How China's Government Uses Foreign Influencers to Spread Propaganda
The government of the Peopleâs Republic China (PRC) keeps a firm grip on its domestic media landscape, but it is also trying to shape public opinion abroad through a network of foreign influencers.
These are social media personalities who have millions of followers and endorse pro-PRC narratives on platforms such as YouTube, TikTok and Weibo.
A new report by Fergus Ryan, Daria Impiombato andâŠ
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Satanic Panic
I saw a post about Satanic Panic, so I felt the need to write an overview of what actually happened for those who donât know.
What is Satanic Panic?
Satanic Panic can be viewed as either part of the Memory Wars or as an entirely separate entity. If viewed as aligned with the False Memory movement, it might be seen as proof of False Memories and a near complete lack of the existence of ritual abuse. The other takes Satanic Panic as still harmful, but removes the blame from those claiming to have experienced it.
I believe that a crucial part of enabling healing is giving survivors the benefit of the doubt. People who are speaking out about abuse might be doing so for the first time, and are particularly vulnerable to disbelief even if they have told their story before. Talking about maltreatment takes a lot of courage, especially when a stigma already exists around the topic.
Fundie Satanism
That said, the Satanic Panic was weaponized by Christian groups expecting to gain power from it. Some genuinely believed Satanic Ritual Abuse was a primary concern, others knew it was only a face for the politics.
Fundamentalist groups wanted to have the kind of attention they were no longer getting, and the instatement of mandated reporter laws and influx of unsupervised children gave them a fighting cause. They saw that child abuse was becoming popular in media, and they used it as leverage to frighten well-meaning folks into their way of thinking.
Satanic was the word for non-Christian, and Christians were quick to disown anything that hinted at rot within their own organization. Christianity was still popular, and nobody wanted to believe they could be involved with a group that caused harm. So they took any religious abuse, and some non-religious abuses, and slapped Satanic on it.
Satanic Ritual Abuse
Ritual abuse refers to maltreatment that is both standardized and associated with symbols or ideologies. At the time, many kinds of organized (involving multiple perpetrators and victims) and/or coercive (intentionally manipulative) abuse were grouped under that name. Extreme abuse was also called ritual abuse, and we still donât have a solid definition for that one.
Given that all ritual abuse would have been considered Satanic, fundies basically screwed over anyone who was abused in this specific way. Ritual abuse as we know it now did and does happen. An abuser doesnât have to believe in their symbolism or ideology to misuse it, and many forms of religion and other structured beliefs can be applied to hurt and intimidate people.
RAMCOA
Ritual Abuse, Mind Control, and Organized Abuse are grouped together under a metric ton of buzz words. The survivors of this collection of abuses are left with research that is out of date, chock full of misinformation, and unable to communicate with people outside of the community.
I know the words are conspiratorial. I get that the books have fear-mongering content. I need people to understand that there is no better option, and pretending bad things donât happen doesnât make them go away.
Government Mind Control
Mind control is manipulation with intent. Coercion. Using psychology to get your way. Implanting false memories would be mind control. Again, it doesnât sound good because cultural contexts have evolved over time and clinical language for this kind of abuse has not. Not all mind control is abusive at all. McDonaldâs using targeted ads is mind control. But also training children like dogs is mind control.
There have been government-sponsored projects on mind control. There probably still are. Governments do sketchy things like that for military advancement and because they donât face consequences, and there was a time where government employees admitted to it. Similar to McDonaldâs and their hot coffee campaign, there were some strategic moves to look better to newcomers.
The government has sponsored lots of things they donât want to acknowledge, and people are still suffering the effects. People in poverty, black and brown communities, and so on can probably agree that government is not synonymous with benevolent.
One of the things the government did was talk to criminal organizations. I donât know if this is news to anyone, but it was a good way to get information and resources. There were wartime experiments on drugs and interrogation, and those were mind control.
Enough survivors agree about their experiences that it doesnât seem worthwhile to dismiss them, so until thereâs better information we would do well to try to understand them. You donât have to agree full heartedly to sit with people in their own stories.
Cult Mind Control
I would describe a cult as any group that uses unhealthy practices as a defining feature of their cultural norms. Not everyone agrees on what is or isnât a cult, and that mostly fine. This is the definition Iâm using because it makes the most sense to me in context.
Cults members are not the only ones to use or receive mind control tactics, but the post I saw mentions cults this way. The specific technique is called Trauma Based Mind Control, which is the application of psychological responses to danger and overwhelm for the purposes of an abuser.
TBMC is the primary method for what the RAMCOA survivor community calls programming. Programming is the use of cues associated with PTSD triggers to achieve a desired response in a subject. When programming is done to a small child (under age 6-12, depending on the source), a common response is Dissociative Identity Disorder.
HC-DID
Abusers create alternate self-states within one body to react to the cues given. Depending on how knowledgeable the perpetrator(s) is/are, a child might have a very structured system of alters with little control allocated to them. These systems are designed by and for abusers to create long term obedient subjects.
Not every DID system is formed this way. Most are naturally developed with the induction of trauma in a childâs life. Some organic systems have complex structures anyway, but not for anyone but themselves. These systems are polyfragmented, or C-DID systems.
The level of control and organization found within a programmed system is almost always more than those found in organic systems. In the RAMCOA community, this is called HC-DID. The key difference isnât true complexity, but the type of prerequisites to qualify.
Highly Complex DID isnât particularly difficult to groom in a child, but it does require intent. Cult groups, as well as other high control groups, are quite capable of figuring it out by sheer cruelty and observation.
Why Does It Matter?
Making blanket statements about what abuse is and isnât real doesnât actually help anyone. While people prone to worry who didnât experience RAMCOA might feel temporarily safer, itâs likely theyâll figure out they were lied to.
People who did experience it struggle with doubt and disbelief from others, and may have been told that nobody would care. This field is still considered taboo, and there are victims of torture and adjacent who are ashamed or afraid because of the state of the larger population.
I survived RAMCOA. My family and friends survived RAMCOA. Not all of my friends survived RAMCOA. Watch yourself.
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^^^ from @visegrad24
The Communist Party government of China does everything possible to suppress information about the events of June 4, 1989. Even the number 64 (as in June 4th) is treated as suspicious by government censors.
How China Is Wiping Memories of Tiananmen Square off the Internet
But no matter how hard the authorities try to hide history, some people in China do manage to learn about the massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators.
Chinaâs young netizens share how they learned about 1989 Tiananmen Massacre Â
The events which led up to the massacre.
Timeline: What Led to the Tiananmen Square Massacre
Censoring history is a practice which Ron DeSantis has picked up from Chinese Communists.
Historical Erasure Is Dangerous for Democracy. A New Florida Law Would Erode Studentsâ Fundamental Right to Learn History Accurately.
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The Chinese journalist whoâs been writing about Uyghur people
âUyghurs are working in factories that are in the supply chains of at least 82 well-known global brands in the technology, clothing and automotive sectors, including Apple, BMW, Gap, Huawei, Nike, Samsung, Sony and Volkswagen.â - Uyghurs For Sale
Vicky Xu was born and raised in China. She thought the Tiananmen Square massacre was fake and she used to be very nationalistic, often standing up for the CCP. Now, she has been writing about the oppression and cultural genocide Uyghur people have been experiencing for years. In this tweet, she talks about her experience and why she was driven to do investigative journalism on human rights abuses in China, particularly Xinjiang.Â
https://mobile.twitter.com/xu_xiuzhong/status/1377527819715010561
(I wonât be translating her thread word for word but Iâll translate some quotes and also the gist of the thread)Â
Afficher davantage
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