Why subscribe?

On resisting cults, quacks and abusive partners. This is a place to discuss breaking free and making change in the world. It is a place to rediscover your personal power and to laugh at the people making money trying to scare you.

Technology, people and politics keeps us wrapped in the same bubble of feeling powerless. The manipulative techniques for cults, gangs, human trafficking and abusive partners are the same. The digital age has made it worse. After years of reading, I want to share preventative education to the best of my ability. There is very little on the topic of resisting these techniques being written.

Subscribe to get all my articles, which will be published once a week. I am not going to have a separate website right now. Some of the articles will be free, some won’t. The more hard-hitting and personal information will be for subscribers only. The cost of subscription will be deliberately low to tempt the doubtful. Maybe I should sell T-shirts? Or mind-busting stickers? All I know is I am inordinately fond of the compound adjective.

What This Newsletter Gets You

I don’t want to bill this creation as an adrenaline-fueled chance to become like Beyonce on a budget, but for the mind. There is no frenzied opportunity that will pass like a fart in the wind. This newsletter seeks to discuss a mental framework for resisting what is called “totalist” systems and bad persuasions. It seeks to create in its readers a stronger sense of self, of thought, of choices. We will never sell supplements or magic sticks. No purchase can give you the mental tools you need. But we will make obnoxious stickers available for sale, just to keep our critics busy. When I get to it.

The Reading List

After over 30 years in recovery, extensive research into coercive control, and creating a comic book for pre-teens to avoid online exploitation, there are a few ideas I’d like to share with you. I’ve read most of these books as part of a self-study the last few years:

My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me – A Black Woman Discovers Her Family’s Nazi Past, by Jennifer Teege and Nikola Sellmair

Terror, Love and Brainwashing – Attachment in Cults and Totalitarian Systems, by Alexandra Stein

The Language of the Third Reich, by Victor Klemperer

You Are Now Less Dumb – How To Buy Happiness, And All the Other Ways To Outsmart Yourself, by David McRaney

The City -  London and the Global Power of Finance, by Tony Norfield

Antisemitism – Part One Of The Origins Of Totalitarianism, by Hannah Arendt

Predators - Pedophiles, Raptists, and Other Sex Offenders, by Anna C. Salter, Ph.D.

A Brief History of Fascist Lies, by Federico Finchelstein

Rendezvous with Oblivion, by Thomas Frank

Combating Cult Mind Control, by Steven Hassan

The Power of the Powerless, by Vaclav Havel

The Russian Revolution, by Leon Trotsky

The Revolution Betrayed, by Leon Trotsky

The Division of Light and Power, by Dennis Kucinich

The Coming of the Third Reich, by Richard J. Evans

Der Desinformant, by Horst Kopp

Yes! – 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive, by Noah J. Goldstein, Steve J. Martin and Robert B. Cialdini

On Tyranny – Twenty Lessons From The Twentieth Century, by Timothy Snyder

How Fascism Works – The Politics of Us and Them, by Jason Stanley

The Dictator’s Handbook – Why Bad Behavior Is Almost Always Good Politics, by Bruce Bueno De Mesquita and Alastair Smith

Rising out of hatred – the awakening of a former white nationalist, by Eli Saslow.

Join the crew

Let’s create a community. Let’s travel together in this scary world.

To find out more about the company that provides the tech for this newsletter, visit Substack.com. Or don’t.