Newsletter: Staying Strong: Connect with Trustworthy People and Build Community!
It’s Vital to Connect In Real Life and Stay Focused on What We Can Do
We apologize for not being able to send out our newsletter on Tuesday. Life happens.
This week’s livestream will be today, Wednesday, October 1st, at 2-3 p.m. EDT. Last week’s livestream was a great success; you can see the recording here if you missed it.
Mormonism is all over the news. Coincidentally, this week’s episode of my newly rebranded podcast, Cults, Culture & Coercion, “Irene’s Entropy: Coffee as Courage and Ritual as Repair,” is with a talented ex-member of the LDS Church. I talk with Irene, a mechanical engineer turned musician, storyteller, pilot, and entrepreneur. Raised in a strict Mormon household, she undertook a recruitment mission and left in her early twenties. She also interviewed me for her podcast, Golf With Irene, and that video just went live last Thursday. I’m sure you’ll want to check out both conversations! You can listen to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Of course, the video of my interview with Irene is on our YouTube channel and below:
In next week’s episode, “The Girl with the Duck Tattoo,” I speak with Sarma Melngailis, whose story was misrepresented in the Netflix documentary, Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives. This exploitative documentary was painfully inaccurate, leading to media distortion and public shaming of Sarma, who is a survivor of a highly manipulative and controlling relationship, which led to her regrettable circumstances. I interviewed her in 2022 to set the record straight, and she returns now to update us on what she’s been doing, as well as to discuss her new book, The Girl with the Duck Tattoo. The video of our talk is available in advance for our YouTube members, so now is an excellent time to become a YouTube channel member!
Yesterday, we posted a special members-only post for our paid Substack subscribers, “The Virus Sickening Anti-Vaxxers.” RFK Jr. is doing so much harm with his MAHA agenda. The psychological warfare propaganda is so harmful. So we wanted to write a blog about discarding science. We need to help people who will listen to us from spiraling deeper into fear-mongering, destructive influence echo chambers. MAHA poses a significant public health problem. I view the recent lies about Autism and Tylenol and the anti-vaccine movement through a lens of undue influence. This is an important piece you won’t want to miss, so if you aren’t already a paid subscriber, now is an excellent time to become one.
My monthly article in Psychology Today, “When High Control Politics Meet High Capacity Firepower,” explores how recent events have demonstrated a dangerous convergence of heated political rhetoric and the easy availability of powerful weaponry. It also highlights that the “lone wolf” argument, often used to explain politically motivated shootings, overlooks crucial factors such as radicalization. With authoritarians crafting aggressive political narratives, raising the risk of violent acts, we must remember that violence only leads to more violence. Now, more than ever, we must strive for community and unity, rejecting “us-versus-them” thinking.
Last week, the Cult Chat podcast, which is based “down under,” posted. I spoke to hosts Dr. Caroline Ansley, Lindy Jacomb, and Liz Gregory. We discussed cult apologists, and I gave my 49-year perspective on these disingenuous sociologists who deny brainwashing, who say we shouldn’t use the word “cult” but instead use the term“new religious movements.” For any activists, talking about the propaganda that minimizes survivor voices and cult critics causes grave harm- especially to those people still trapped in the cult. High-profile cult apologists are given a platform to speak at academic conferences whose goal is to examine the harms of cults. This is part one of our discussion; watch this space for part two!
I was also interviewed on the Seneca Project’s Welcome to the Stakes podcast. Hosts Tara Setmayer and Michelle Kinney invited me to speak about my book, Cult of Trump, and how Christian Dominionism is shaping our political landscape. We had a fascinating discussion, and I’m sure you’ll want to tune in.
Irene of Irene’s Entropy is a mechanical engineer turned musician, storyteller, pilot, and entrepreneur. Raised in a strict Mormon household where she underwent the experience of a recruitment mission, she left in her early 20s. She began documenting the honest rebuild of her identity as Irene’s Entropy. Her work blends songs, narrative, and a recurring symbol, a red door, through which she “walks” whenever she’s ready to learn and change. She calls her audience Door Walkers, and even launched Door Walker Coffee, a liberating nod to the Mormons’ coffee prohibition.
Read the blog post or listen to the podcast, below:
Recent events have demonstrated a dangerous convergence of heated political rhetoric and the easy availability of powerful weaponry. The targeted assassination of political figures and commentators is rising. The impact of such acts on society’s sense of safety and democratic norms is profound. As fear and fury increasingly mix with firearms, it’s critical to examine how we got here and how we can respond.
As someone who has spent decades studying undue influence and cultic movements, I view the anti-vaccine movement through the lens of undue influence. When I see charismatic leaders shaping health policy through information manipulation, fear appeals, and identity politics, I recognize a powerful echo chamber of destructive influence and a significant public health problem.
Read the paid subscriber article now!
As always, please let us know what you think about these pieces or what you’d like to see us discuss in the future. Thanks so much!
Dear Dr Hassan, thank you for all that you work on and illuminate. I get the importance of raising awareness about undue influence indirectly to help folks come around to authentic conclusions about reality for themselves. That said, I really think it's time to talk about the cult around a certain rogue ethnostate that has so many of our representatives well bought and paid for, crossing all party lines, and not just in the states! We're seeing the effect of silence in real time. Never again! Thank you.
Dr. Hassan, I respect and trust you as an expert in your field, not to mention as a fine human being. Keep up the good work! I’m behind you all the way.