Classic example of the logic of cults


I mean, how could I not read a story with the title, White nationalist ‘America First’ group plunges into chaos after high-ranking official gets a girlfriend? It’s the most pungent kind of clickbait. It seems Nick Fuentes, that unbelievable cartoon of a man, is in disarray over the fact that one of his employees has done something fairly normal.

The America First movement has plunged into turmoil after its treasurer started a romantic relationship and moved out of the group leader’s basement.

Somehow, I could have guessed someone was going to be living in someone else’s basement somewhere in the story.

White nationalist Nick Fuentes, the right-wing group’s leader and associate of Reps. Paul Gosar and Marjorie Taylor Greene, urges his followers to abstain from sex, and he describes himself as an incel, or involuntarily celibate.

This led the nonprofit group’s treasurer Jaden McNeil to resign and call America First a cult, reported The Daily Beast’s “Fever Dreams” podcast.

“[Members act so] racist and ridiculous in public that it ruins people’s lives,” said co-host Kelly Weill on the podcast. “You can’t go and get a normal job after that, so they turn further and further into this movement, which really does function almost like a cult.”

The fact that Gosar and Greene, who have a modicum of power and influence, are entangled with Nick Fuentes, is revealing about the sad state of American politics. How can anyone in the halls of power take this guy seriously?

That last paragraph, though, explains a lot. America First is openly and loudly racist, and its members have openly slapped that stigma on their records. This is how cults start: throw out one absurdity for your followers to accept, watch as the majority walk away, but the ones who stay…give ’em another absurdity. Then another. And another. You’ve got the few so deeply hooked that you can get them to do whatever you want. Tell your followers that you translated the holy book by staring at magic rocks in a hat, and if they swallow that, you can load ’em up into a wagon train and go found a city in the middle of nowhere. Fuentes is such a patently hateful fool that his followers have to be committed to stick by him, not by virtue of the quality of his arguments, but because they’re so stupid that admitting that leads to an exposure of their gullibility.

By the way, this also explains how Michelle Malkin has ended up associated with this group. She’s been making horrible choices for many years — justifying the internment of Asian Americans in WWII just one of them — so of course she has sorted herself to the bottom of the dumpster.

Comments

  1. Matt G says

    You should be voluntarily involuntarily celibate. Makes sense.

    Also: I can’t get laid so you shouldn’t either.

  2. dianne says

    White nationalist Nick Fuentes…urges his followers to abstain from sex, and he describes himself as an incel, or involuntarily celibate.

    So he doesn’t want his followers to have the freedom to do something that he can’t? Very libertarian.

  3. jo1storm says

    Another way to put the article title “Man saved from the clutches of hate cult by the power of love” but that is not nearly as politically charged or snappy.

  4. mordred says

    When I read the headline, I assumed the problem was a not sufficiently white girlfriend. But “no girls allowed in the cub”? Seriously, most boys grow out of that phase long before they turn adult…

  5. Owlmirror says

    He could have gone with Man Going His Own Way, but “involuntarily” makes it sound like his freedoms are being deliberately trampled on. By women, of course. It’s implicit finger-pointing. Blame and shame every single female who deliberately refuses to date him, with malice aforethought. They’re practically forcing him to be celibate.

    Or in other words, it’s all about the misogyny.

  6. Akira MacKenzie says

    I’ve had the misfortune to listen to some of Fuentes’ spiel on the Knowledge Fight podcast. Dis-gusting. When he’s wasn’t bashing nonwhites and immigrants, he was threatening the LGBTQ community. When he wasn’t doing that, he was pissing on women and screaming about premarital sex. The little shit needs… something civility won’t let me post here.

  7. christoph says

    “Tell your followers that you translated the holy book by staring at magic rocks in a hat…”
    Jeez, everyone knows you need magic glasses to decipher a holy book.

  8. says

    White nationalist Nick Fuentes, the right-wing group’s leader and associate of Reps. Paul Gosar and Marjorie Taylor Greene, urges his followers to abstain from sex, and he describes himself as an incel, or involuntarily celibate.

    So…the cult leader doesn’t get any, so he tells his followers not to try to get any as well? That’s pathetic on more levels than any choice one-liner can ever cover.

    It’s like, he’s telling his followers that he’s a loser so they all have to be losers as well. And he’s basically inviting them to rub his nose in his losership, because any one of them who actually finds a girlfriend will have no choice but to all-but-explicitly say “Hey, Dear Leader, I’m in a nice relationship now, so I guess I just have to quit and blow you off! See ya!”

    PS: Can’t that sad sack even get a date with Lauren Boebert or MTG? They have so much in common!

  9. Rich Woods says

    You’ve got the few so deeply hooked that you can get them to do whatever you want. Tell your followers that you translated the holy book by staring at magic rocks in a hat, and if they swallow that, you can load ’em up into a wagon train and go found a city in the middle of nowhere.

    Or decide you’re already in the Promised Land and just tell them who to go and kill.

  10. muttpupdad says

    I have found that it isn’t so much the glasses are magic as what liquid I put into them that makes it easier to read anything dealing with religion.

  11. Pierce R. Butler says

    Akira MacKenzie @ # 9: I’m sure this is just another one of Salon’s attempts to whitewash the image of theism and religion by playing “No True Scotsman” games.

    Read the damn article, willya? Kathryn Joyce does much of the best reporting on the right wing in the USA.

  12. PaulBC says

    Do they meet in a treehouse with a “No Girls Allowed” sign on the door? Reading the first fews lines, I had to double check that this wasn’t satire. It reads more the The Onion than Rawstory.

  13. Akira MacKenzie says

    @ 12

    I have read the article. I referring to what obviously implied in the headline, and Salon’s past editorial policy of pissing on atheists.

  14. unclefrogy says

    well I guess I have found who I would suggest be our first “volunteers” for the mars colony. they are already half way there.

  15. gijoel says

    I call bullshit on Fuentes celibacy claim. He’s fucking his female, and probably male, cult members for sure.