arayder wrote:Somebody who knows a lot about cults ought to comment on what it means when a group like GOODF closes off contact with and input from the outside and starts to enforce a sort of internal discipline regarding what can be said, done and thought .
I think Tom's eviction must have been cathartic for some of the GOODFers. The screaming crew at the eviction really lost control of themselves. I suspect many think everything is different now. Some are saying they are at war.
The cult seems to have fixated on harassing or arresting every authority figure involved in Tom's case.
With nobody in the group to say, "How wait, guys, we're talking about arresting several police men and woman and bringing them before our common law courts! Don't you realize that means our courtroom is going be full of police tactical units before we get the first gavel down?"
The Amish call it shunning, Scientologists refer to it as disconnection, they police this through a means of auditing, I believe North Korea's isolationism comes from a philosophy they call "Juche" which is supposed to mean self reliance (in reality it's aim is to stop the general population from rising up against Pyongyang, this is done through a citizen spy network that basically reports on each citizen if one is witnessed to do something incorrect, in addition each citizen attends regular meetings in which they are expected to receive and offer criticism of things that they have been involved in.
While the GOODFs haven't gone so far as to start monitoring the thoughts of others, they do take steps to deal with information that contradicts their perceptions. They call those posting it 'trolls' or 'shills' and even allege that they are paid to do this by a secret tranche of the government. It's notable that their accusations aren't based on any factual record, certainly I can find no credible source which indicates that GCHQ would be especially interested in a 64 year olds fight in regard to a rather ordinary bungalow in the midlands and I would suggest that the spy agencies have better things to be doing.
But they won't accept anything except evidence that disproves their allegations, which is unlikely to be forthcoming because they don't have any evidence in support of their allegation.
In this case it seems to be cognitive dissonance, in that they perceive Tom being evicted, which is a sign that he has lost his fight for possession, as a sign that he is in fact in the right. They have formed their own narrative and this story, this account is not going to be consistent across the group however any deviation from the central theme would be considered a personal attack on the masses involved. This is because they have formed an emotional bond to the narrative, look at the postings and see how many are talking about feeling angry, or outraged, or hating that this had happened to poor old Tom.
In some ways, to go back to North Korea and perhaps more accurately Orwells 1984, they need a war and an enemy to be fighting against and they must consider themselves the plucky few rebels that bring down the bigger force. They consider their enemy to be the Star Wars Empire against their rag tag Rebel Alliance. They like being the little guys because Hollywood has taught them that the little guys always win (the real world however often teaches us the opposite of this fantasy).
All of these things combine to allow them to build up a comprehensive number of walls against looking at the facts because firstly they filter the facts they will allow themselves to see, any contradictory facts are considered lies, disinformation and propaganda, they attack anyone who steps outside of the groupthink and reinforce each others views to keep the fantasy running (this in turn leads them to agree with the wilder propositions), they have an enemy (largely imagined) who they are involved in the direst of struggles against, but most importantly they view themselves as a rebellion or a revolutionary movement.
That is most important because it justifies them as being in the right, it tells them that they are fighting the good fight and trying to help.
I don't doubt for a second that the people posting up about being Tom Crawford and attending his eviction are all convinced that they are helping him. But the truth is, they aren't. They are feeding into a delusion and driving Tom further from the truth and further from being able to cope with what happens next. Tom is homeless and they certainly helped.
