News
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
view the rest of the comments
That's a myth perpetuated by Christian mums during the satanic panic. Back in the 60s the hippie movement was in full swing and young people were abandoning Christianity to follow pagan religions like Wicca and Hellenism. Christian pastors felt threatened, so they came up with a conspiracy to take the word cult (which up until then had meant a small religion) and make it a bad word by association with abuse. That's why all the historical examples of cults that predate the 60s have no association with abuse. You take an example like the Cult of Dionysus and there's no pejorative meaning to the word.
I don't think it's a myth if it has become an area of study. Yes, words have different meanings like "theory" does in and out of academia, but the current understanding of the word is much more comprehensive than a small religion. And MAGA is most definitely a cult of personality that uses religion as a tool.
You can do science on any made up word and reach genuine conclusions with flawed premises. Look at phrenology and scientific racism. If you ignore the question "is this thing real?" and skip straight to "what are the associations with this thing", you'll find something. It'll be nonsense, but it'll be there.
For example, suppose I look at the habits of clowns and roofers. I don't question why clowns and roofers are associated, I just assume they are and check the data. The data I find will be the overlay of two different trends. I'll reach all sorts of conclusions about clowns that are only true of roofers, and vice versa. The data will say clowns love a good beer after being outdoors all day, and roofers visit party stores a lot. That's nonsense, but if I don't question the association, the data will show it.
Associating small religions with abusive religions is the same mistake. The data will tell you all sorts of things about small and abusive religions, but it won't tell you which trend belongs to which group, and people will make all sorts of wrong assumptions based on the wacky data.
Yep, science has churned out some whacky stuff before. But what? So you're saying that the study of non-religious or coincidentally religious cults as a means to exploit and control is pure made-up nonsense? That's kind of wild to me considering how characteristic and consistent their modus operandi is. MAGA fits the bill so well, for example, that I have a hard time believing they don't exist. And I'd like to hear some opinions from people in the know, like Daniella Mestyanek from the link above, who you're essentially saying her entire field of study is based on a lie.