"If America Fails?: The Coming Tyranny" ::: Examining "The Handmaid’s Tale". . .the fictional story that explores the real potential of the U.S. as a failed state.
@ASoulAFire @JaniceOCG @MMFlint interviewed @SDonziger, a lawyer who defended Mother Earth & now needs our support. The bizarre facts of this case of “corporate prosecution” remind me of how criminal justice is approached in @HandmaidsOnHulu. Join “If America Fails?: The Coming Tyranny,” Thursdays at 8 pm ET, beginning January, 2022.
In The Handmaid’s Tale, a form of a criminal justice system does exist, dubious as it is. For instance, after Serena was shot in Season 2, Episode 6, “First Blood,” Fred and a group of commanders took the accused out to the woods and shot him. Justice, really, is just a word – and largely dependent on one’s point of view.
In real life, standing up for Mother Earth and indigenous people is dangerous business – and essentially against corporate law – apparently. Sometimes, it gets you killed.
The case of Steven Donziger illustrates yet another approach to suppressing dissent – “corporate prosecution” or the use of private resources to punish the enemies of major corporations. Listen to Michael Moore’s interview of attorney Donziger, and see how you might help. This lawyer who successfully defended Mother Earth, needs our support.
Michael Moore asks us to speak out by, among other things, calling the U.S. Attorney General, Merrick Garland, on 202-514-2000 or writing the DOJ. — LMO
“Steven Donziger has spent the last 800 days under house arrest with a government tracking device around his ankle. His crime? Well, Donziger is the lawyer who successfully sued the oil giant Chevron on behalf of the people of Ecuador for deliberately discharging 16 billion gallons of toxic waste in the Ecuadorian Amazon between 1964 and 1992. Donziger and his colleagues succeeded and won a $9.5 billion judgment on behalf of the indigenous and poor communities of Ecuador in 2011. Chevron has yet to pay a dime on this judgement and instead, have brought this case to the friendly confines of the United States and turned Donziger, the person who successfully prosecuted them, into the one doing time. Mike is joined by Steven Donziger, live from his house arrest, to explain the Kafka-esque/Twilight Zone case in which Donziger is serving as the punching bag of corporate America, with the American people footing the bill. They discuss this bizarre and unprecedented case, his condition, and what we all must do to fight back.” — Rumble with Michael Moore
@ASoulAFire @JaniceOCG #ZaraZimbardo interviewed @AmandaMontell for @ciispubprograms on the issue of cults in our midst and her new book, Cultish. Good background on the pervasiveness of this issue. Join “If America Fails?: The Coming Tyranny,” Thursdays at 8 pm ET, beginning January, 2022.
There’s a sort of “cultish” quality to the people who bring Gilead to life in The Handmaid’s Tale. Where key actors in the new regime, Fred and Serena Joy Waterford, were booed in the U.S. and Serena was shot, by the time they are detained in Canada, disturbingly, they have developed a new group of pro-Gilead followers. (See Season 2, Episode 6, “First Blood” and Season 4, Episode 8, “Testimony”).
The word “cult” is thrown around a lot these days in the U.S., especially when trying to grasp whatever is going on with the Republican Party. Cults are also the subject of a new book – Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell. Below are excerpts from Montell’s interview with CIIS Public Programs host Zara Zimbardo. The women consider how our human needs for “community, meaning, purpose and ritual” may lead to vulnerability to cults, in the episode, “Amanda Montell: On Cults, Language, and Social Science.” — LMO
Here are a few excerpts from the transcript:
“What makes cults so intriguing and frightening? What makes them powerful? The reason why so many of us binge Manson documentaries by the dozen and fall down rabbit holes researching suburban moms gone QAnon is because we’re looking for a satisfying explanation for what causes people to join—and more importantly, stay in—extreme groups. We secretly want to know: could it happen to me? Author and journalist Amanda Montell’s argument is that, on some level, it already has.
“In this episode, CIIS professor, writer, and speaker Zara Zimbardo talks with author and journalist Amanda Montell about her latest book, Cultish, in which she argues that the key to manufacturing intense ideology, community, and us/them attitudes all comes down to language. Zara and Amanda discuss influence, the social science of cults, and how to recognize the language of fanaticism all around us…” — CIIS
“…when we are earnestly talking about spiritual groups, religious groups, socio-political groups, throwing around the cult accusation willy-nilly, it can really shut down conversations because nobody wants to be told you’re in a cult and if your ideologies and your group affiliations vastly differ from others who have equally strong ideologies and affiliations, that cult label is going to do nothing but increase and widen that rift.” — Amanda Montell
“…throwing around the cult accusation willy-nilly, it can really shut down conversations because nobody wants to be told you’re in a cult…”
— Amanda Montell
“…certain terms, certain concepts, certain kind of, like, ‘wink’ code words can create a kind of a warm community of shared understanding that can be liberatory, that can be in the service of healing or social change. And then those same terms can get wielded in a way that can be abusive, policing, or justifying this treatment for people who have become heavily, emotionally, psychologically, financially invested in whatever the community is, and the- I’m wondering if we could hang out for a bit with this concept of thought terminating clichés, coined by psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton in the early 60s because you returned to this again and again from different angles and from different contexts, what is a thought terminating cliché and how does it function, and how can we be sensitized to it, to them?” — Zara Zimbardo
“Yes. Well, this is one of the key elements of cultish language. It’s one of those things that once you become aware of it, you won’t be able to unhear it. So, a thought terminating cliché again, I wish I’d come up with it. It’s the perfect label for this phenomenon which you’ll find everywhere. Also known as a semantic stop sign. They’re these stock expressions that are easily memorized, easily repeated, and aimed at shutting down independent thinking or questioning. So, as you mentioned, questioning is the enemy number one for a cult. They’re trying to accomplish things that can’t be accomplished if people are allowed to express dissent and push back and weigh in individualistically on what’s going on. So, you need a robust glossary of thought terminating cliches to make sure people are not able to do that, to express that pushback.
“…a thought terminating cliché…Also known as a semantic stop sign. They’re these stock expressions that are easily memorized, easily repeated, and aimed at shutting down independent thinking or questioning…questioning is the enemy number one for a cult.”
— Amanda Montell
“So, examples of thought terminating cliches that we might hear in our everyday lives include things like ‘well, boys will be boys’. Or ‘well, everything happens for a reason’ or ‘you know, it is what it is. It’s all in God’s plan’ and expressions like that are really compelling because it’s work to think. And it’s a relief not to have to and they alleviate cognitive dissonance or the uncomfortable discord you feel in your mind when you’re holding two conflicting ideas in there and at the same time. So, let’s come up with some cultish examples and in those contexts, these can be a lot more destructive and nefarious.
“…examples of thought terminating cliches that we might hear in our everyday lives include things like ‘well, boys will be boys’. Or ‘well, everything happens for a reason’ or ‘you know, it is what it is. It’s all in God’s plan’”
— Amanda Montell
“So, in Synanon for example, where everybody is physically isolated, and their lives are being dictated by this one person at the top. This guy named Chuck Dederich. If someone in Synanon wanted to question, you know, why do we have to play the game, the Synanon game, every single night, or why aren’t kids allowed to go to outside schools? Or you know, why do we have to shave our heads? Why do we have to be reassigned new Synanon partners? There was a thought terminating cliché that could be served on command, and it went ‘act as if’ and it was this imperative to act as if you believed in this policy that Chuck Dederich put in place until you did because if you’re feeling dissonant about it, well that’s a you problem. This is the gaslighting that you were talking about, that’s a you problem, and Chuck is a visionary and a genius and he knows what’s best. And so, if you have an issue, act as if and then you can tell your- you can sort of brainwash yourself, right? Like you want badly to believe that this place where you spent the past 5, 10, 15 years, is everything that it would promised it would be, you don’t want to have to cut your losses, you don’t want to have to create conflict and so you’re going to use ‘act as if’ as a cue to put that cognitive dissonance in that dis- that, you know, dissent to bed. In a group like NXIVM, if folks binged the NXIVM docuseries like I did, you might recognize thought terminating clichés that Keith Ranieri would use things like, ‘well don’t let yourself be ruled by fear’ or dismissing valid concerns as ‘limiting beliefs’. In Jonestown and so many different cultish groups throughout history and the world of thought- classic thought terminating cliché is ‘it’s all the media’s fault. Blame the media.’ So thought terminating- [Zara: Fake news?] fake news! Yeah. And that’s an example of loaded language, right? So, they’re up there, so many examples of that, but yeah, the media is a classic, classic scapegoat and it’s, you know, it’s tricky. And this is what toxic relationships are in general. Whether you’re in a toxic one-on-one relationship, or in a toxic relationship with the group you’re in, like, there’s always some truth to what’s going on there. If there weren’t, you would, you would never have joined, you would never have stayed. And so, you know, it’s like we do need to express skepticism toward the media to a degree, we do need to, you know, check preconceived notions that we have in our minds about what our limits are and what we can achieve or can’t achieve. Like there’s a little bit of truth there. But when you have these stock expressions that are there to shut you down anytime you have a question, that’s a red flag because anything legitimate will stand up to scrutiny…
“…anything legitimate will stand up to scrutiny…”
— Amanda Montell
“I think the multi-level marketing industry is this sort of really extreme case study in toxic positivity and the prosperity gospel that imbues all of American workplace culture in general. But the way that the multi-level marketing industry exploits this American value for you know, productivity and progress and self-improvement is well, it’s, I don’t know how far I want to go back, but you asked about the language of, you know, pseudo feminism and how the multi-level marketing industry exploits that.
“I think the multi-level marketing industry is this sort of really extreme case study in toxic positivity and the prosperity gospel that imbues all of American workplace culture in general.”
— Amanda Montell
“So, since the dawn of the modern direct sales industry in the 1940s and 50s, the industry has always targeted non-working wives and mothers as the primary sales force. The reason why is very interesting, I won’t get into it. But so, while in the 40s and 50s, Tupperware, just like the OG multi-level marketing company, MLM, was pitched as like, the best thing to happen to women, since they got to vote, this opportunity to be a businesswoman to earn a full time living with part time work from home. Now multi-level marketing companies and Tupperware, still around, pitch themselves as an opportunity for ‘girl boss’, ‘boss babe’, ‘mompreneurs’ to become part of an empowering movement. So, the precise terms have changed but MLMs have always capitalized on whatever commodified pseudo feminist language was trendy at the moment to convince women that they should be a part of not only this industry, but a movement, a community and that’s part of what makes these companies so cultish is that they’re not just sort of scammy and predatory, they are missionary in character. They are helmed by these charismatic leaders that members come to revere and worship almost in a religious way. There is such intense pressure in these groups that truly codependent life consuming relationships start to form when you invariably do not become a millionaire mompreneur within a year like they promised, because mathematically, it’s not possible.
“The way that these pyramid scheme-esque organizations are structured, they will do what these other cultish groups that we’ve been mentioning before do, they will gaslight you into believing that you didn’t try hard enough, you aren’t really dedicated to the American dream like you should be because this is a good system, and a good system always works. And the exit costs are incredibly high because of these high pressure, boundaryless relationships that have formed since everything- since everybody’s financial success depends on the financial success of the recruits below them. So yeah, I decided it was important to focus on the language of multi-level marketing, not only because it is fascinating in and of itself, but it says something about our workplace values in America at large…
“The way that these pyramid scheme-esque organizations are structured, they will do what these other cultish groups that we’ve been mentioning before do, they will gaslight you into believing that you didn’t try hard enough, you aren’t really dedicated to the American dream like you should be because this is a good system, and a good system always works.”
— Amanda Montell
“So, it’s this, it’s this combination of vulnerability with sort of resilience and idealism in the face of that vulnerability that can make someone attracted to cultish groups and that doesn’t necessarily have to be bad. You just have to approach them with the right combination of fact checking and cross-checking. And all of these things that we’ve been talking about the, the skepticism to keep you safe.” — Amanda Montell
@ASoulAFire @JaniceOCG @megangarber uses @HandmaidsOnHulu to warn we should not be deceived by the banality of America’s creeping fascism for @TheAtlantic in “Slouching Towards Gilead.” Many thanks to @Ritzenhoffk for sharing this link.
“The Handmaid’s Tale showed the ease with which the unthinkable can become ordinary—a lesson crucial in the age of the Big Lie…
“When the TV version of The Handmaid’s Tale premiered in 2017, the show was a textbook piece of Trump-era resistance art—a direct reply to the preening misogynies of the newly elected president. Both the book and the show were timely parables of gendered violence, reminders that history can also move backwards. And they retain that power today: The Trump administration may have concluded, but its encroaching cruelties have not. State leaders are currently attempting to legislate away the rights of, among many others, trans people, of other LGBTQ people, of women. But The Handmaid’s Tale is urgent again for another reason as well. Lawmakers in several states, empowered by the nearly friction-free spread of Trump’s Big Lie, are attempting to limit people’s ability to vote—and building the power to cast as ‘fraudulent’ those electoral outcomes they find politically inconvenient. They are doing much of this in a way that might be familiar to Atwood’s readers: They are treating these elemental threats to democracy as if they were business as usual…
“One of the paradoxes of this moment of democratic emergency is that the threat, strictly speaking, doesn’t always look like the crisis it is. Laws being passed by lawmakers: This would seem to be business as usual. The whole thing is, for the most part, very orderly. Part of the challenge, for the public, will be to see the emergency for what it is—even if the encroachments are bureaucratic rather than outwardly violent, and even if the changes come slowly before they come suddenly. There are many ways to attempt a coup. And there are many ways for the unthinkable to become, finally, banal.”
— Megan Garber, The Atlantic
“One of the paradoxes of this moment of democratic emergency is that the threat, strictly speaking, doesn’t always look like the crisis it is. Laws being passed by lawmakers: This would seem to be business as usual. The whole thing is, for the most part, very orderly. Part of the challenge, for the public, will be to see the emergency for what it is—even if the encroachments are bureaucratic rather than outwardly violent, and even if the changes come slowly before they come suddenly. There are many ways to attempt a coup. And there are many ways for the unthinkable to become, finally, banal.”
@ASoulAFire @JaniceOCG @Ritzenhoffk offered a PPT, “The Handmaid’s Tale – WHY NOW?, on @HandmaidsOnHulu for last night’s launch of “If America Fails?: The Coming Tyranny.” It considers, among other things, the issue of resistance. Join the webcasts Thursdays at 8 pm ET, beginning January, 2022.
This is the second of two PowerPoint presentations Dr. Karen A. Ritzenhoff wanted to share when she joined “If America Fails?” for the inaugural episode – “America’s Fascist Brew; Will America Fail? – the Sneak Peek,” on October 14th. Due to technical difficulties, we were not able to share this PPT in the live event. For the full PPT, please see link below.
In “The Handmaid’s Tale: WHY NOW? Interdisciplinary lessons about Margaret Atwood’s Prophetic Dystopia,” Dr. Karen A. Ritzenhoff considers ways in which resistance to the cruel abuses depicted in the show is formed – as well as how the show has inspired real-life resistance efforts, such as responses to anti-abortion bills currently being pushed around the U.S. She also considers the implications of forcing women out of the workforce and the specter of rape as a sanctified occurrence.
SEE | “The Handmaid’s Tale: WHY NOW? Interdisciplinary lessons about Margaret Atwood’s Prophetic Dystopia.” | by Karen A. Ritzenhoff, Ph.D. | 10/14/2021
@ASoulAFire @JaniceOCG @Ritzenhoffk wanted to share this PPT, “Writing Women Out of the Public Sphere,” on @HandmaidsOnHulu in last night’s launch of “If America Fails?: The Coming Tyranny.” Join the webcasts Thursdays at 8 pm ET, beginning January, 2022.
Linked below is the first of two PowerPoint presentations Dr. Karen A. Ritzenhoff wanted to share when she joined “If America Fails?” for the inaugural episode – “America’s Fascist Brew; Will America Fail? – the Sneak Peek,” on October 14th. Due to technical difficulties, we were not able to share this PPT in the live event. For the full PPT, please see link below.
Dr. Ritzenhoff highlights some aspects of The Handmaid’s Tale story that explore women’s role in the working world outside the home, in this presentation. She centers on the role of language, news and access to information, with special attention to the role of journalism.
“The rights that we enjoy now are not the default status. The default status for anyone who is not white, straight, or male, as history shows, is actually to have no rights at all.”
@ASoulAFire @JaniceOCG Here’s the AFTER-SHOW Chat to 10/14 event on @HandmaidsOnHulu – “America’s Fascist Brew; Will America Fail?” where @Ritzenhoffk was the featured guest. Join “If America Fails?: The Coming Tyranny,” Thursdays at 8 pm ET, beginning January, 2022.
AFTER-SHOW Chat: If we missed you at the after-show on last night’s webcast where we shared our thoughts on “If America Fails?: The Coming Tyranny” – “America’s Fascist Brew; Will America Fail? – the Sneak Peek” – you can catch up at the link below. This one-hour discussion received audience calls reflecting on the evening and exploring themes in “The Handmaid’s Tale.”
Season 1 of “If America Fails?: The Coming Tyranny,” airs Thursdays, 8:00 pm ET, starting January, 2022, on YouTube. This TruthWorks Network production is co-hosted by Janice Graham and L. Michelle Odom.
This panel features Dr. Karen A. Ritzenhoff, Professor, Department of Communication, Central Connecticut State University. Dr. Ritzenhoff is a co-editor of The Handmaid’s Tale: Teaching Dystopia, Feminism, and Resistance Across Disciplines and Borders, and many other books.
Joining us in this event were Geo Moses and Suzanne Colson.
@ASoulAFire @JaniceOCG RAW VIDEO to 10/14 chat on @HandmaidsOnHulu – “America’s Fascist Brew; Will America Fail?” where @Ritzenhoffk was the featured guest. Join “If America Fails?: The Coming Tyranny,” Thursdays at 8 pm ET, beginning January, 2022.
RAW VIDEO: If we missed you at last night’s webcast where we shared our thoughts on “If America Fails?: The Coming Tyranny” – “America’s Fascist Brew; Will America Fail? – the Sneak Peek” – you can catch up at the link below.
Season 1 of “If America Fails?: The Coming Tyranny,” airs Thursdays, 8:00 pm ET, starting January, 2022, on YouTube. This TruthWorks Network production is co-hosted by Janice Graham and L. Michelle Odom.
This panel features Dr. Karen A. Ritzenhoff, Professor, Department of Communication, Central Connecticut State University. Dr. Ritzenhoff is a co-editor of The Handmaid’s Tale: Teaching Dystopia, Feminism, and Resistance Across Disciplines and Borders, and many other books.
Joining us in this event were Geo Moses and Suzanne Colson.
“America’s Fascist Brew; Will America Fail?” is an introduction to the “If America Fails? The Coming Tyranny” webcast series. It features a two-hour online panel discussion where we shared videos from “The Handmaid’s Tale” Hulu TV series and summarized the first four seasons of the show, while exploring key themes. The panel discussion was followed by a one-hour open chat with the audience, found at this link.
“IF AMERICA FAILS?: The Coming Tyranny,” is a real-world exploration of a fictional story. A new totalitarian society is created in the dystopian world of “The Handmaid’s Tale.” It resonates, frighteningly, with the dramatic efforts happening in the United States today—to suppress voting rights, limit a woman’s right to choose, criminalize free speech, distort education, rewrite history, and other threats taking place in the country now. Our Black voice collaborative considers the themes presented by the universally-focused web series, from our own perspective—relating them to real-life current events—and warns, the time to fight fascism is NOW!
@ASoulAFire @JaniceOCG FOLLOWTruthWorks Network on Blog Talk Radio to access the archives of “If America Fails?” After Show Chat with the audience and other programming produced by TWN.
“If America Fails? The Coming Tyranny” chats with our audience after the live webcast, on the TruthWorks Network site at Blog Talk Radio. Archives of the After Show Chat are found at this site, as well as other programming produced by TWN. Follow us there and receive notices of live episodes.
@ASoulAFire @JaniceOCG @LastWeekTonight @iamjohnoliver does a pretty good job looking at #VoterSuppression issues, but he does not get at problem of election subversion. or throwing out valid votes. Watch “Voting Rights: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.”
“John Oliver discusses the current attacks on voting rights, who’s behind them, and what we can do about it.” — Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
@ASoulAFire @JaniceOCG Listening to @gaslitnation by @sarahkendzior & @andreachalupa is a great way to gain perspective on America’s growing fascism problem. The weekly podcast offers news analysis, research results, and opinion, as well as ideas on how to #FightFascismNow.
If America Fails? 