How to tell if it's a cult

[bionicmlle]

RickRoss.com IS an excellent resource.

A few years ago a colleague was involved with what I thought was an offshoot of Scientology -- turns out it was a LGAT or "Large Group Awareness Training" which did actually have roots in CoS and took several people I know for a hell of a lot of money. Reading on LGATs is scary stuff -- even though it is completely sans God.

[Witsec7]

RickRoss.com IS an excellent resource.

A few years ago a colleague was involved with what I thought was an offshoot of Scientology -- turns out it was a LGAT or "Large Group Awareness Training" which did actually have roots in CoS and took several people I know for a hell of a lot of money. Reading on LGATs is scary stuff -- even though it is completely sans God.

I had a boss years ago that sent me to an LGAT, (Wings). I walked out after 20 minutes.

[camdendayton]

The LaRouchers on college campuses are the best example of a non-religious cult that I can think of. They recruit impressionable college kids and get them to quit school and go from college campus to downtown corners trying to spread LaRouche's crazy "political" message about the U.S. government, the Fed, Jews, the illuminati, the British Family's "drug cartel," etc. Sigh.

Anyway, they isolate their followers from family and friends. The usual cult tactics. Rick Ross has personally worked for many families trying to deprogram their children. It's quite sad. They just look like typical political activists at first glance until you read their crazy handmade signs about Queen Elizabeth and her drug cartel that she runs with the Fed :lol:

QFT. I debated at a CC and when we got bored we would go talk to the LaRouchers. So much crazy! I also saw them at my four year college, but they seemed to get a lot more traction at the CC.

[2xx1xy1JD]

After reading the recommendations here, I took a look at rickross.com.

I noticed a blog entry on the Falun Gong. The photos of the woman who set herself on fire were certainly gruesome, but I was taken aback by some of her comments where she says that she should have been a good citizen and listen to her government when they labelled the group a cult.

To be perfectly fair, rickross.com does have articles on the site about the persecution of Falun Gong in China. Still, the real story here seems to be about how the Chinese Government uses extreme techniques (job loss, arrests, "re-education through labor", forced organ retrieval, torture, death) to suppress a somewhat wacky but relatively benign exercise/new religious movement because it feared any challenge to its power. Even the press releases from the Chinese government are downright chilling. I'm concerned that the Chinese government has latched on to any Western criticism of the Falun Gong and stuck on the label "cult" to justify itself, when in fact the Chinese Government is really the one engaging in cultist techniques.

Press release from Chinese (note the line about how the people should thank the Chinese government for "acting as a mightly fortess for its citizens"):

http://www.rickross.com/reference/fa_lu ... lun97.html

Rick Ross blog entry:

http://www.cultnews.com/?p=2422

Organ harvesting:

http://www.rickross.com/reference/fa_lu ... un313.html

Background:

http://www.rickross.com/reference/fa_lu ... un310.html