Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > The Seed Discussion Forum

Elizabeth Smart and cults...

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Anonymous:
It seems that some of you are assuming that my original cult reference relates to Elizabeth Smart and her family as possible Mormons, and that Mormons are a cult and are responsible for setting the stage for the kidnap.  This is totally incorrect.  My cult reference relates to Brian David Mitchell and *his* beliefs and behavior.  He is the wacko, not the parents/family.

Majiktrvls:
There is defintely no separation of church and state in Utah.
No other state that I have lived in has had a "seminary" on the Junior High and High School campuses. These are separate buildings ON the school campus that the kids go to during the school day. LDS students are allowed to take a credit course for attending this "seminary" class. In fact, if they don't choose to take these classes, they are deemed as being "unworthy" in the eyes of the church and risk being persecuted by fellow students, church leaders, parents, etc... Now, I may be stupid here, and I am defintely out of the LDS range, being Buddhist and all, but, I have to tell ya, I do not see any other states offering CHURCH as a school class. The Government is highly republican and is heavily "donated" to by the LDS church. Bought out is more like the word I should use. WE had hell to pay to get the liquor laws changed during the Olympics so that venues and restaurants could sell more than just beer. Recently, the LDS Church bought a huge mall in downtown Salt Lake City. How many other churches own their very own mall?

Anonymous:
Which was precisely my point .  Yes, the kidnappers are a cult but they were the creation of the cult -- ie the Mormons.
But it took Karl Marx ( of the cult of Communism fame )  to recognize two factors important truths
1.  Religion (is) the opiate of the masses.
2.  "systems" contain the seeds of their own destruction (the dialectic)

The kidnappers were products of the Mormon church and are agents of its destruction.  
Interesting, too, that the thing most feared by the religionists are drugs, since it is the religion itself that has so doped up their capacity for critical thinking.
There is no god.

Anonymous:
My post copied from thekidsbbs.com:
Thank God she was found. It's amazing enough that she was found alive. What's more amazing is that according to a source in the Salt Lake city police, she first denied that she was Elizabeth Smart and told police she had to keep her sunglasses on due to eye surgery. Even her dad said she had been brainwashed. Here is a tidbit from the Salt Lake Tribune that reminds me of our own ordeal:

"We have no idea what psychological or pressure manipulations he used with her," said Janja Lalich, a sociology professor at California State University, Chico, and author of Captive Hearts, Captive Minds and co-author with Margaret Singer of Cults in Our Midst.
Still, she said, past experiences show that "when you are removed from your normal environment and kept confined in some way, which we know [Elizabeth] must have been at the beginning, you can enter a very distorted reality," said Lalich. "If they are good at what they do, they use a punishment/reward system. It doesn't take much for your reality to shift."

This also happened to Patty Hearst of the cult "The Symbionese Liberation Organization". She was kidnapped, kept in a closet, raped, punished, and starved by the cult until she started to see thing their way. Next thing you know, she was robbing a bank and killing whoever who got in her way.

Sound familiar?

Anonymous:
Yup!
And around that time there was a British movie about a boarding school  -- I think the title was "If.."
Did anyone see it?

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