Controversial networks (considered by some to be "cults") mumsnet readers need to be aware of

[hoodathunkit]

This is going to be a very long thread and posting it is very overdue

The word "cult" is quite loaded and obviously one person's religious movement or psychotherapy / life coaching / wellness organisation is another person's cult.

Sometimes cultic dynamics arise in family and extended family groups also, so the word "cult" can be a loaded and problematic one.

There is a lot I need to share here, this is made more urgent by the fact that, while I train hard and am fairly healthy, I do have underlying health problems that mean there is a chance I may not survive the comming storm.

I am somewhat dyslexic and have always struggled with spelling. I am pushed for time and do not trust spelling / grammar apps on my computer so I hope readers will forgive my occasional typos, spelling mistakes and grammatical errors.

I will be doing this in small, digestible posts for ease of reading.

I would say "enjoy!" but what I am about to share is not remotely enjoyable. This is going to be a thread of horrifying, dark, twisty rabbit holes with many network links to material other posters here have shared.

More to follow shortly

waves from climate camp 2007
Thanks again @hoodathunkit - its 9only recently been suggested again to me that the people I trusted were actually I practical terms a cult. I did actually get warned before signing up, but my best friends and partners were members so I thought it couldn't be that bad. I have a lot of hindsight and I think talking about this stuff is the most practical thing I can do in terms of future harm prevention.

I hope you are keeping well

I hope you are keeping well

Swings and roundabouts :)

Going through some challenging times, gaslighting, bullying, the usual stuff, so absolutely batshit that if it was in a fictional books people would say "but that could never happen"

But it's what I signed up for so meh

Unfortunately the bullying, cults, abuses, gaslighting it's all the rage at the moment.

I have to do my best to survive it, record it, expose it so as to protect others less resilient than I am

hoodathunkit thank you for this thread. I haven't read all of your links yet, but seeing the association between XR and some of these very dubious organisations is helping me to understand some of the weird mind-fucks of my years in climate activism (was well out of it by the time XR came along, but still in touch with some people who were very keen participants).

Some indoctrinative things that I saw, or that I have heard about from other people:

• Consensus decision making: it looks weird from the outside, so familiarity with the process is used as a bit of a shibboleth. The idea that a consensus is possible for every decision can be exploited to push someone's boundaries by implying that they are unreasonable for not moving to a middle ground position. Achieving consensus is a public process, so dissent is obvious. This serves both to shut down dissent, as disagreeing is transgressive, and to marginalise people who raise concerns.
• Alongside consensus processes are the informal processes. You can't actually organise anything by consensus on an open meeting, so major decisions really get made outside of the public process and then presented for the group to agree on. However, this conflicts with the fundamental (anarchist) organising principles of the group, so the existence of these informal processes is publicly denied - this can also be used to discredit people who try to use informal processes to raise concerns. As soon as there's a problem, the complainant must do everything publicly, whilst the accused can continue to pull strings behind the scenes.
• Informal hierarchies: like I said in my previous post, lots of the activists I knew had been in multiple movements before the ones I was involved with. They knew and trusted each other from previous actions and often sat at the top of informal hierarchies, running the informal organising processes. Status could also be quickly earned by getting involved in organising (not just taking part in) illegal actions. People who didn't do this were seen as lightweight dilettantes and not really committed. That meant that gaining power in the group was associated with taking big personal risks that bound you tightly to other high-status group members. There were also some long-standing members who lived on the status of their prior involvement and pushed newer, younger members into stupid, risky things they privately said they would never do themselves.
• Normal rules don't apply: if you are planning on taking part in something illegal or borderline illegal, you will not go to the police if something bad happens to you, because ACAB, right? (I genuinely think that this narrative contributes to the low percentage of sexual assaults being reported to police)
• Normal social rules also don't apply. Many activists I knew rejected various oppressive systems, such as capitalism and patriarchy. But that can also be exploited to push boundaries. Monogamy was also seen as oppressive; objecting to pornography was uptight and middle class. And somehow it was always the women being accused of being judgemental and bourgeois ...
• Boundary blurring: the group became someone's whole social circle. People lived together (sometimes in low-rent housing collectives), they worked/studied together and took part in activist activities together (direct action, but also reading groups, zine making, vegan baking etc - all niche activities populated by the same clique of people). That creates a social echo chamber because you hang out with the same people all the time and police each others' politics for transgression. It also creates a huge social penalty for leaving / dissent because your whole life and identity is now bound up with this activism.
• Class hierarchies: Being middle class or posh was seen as a bad thing, and was used to discredit objections to abusive behaviours. However to really be an activist you had to have some source of income. Quite a lot of the long-standing group members had wealthy backgrounds that gave them the means to dip in and out of professional careers, hire equipment, travel to actions and organise parties and social events. It also have them a safety net if anything went really wrong and connections to the professional liberal world if they wanted to step back from the gritty stuff. Activism was a role they could take on and off as convenient. That was not the case for people they exploited, who had no such professional connections and had isolated themselves from other support networks.
• constant tone and language policing. Constant checking up on your political positions. Not a vegan? Lose points. Voted Labour? Why are you here? Voted at all? Suspect. Buying the wrong products (Nestlé? Coke?), eating the wrong foods, reading the wrong authors, using the wrong words ("okay guys" ??? Educate yourself, please. We're not here to educate you) - mistakes were noticed and commented on publicly. The overall effect was a total chilling of discourse and a fall-back to nostrums and platitudes (sounds familiar?).

Yikes, when I write it all out like that it sounds very culty indeed. Horrible environment overall. The effect of the language policing is taking the longest to wash away - I still find myself checking if my opinions are appropriate and waiting for confirmation that I'm allowed to think something. All from a "social movement" that was banging on about "safe spaces policies" more than 10 years ago.

@InvisibleDragon spot on summary.

Is it ok if I dm you about this?

@WaveWalker - sure, feel free :)

@hoodathunkit

I hope you are keeping well

Swings and roundabouts :)

Going through some challenging times, gaslighting, bullying, the usual stuff, so absolutely batshit that if it was in a fictional books people would say "but that could never happen"

But it's what I signed up for so meh

Unfortunately the bullying, cults, abuses, gaslighting it's all the rage at the moment.

I have to do my best to survive it, record it, expose it so as to protect others less resilient than I am

Just remember that - when things get tough, you are doing it to help others. Thank you for the links, I'm going through them and find them really eye opening- I have to say, agree with many things InvisibleDragon writes about above x

I spent some time in the late 80's - early 90's with Atlantis ('The Screamers') during the time they were selling off their property in Donegal and finalising their move to Colombia.

I loved the island and I loved the self-sufficiency stuff. They really were very good at that and I learned a lot of practical skills from them which I have found extremely useful ever since.

I never experienced the full force of the therapy side of things, nobody had primal screaming sessions while I was there. There was though a huge emphasis on 'having your feelings' - if someone was being snarky or passive-aggressive or moody they would be called out and encouraged to express their feelings directly with the person they were pissed off with so it didn't fester. There were frequent blazing rows which everyone was encouraged to witness and 'help with' (I was never sure how) and I found this quite frightening. But also it had never properly occurred to me before that it was OK to be angry and to say what I honestly felt and the world would not end. I'm grateful for that lesson as well as the practical skills. But mostly it was really bloody tedious. There would be some big community project planned like cutting turf or rebuilding a greenhouse and it just couldn't happen until everyone had 'had their feelings'.

They believed in traditional gender roles. There were no restrictions on what anybody of either sex did but the kind of work traditionally assigned to women - child rearing, cooking, cleaning, laundry, making a nice home etc. was very highly valued and there was a definite belief that women were better at these things and that men should focus on the jobs that most needed physical strength.

They had no doubt about who was male and who was female. They had had trans visitors in the past and were not fans because they saw it as false and artificial. They also recognised AGP when they saw it although they obviously didn't use that term back then. They were fine with men wearing skirts, make up etc. to explore their 'feminine' feelings, as long as they did it as men.

I once had tea at the Silver Sisters's house in Burtonport. I think it was 'Miss Martindale' who met us. I had just tagged along with someone who had an appointment with them about the property, which was still owned by Atlantis - can't remember whether it was about the sale of the property or SS's massive rent arrears, probably both. I was briefed on the way that this was a lesbian victorian spanking fetish thing, possibly a brothel, and that they were really quite weird and unhealthy. The whole situation seemed very sad. The house was very cold and unheated and this woman appeared to be living there on her own with massive rent arrears and no income. I got the impression they had very few visitors. Turns out victorian spanking RP is a peculiarly English fetish. Who knew? She wasn't in victorian dress when I met her but she was still very obviously playing a role. She came across as false but also brittle, as if the whole charade might fall to bits at any moment.

I can confidently say that the only link between the two groups was that when Atlantis moved to the island they rented the house on the mainland to the Silver Sisters. Atlantis were very scathing about their tenants because they didn't approve of kink - they saw it as a way of avoiding connecting with the person you were having sex with. Almost undoubtedly this property deal would have come about through an ad in Communes Network, a publication that went out to loads of 'intentional communities' as well as individuals interested in joining or forming one. You'll probably find rich pickings in old CN newsletters if you can find them, also in the yearly 'Diggers and Dreamers' directory.

Other things:

Atlantis had an old signed letter from Arthur Janov disowning their version of primal therapy and asking them to stop it. They kept the letter because they found it very funny.

Snowy James is definitely not 'Miss Martindale', she had nothing to do with the Silver Sisters. Snowy had already gone to Colombia by the time I was there. She's pictured here (right) with Jenny (left) on the steps of the house in Burtonport:

victorpatterson.photoshelter.com/image?&_bqG=1&_bqH=eJxLcQ4pdkoNMXXxLk8z9AvL003Mz3J0TDIM9Mi2MrYyNDAAYSDpGe8S7GwbnJdfXqntlZibWqwGFol39HOxLQGyQ4Ndg.I9XWxDQaotk83LApMTw_M8ktXiHZ1DbItTE4uSMwDybiEZ&GI_ID=

Atlantis grew out of a group called People Not Psychiatry which was based in London in the early 70's, I think this was also led by Jenny James. They moved first to the house in Burtonport, then to the island of Innisfree, then to Colombia. They also had a big sailing boat (a Norwegian Ketch) in Baltimore called the Atlantis Adventure. It needed a lot of work doing but the plan was for the remaining people in Ireland to sail across the Atlantic and join those in Colombia. As far as I know that plan didn't happen, I think the cost of restoring the boat just grew and grew and in the end they cut their losses and flew out.

I don't know if they're still going. Their website is still up but it hasn't been updated for a few years:

www.macsuibhne.com/atlantis/atlantis2.html

I can't see anything on there now about therapy or primal screaming. I think they were moving away from that stuff when I encountered them over 3 decades ago. Their 'How to get here' page has a summary of their current philosophy (if they're still going) which rings true from what I know about them:

www.macsuibhne.com/atlantis/directions.html

FARC kidnapped and brutally murdered Jenny's grandson and another young commune member. The Green Letters on the above website have lots of details about what happened. I haven't read the letters in depth and I don't know much about Colombian politics but I have heard that just being foreign was sometimes enough to get you killed.

You might consider Atlantis a cult but having thought about it a lot over the years, I honestly don't think they were, I think they were just a hippy commune with some strange ideas. There was never pressure to join or to stay, it was fine to disagree about things and have a normal discussion or argument. Nobody was really in charge and the only hard rules were no meat and no tobacco. They had good relationships with lots of ex-members and they had lots of short and long term visitors. They never asked for money but everyone was expected to help out with practical work.

OTOH a fair few people had a thoroughly bad time there and relationship breakdowns were common. I don't believe there's anything particularly sinister about this. I think it's just not a very good idea, on balance, to express exactly what you think and feel, all the time, to everyone around you.

I haven't seen any evidence that they or any of their members were part of any controversial networks, the only links they seem to have formed were with local environmental campaigns. I visited a few other intentional communities around the same time and the word was that Atlantis were a bit weird but but kept themselves to themselves.

Not rtft as there's so much of it but am intrigued by cults as have vulnerable parents who've been involved with them on and off since I was a baby. Much abuse at the hands of them.
Interesting to see you mention Atlantis, with all your cult knowledge in sure you must know about Ramtha and the leader now who's body is a vessel for the voice and teachings of Ramtha who, from what I can gather, lived thousands of years of years ago in Atlantis. They seem to be on a par with scientology in terms of the cost of being in their insane posse.

@InvisibleDragon

hoodathunkit thank you for this thread. I haven't read all of your links yet, but seeing the association between XR and some of these very dubious organisations is helping me to understand some of the weird mind-fucks of my years in climate activism (was well out of it by the time XR came along, but still in touch with some people who were very keen participants).

Some indoctrinative things that I saw, or that I have heard about from other people:

• Consensus decision making: it looks weird from the outside, so familiarity with the process is used as a bit of a shibboleth. The idea that a consensus is possible for every decision can be exploited to push someone's boundaries by implying that they are unreasonable for not moving to a middle ground position. Achieving consensus is a public process, so dissent is obvious. This serves both to shut down dissent, as disagreeing is transgressive, and to marginalise people who raise concerns.
• Alongside consensus processes are the informal processes. You can't actually organise anything by consensus on an open meeting, so major decisions really get made outside of the public process and then presented for the group to agree on. However, this conflicts with the fundamental (anarchist) organising principles of the group, so the existence of these informal processes is publicly denied - this can also be used to discredit people who try to use informal processes to raise concerns. As soon as there's a problem, the complainant must do everything publicly, whilst the accused can continue to pull strings behind the scenes.
• Informal hierarchies: like I said in my previous post, lots of the activists I knew had been in multiple movements before the ones I was involved with. They knew and trusted each other from previous actions and often sat at the top of informal hierarchies, running the informal organising processes. Status could also be quickly earned by getting involved in organising (not just taking part in) illegal actions. People who didn't do this were seen as lightweight dilettantes and not really committed. That meant that gaining power in the group was associated with taking big personal risks that bound you tightly to other high-status group members. There were also some long-standing members who lived on the status of their prior involvement and pushed newer, younger members into stupid, risky things they privately said they would never do themselves.
• Normal rules don't apply: if you are planning on taking part in something illegal or borderline illegal, you will not go to the police if something bad happens to you, because ACAB, right? (I genuinely think that this narrative contributes to the low percentage of sexual assaults being reported to police)
• Normal social rules also don't apply. Many activists I knew rejected various oppressive systems, such as capitalism and patriarchy. But that can also be exploited to push boundaries. Monogamy was also seen as oppressive; objecting to pornography was uptight and middle class. And somehow it was always the women being accused of being judgemental and bourgeois ...
• Boundary blurring: the group became someone's whole social circle. People lived together (sometimes in low-rent housing collectives), they worked/studied together and took part in activist activities together (direct action, but also reading groups, zine making, vegan baking etc - all niche activities populated by the same clique of people). That creates a social echo chamber because you hang out with the same people all the time and police each others' politics for transgression. It also creates a huge social penalty for leaving / dissent because your whole life and identity is now bound up with this activism.
• Class hierarchies: Being middle class or posh was seen as a bad thing, and was used to discredit objections to abusive behaviours. However to really be an activist you had to have some source of income. Quite a lot of the long-standing group members had wealthy backgrounds that gave them the means to dip in and out of professional careers, hire equipment, travel to actions and organise parties and social events. It also have them a safety net if anything went really wrong and connections to the professional liberal world if they wanted to step back from the gritty stuff. Activism was a role they could take on and off as convenient. That was not the case for people they exploited, who had no such professional connections and had isolated themselves from other support networks.
• constant tone and language policing. Constant checking up on your political positions. Not a vegan? Lose points. Voted Labour? Why are you here? Voted at all? Suspect. Buying the wrong products (Nestlé? Coke?), eating the wrong foods, reading the wrong authors, using the wrong words ("okay guys" ??? Educate yourself, please. We're not here to educate you) - mistakes were noticed and commented on publicly. The overall effect was a total chilling of discourse and a fall-back to nostrums and platitudes (sounds familiar?).

Yikes, when I write it all out like that it sounds very culty indeed. Horrible environment overall. The effect of the language policing is taking the longest to wash away - I still find myself checking if my opinions are appropriate and waiting for confirmation that I'm allowed to think something. All from a "social movement" that was banging on about "safe spaces policies" more than 10 years ago.

A really good post. I am noticing a lot of movements becoming almost mainstream now, xr a prime example of hiding in plain site. We have a cult near us masquerading as wholesome vegan restaurants, a Google search found they're linked to another 'group' from the 80s, in a different guise and they contributed to some awful abusive behaviour to me as a child. This thread is great. Thanks @hoodathunkit I remember you from another thread too, you're a great and thorough researcher. I hope all this work is cathartic for you as well as awareness raising for others.

[quote hoodathunkit]Thge far right influence is also intersting to me

intersted readers may find this article helpful

The Sunday Telegraph, 3rd January 1993

Neo-Nazi leaflets found in gracious ladies' academy where caning was on the curriculum

Inside the secret world of the sisters of St Bride's

by Richard Pendry and Helena de Bertodano

<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200229175659/www.worldofspectrum.org/interviews2/stbrides-st930103.txt" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">web.archive.org/web/20200229175659/www.worldofspectrum.org/interviews2/stbrides-st930103.txt[/quote]
This is an interesting article.

It wasn't just a few leaflets that were found:

Anne Barr, 36, and Mary Kelly, 40, found material produced by neo-Nazi organisations and the sado-masochistic sex industry. Anti-Semitic periodicals from all over the world lay in piles on the floor, alongside fetishistic magazines featuring women in gas masks and suspenders and price lists for equipment such as handcuffs and leg-irons. Titles strewn around included National Front News and the British National Party's Spearhead ...

Most surprising, among letters from Irish farmers enquiring whether bondage and domination were on offer at the academy, was evidence of a two-year correspondence from the British National Party leader, John Tyndall, who seems to have found much in common with the sisters' dislike of the present and who put them on the mailing list for the BNP magazine Spearhead.

A woman calling herself Laetitia Linden Dorvf ... denied that the sisters had links with the publications found in their house. "We do not endorse any of them as they are all collaborating with the degeneration of the late 20th century. We simply receive them as part of an exchange subscription. One of our girls was in correspondence with the National Front and we may have a copy of National Front News in St Bride's.".

It's true that it was possible back then to end up on the wrong mailing list and receive the odd dodgy flyer through the post but nobody received piles of antisemitic journals from all over the world (and kept them!) or corresponded with the leader of the BNP for two years unless it was deliberate.

So there can be no doubt that 'Miss Martindale' was sympathetic to fascism.

The article also explains the relationship between Atlantis and the Silver Sisters:

The landlords say they attempted to regain possession of the property after the sisters stopped paying the rent. Over Christmas, two members of the Atlantis Therapy Commune, who own the property, climbed in through a window ... The house in St Bride's was bought by the Atlantis commune - known locally as "The Screamers" - in the 1970s to use as a base for their primal screaming therapy. After complaints from the neighbours about the noise, they moved to an island off the coast and let the house to Miss Tyrrell. Anne Barr says they were originally sympathetic to the sisters because they were women and seemed to be a bona fide community.

This fits with what I was told and witnessed while I was there. Atlantis were Silver Sisters' landlords and that's about it. When SS took on the property they presented themselves as a pagan goddess community, into the 14th century and making their own musical instruments and clogs - i.e. weird but mostly harmless. At some point during their tenancy they inexplicably morphed into a victorian school spanking fetish club and then some time later they stopped paying rent. Eventually Atlantis evicted them.

I knew both Anne and Mary. I didn't always get on with either of them but they always struck me as very upfront, honest women. I believe their account of what they found and I have no doubt they were shocked and disgusted by it.

I'm just resurrecting this old thread to let people know there's a BBC NI podcast about the silver sisters available here:

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001dd9q

Not much new info (and a couple of clangers) but it includes a hard to listen to interview with the woman who was assaulted by 'Miss Martindale' as well as an interview with MM herself.

One interesting snippet: Miss Martindale knew Snowy James from years back when they were in a consciousness raising group together and was briefly a member of the screamers (I got the impression this was before they moved to Ireland and became Atlantis).

Hope you're keeping well @hoodathunkit

Watch Wild Wild Country is now on Netflix, its an eye opener watching how people got entangled and were so convinced they were right they ended up using hundreds of homeless people .
I wonder where everyone went after it disbanded? The cult followers as well as the homeless.
www.netflix.com/nl-en/title/80145240

''I understand how good it feels to find a teacher who sees you.'' written by a woman who escaped a yoga cult.
www.huffpost.com/entry/hbo-the-vow-living-in-a-cult_n_5f8e4dd2c5b67da85d20f875

Wild Wild Country is staggering- it takes a long slow time to unfold but your jaw will be on the floor once the shit hits the fan.