons [members of the Church of Later Day Saints] almost never go out without a chaperone to keep them on the straight and narrow. When separated, they start to become highly nervous if their behaviour, their ‘religion’ is questioned.
Highly irrational and stereotyped responses in interactions is a common behaviour for those involved in such organisations.

why does such indoctrination work

The young person adrift often seeks easy ‘answers’, an ‘identity’ which makes them ‘special’ and a group that provides a support network. These desires can be exploited, widely they are exploited by those seeking recruits.

Often the most vulnerable to cult capture are the good boys and girls. These are the ones who have learnt to be thoroughly obedient and not to seriously question. It is often those who can do well in the parrot education system who will quickly adapt to the new, simpler, parroted dogmas. Yes, apparently rebellious, young adults can also be entrapped, but their rebellion is merely a reaction to their conditioning. Each “yes” is replaced by a “no” and each “no” by a “yes”. This is not free thought, it is just moving from one extreme to its reflection in the mirror.

These are the true believers, the idealists, the good children. They will stay late at the office, they will canvass houses for the elections or the Mormons, they will go down the mosque very regularly, they will work late into the night to complete school assignments.

The major pool for potential recruits are the scions of the aspiring, disciplined and idealistic middle classes. Approximately 90% of cult enthusiasts will come from this group. Hence, the natural high activity of recruiters around university campuses. In general, it is also the case that approximately 90% of those involved in cult activity will drop out after a couple of years. Thus, the drive of cults and dope peddlers to catch ’em young and keep ’em hooked.

The immature easily succumb to addiction, in this case to the high of being lauded.

To counter the gullibility of such people is, in part, why I want professional citizenry training curriculum in our society, a curriculum that every person will be required to pass for adult status. It is my observation that people who have been raised in more than one culture (not just visited for a week or ‘done’ comparative studies) often have better balance and are more able to think independently. This is because they now know there is more than one way of thinking, living and behaving; whereas the person limited to a particular group cannot imagine that there is any other way to be.

Thus, you may remark upon the amazing co-incidence that almost every person raised in Rome ends up a good catholic, nearly everyone raised in soviet Moscow was a believing Marxist, while in Saudi Arabia it is difficult to find any person who does not just know in their bones that Islam is the true way.

some indoctrination tools (brainwashing)

1. Protein and sleep deprivation techniques;
   
   
2. over-stimulus to lock out time to think;
   
   
3. repetitive messages to slow down or inhibit clear thinking, also see chanting;
   
   
4. ‘love-bombing’:
   The group of acolytes are trained to give a great deal of attention, ‘emotional support’, false and constant positive reinforcement to new recruits.
   They constantly reassure the new recruit that they have made the right decision in joining the cult, tell the recruit how wonderful they are, instigate regular (and intrusive) sessions of hugging etc.
   
   The same pattern of dependency inculcation is seen in fashionable education, also known as irresponsibility or permissiveness. The child is never thwarted, and is continually rewarded and reinforced - whatever their behaviour, or however low their standard of performance.
   
   These behaviours are designed to set up dependancy, not much different from feeding an infant sugar on a dummy, or getting people hooked on cigarettes or heroin. The objective is control.

social environments : the emanation of behaviours from a meme swamp

An environment breeds animals adapted to that environment. Religion is a social environment.

Islam is a sea in which there are elements that tend towards suicide bombing. People who do stupid things usually do it from out of their culture. Islam is tribal and individualistic, and has heavy elements of anarchism. Other, Western, religions like Christanism and Socialism are herd and hierarchically oriented. This expressed in the centralised state.

Of course, a nation can be conceived as a large tribe, or an extensive tribe may be thought of as a proto-nation. There are no rigid boxes in the real world. The habits, laws and traditions of the tribe or nation can be similar to the rule books of religion. Tribes, nations and religions evolve/change, influence and meld with one another.

Thus Islam generally indulges in fairly random individualistic murder, whereas socialist states go for mass-herd murders. The expressions in behaviour of a particular social environment effectively grows out of that social environment. It is unlikely that sects like Jainism and Quakerism will breed suicide bombers.

Nation states and the rule of law come from the Christianist tradition. Islam and socialism are both christianist schisms.

spreading dogmatic responses in the young - brainwashing

To much of the left, Chomsky is a god. In many university book shops, there may be up to a dozen servings of his hash: shallow ‘analysis’ served up with copious rhetoric. This is another nice simplistic religion for (adult) children.

The young are under tremendous pressure to learn in modern Western states. Factors that encourage young minds to follow dogmatic and simplistic routes to achievement include:

• The ‘learning’ to which students are exposed tends to be drilling of supposed ‘facts’. It is a form of brainwashing, complete with ‘repeat after me’ and you will receive a gold star.
• Many lecturers have a very low level of ability.
• An understanding of the modern world requires a very great deal of work and study. It cannot be gained through repeating simple dogmas and rules marked ‘right’ or ‘wrong’.

When along comes some cult salesman like Chomsky, or the reverend Moon, or the local imam, who says to these overloaded and over-pressed students, “here is an easy answer”, “you don’t have to think”, “it’s really all incredible simple”, there is a feeling of relief in the students: “I now have the answer”.

It is very easy to brainwash a person who is already brainwashed from a more complex ‘religion’ to a more simplistic religion or dogma, such as the rigid ‘conspiracy’ rubbish served up in bucket loads in the fossil media;
to take advantage of their youthful rebellion;
to take advantage of their youthful simple minds;
to take advantage of their feelings of inferiority and their resentment of authority.

And give them an easy, simplistic answer that makes them ‘special’.
Tell the young people that, by imbibing the shallow rubbish of the cult, they now know much more than their parents and teachers and the media.
They have seen the light.
They can see through all the noise,
the noise is just a plot to keep them subservient.
Now they have ‘the truth’.

Of course, to some extent, exam learning is not thinking. Cult dogmas rely upon part ‘truth’, a feature which is always found in such writings.

Adults do the young no favours by encouraging them to over-confidence and too much self-regard. The widespread fashion to promote ‘self-esteem’, without any foundation in reality or real achievement, has no positive outcome basis in experimental evidence. A young person too willing to trust their own judgment is an easy mark for the flatterer and con man. Realistic caution is at least as important as reality-based confidence.

This trapping and enthralling of unformed minds will not be stopped without a far different and better approach to education. There will always be people like L. Ron Hubbard and ambitious, bigoted imams lining up to take advantage of mentally impoverished youth.

Or the business corporation just waiting to employ the young flexible mind for peanuts. Just think, society and parents spent 20 years educating these good children and turning them into obedient parrots. The corp can get them for very little, without all the input work.

So can cult leaders, selling them a load of tripe (with royalties) along the way. Such cult leaders can also work off their own bitterness and resentment at not being taken seriously by governments and peers when they are really so significant.

There is very little so profitable in this society as a new-minted, flexible, ignorant young person who can already feed themselves and tie their own laces.

We should not wonder at the queue of venal mediocrities lined up at the gate to entice and exploit them.

current m.e. geo-realpolitik

50 million died in the second world war. I know what humans will do if the pressures become great.

If the Middle Eastern situation, and its spin-offs into Western countries, is allowed to fester long enough, necessary decisions to resolve it will be taken out of the hands of politicians, as happened in Serbia in the 1990s.
And there will be no benevolent parental America to come to the rescue.

The Left are foolish beyond the imagination of most people. Their’s is a creed that has already killed hundreds of millions. This creed will kill more if people are credulous and foolish enough to take it with the slightest seriousness. In my view, there is at least a 50% chance that Saddam Hussein would have been removed peacefully, with far fewer deaths following, if it had not been for the shallow caterwauling of the mindless Left in the West.

The Left is are continually degrading the communication channels with their foolish noise. That makes solving the problems with the Islamic cults much harder. The cultists do not hear the real voice of the West, they hear too much the chatter of numbskulls and moonbats.

Islam is far better than socialism as a creed. It has had far longer to develop and sophisticate. It has never been responsible for mass murders to the degree of socialism.

Much of the problem with the Jihadi cults is a poisoning of the Islamic well with fascist/national(ist) socialism. The great mass murder in Iraq under the madman was in a regime heavily infected with socialism.

Further, Middle Eastern societies are tribal societies and the dynamics differ much from Europe. They are not used to (or fluent with) the administration of the nation state.

The West however, must discipline these societies by one means or another. The West does not have other options. Educating them into the modern world must be the best hope.

Tribal medieval peasants standing on the pipe lines of the West, and trading that for nukes is not acceptable. In fact, it is ludicrous to even consider it. That central fact (imperative) will be a high driver in the outcome of this problem of Jihad and Islamism.

Fools once traded Winchesters to Indians. I hope the West can learn not to repeat that error. If it does not, the Middle East will, in my view, suffer a similar fate. It will just be a matter of time. The longer this problem of handling these voracious cultists is avoided in polite conversation, the worse will be the outcome costs for everyone.

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© abelard, 2005, 16 july

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the address for this document is https://www.abelard.org/briefings/recruitment.php

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