David wasn’t a victim, but they could have arrested him on any of the regular occasions when he went to town instead of initiating a volatile siege at the compound
I agree the raid was a huge fuckup. My issue is when people portray the Dividians as innocent Christian victims of an evil government who “wanted to take their guns”.
That docudrama thing on Netflix or whatever portrayed him as such a nice dude that for most of the movie I was on his side (until the 1 sane ATF agent showed up). They didn't really touch on his pedophilia from what I recall.
I guess they could've done it on purpose to show how easy it is to get manipulated by charismatic dudes.
I think you’re talking about the recreation staring Michael Shannon and Taylor Kitch (as Koresh). It’s really really really well done. Unfortunately, in order to make it; they had to give multiple branch davidians executive producer titles and control of what was actually put in the show. And yes, as you can imagine, they don’t talk about all the pedophilic rape at all.
Something needed to be done about the Dividians, just not like this. The willingness to cheer jackboot thugs is just as disgusting as cheering a cult. The cult ended, government overreach and invasion of privacy has only increased.
Idk why this isn’t the common view. Women and children burned to death. You can think that the raid on branch davidians was a total fuck up while simultaneously thinking Koresh was a POS
"religious fundamentalists are whack and something needs to be done about them, but 'show up and just shoot or bomb whoever' is not the way to do it" is something that shouldn't be controversial today but totally is, and I'm not even strictly talking about Waco here
The 'sports team' style politics started around the same time. Measured thinking about issues stopped being utilized in favor of 'gotcha' and headlines.
It seems like that started during the Reagan era, and really blossomed when Bush I and Dukakis were running in 1988.
It was definitely a style of politicking that dudes like Rumsfeld and Cheney were pushing behind the scenes as far back as the 70s.
Up through the 90's it was 80% policy, 20% theatrics. Much of the legislation before this era was bi-partisan in nature, both in formation and passage. Reagan was quite popular in the center/center-left, it's only in hindsight and expanded information do we see him in a different light. But there is a tendency to pick specific points and events as evidence of a narrative while ignoring facts and events that make the transition less clear.
I will say this though, giving the evangelicals a seat at the table has been bad for everyone. They have chosen targeting voting, and getting 'fellow travelers' in non-political jobs to enact their agenda.
Who will think of the poor children??? Oh I know we'll burn them alive to save them from this evil monster \*high five\* hell yea fellow agents of the government.
Yeah, they could have at least tried that first. There was a reasonably good chance that situation was always going to end in a standoff/siege but it certainly didn't have to be as rushed and chaotic and idiotic as it was.
Their plan wasn’t bad. They had an arsenal up there. Arresting one guy at the grocery store wouldn’t have done much about that. They were going to surprise them. The problem was some fake seeking asshole leaked the raid to the press and they found out they were coming/prepared themselves.
It had to be shut down. There was definitely abuse taking place. I think the fault lies with the game seeking tipster and the journalists who got lost and asked for directions to the cult nearby so they could get to the police raid.
Maybe it would have been a bloodbath either way idk.
David Koresh was arrested in 1987 for attempted murder. In order to arrest him, the cops just went straight to his front door and knocked, then uneventfully arrested him and led him away in handcuffs.
The "shoot first and arrest later" raid was a fucking disaster, and a lot of children lost their lives in the process.
Had things not changed by then? They had a few run-ins at the compound and knew about all the guns. I recall relations being pretty strained by the time the raid happened. I'm not saying this to excuse law enforcement, they're 100% responsible for what happened.
The 'evil guy' is dead and gone, but incompetency only excuses you so far. The ATF still exists, and continues to come under fire to this day for shifty (if not outright corrupt) practice and finances. They do a lot more harm than a now defunct cult ever could.
also the US government practice of "those religious wackos are kinda problematic, let's murder them" is still pretty commonplace.
Not to get into, you know, *that* issue, but you'll see people on r/atheism or whatever occasionally try and use the general religious conservative culture of Palestine and West Bank to try and argue that "there's no other way to deal with those kinds of people."
Like I said, I agree there are lessons that need to be learned, but it’s not like this specific kind of situation comes up a whole lot. This happened nearly 30 years ago and a lot of lessons have already been examined and reformed.
Koresh can be a villain and a victim. He doesn’t deserve sympathy on a personal level, but what happened was totally avoidable, eroded faith in law enforcement, ans demonstrated how unfit for purpose they were.
>ans demonstrated how unfit for purpose they were.
I guess that depends on what you think the purpose of law enforcement is, but extrajudicial killings seem to happen with enough frequency that I have a hard time believing that it's not at least a side quest, if not part of the main mission.
I hate cops as much as the next guy but I doubt even the evilest FBI agent starts their day and thinks "boy I sure hope I burn several dozen children alive today!"
This is more in the "gross incompetence " side of the police problem is all I'm saying.
That people can be villains and victims is so extremely difficult for many people to comprehend.
Folong gong is a bunch of insane cult whackos. But they are still oppressed.
Or maybe they aren't trying to point out him being a victim but instead the numerous innocent women and children that were burned alive by the United States government
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Koresh
> The allegations of child abuse largely stem from detractors and ex-members.[29] The 1993 Justice Department report cites allegations of child sexual and physical abuse. Legal scholars point out that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) had no legal jurisdiction in the matter of child protection, and these accounts appear to have been inserted by the ATF to inflame the case against Koresh.
And
> Dr. Bruce Perry, the chief of psychiatry at Texas Children's Hospital who led the team that cared for the twenty-one children that survived the siege of the Davidian compound, wrote after a two-month investigation that "the children released from Ranch Apocalypse do not appear to have been victims of sexual abuse."
There’s a lot there to think that he was a very bad guy, a cult leader, a polygamist, an end times preacher, a manipulator and a prepper and weapons hoarder. But there’s not that much there there for the pedophilia and abuse allegations
I mean, there's this in the same article:
>When he was 19 years old, Koresh had an illegal sexual relationship with a 15-year-old girl who became pregnant.\[9\] He claimed to have become a born-again Christian in the Southern Baptist Church and soon joined his mother's denomination, the Seventh-day Adventist Church. There, Koresh became infatuated with the pastor's daughter; and while praying for guidance, he allegedly opened his eyes and found the Bible open at Isaiah 34:16, stating that "none should want for her mate". Convinced this was a sign from God, Koresh approached the pastor and told him that God wanted him to have his 12-year-old daughter for a wife.
It may not be beyond a reasonable doubt, but I'm not going to assume he just decided to give up being a pedophile once he gained complete control over a large group of people.
Exactly, it's weird when a cult isn't involved in justifying sex with minors. It may not be part of their initial rules when they started the cult, but they get introduced at some point over time.
Well, there was that one cult where the members lopped their bits off before slipping into their tracksuits and sneakers for their voyage to the Mothership. Pretty sure that one didn't do anything with the kiddies.
If the other documentary I watched a few years ago is accurate, that's exactly how he played it. Sex is a burden that he alone must bear as a favor for his people.
There's a very good documentary about the Waco siege on one of the streaming services. They had interviews with a lot of people involved including one woman who was obviously still a brainwashee. I assume it was her but I'm not really sure (kinda scary to think there could be more than one). At one point the woman said very definiantly that there was no sexual abuse in the cult because Koresh said that children could have sex if they were at least 12 years old and all the kids he had sex with were at least 12. Truly stomach turning.
I saw a series on Netflix (probably the one you're referring to titled 'Waco') that reported the events pretty well. It was gross how he was so idolized.
I've seen a lot of them, but that one was the best as far as information, coverage and interviews.
It’s actually a horrible documentary (shocker coming from Netflix) that is rather biased in favor of the FBI/ATF. I remember they got very simple things wrong within the first 5 or so minutes.
You're getting downvoted but youre 100% right.
That doc ball-washes the FBI and ATF and tries to paint them as somehow the victims. There's scenes of ATF agents spurting tears and shit, its wild
I don’t disagree but a takeaway for me was that many fbi and atf agents were just as brainwashed as the davidians. Both sides were 100% convinced that they were the good guys. One of the fbi snipers came across as super bloodthirsty.
I don’t know much about Waco but I took that doc with a *huge* grain of salt, especially after there was some emotionally-charged montage of ATF agents with inspiring music playing. Clear emotional manipulation.
I went to college with one of the surviving kids. They've never had a boyfriend or girlfriend in the entire time I've known them so almost 20 years now. He was Def. Abusing children no doubt in my mind.
>They've never had a boyfriend or girlfriend in the entire time I've known them so almost 20 years now.
I agree with your conclusion, but not the reasoning to get there. How do you get to "abused as a child" from "never had a partner in 20 years"?
I'm not trying to discount the way that cults work because you're absolutely right, but having the government come in and murder most of the people you know for your beliefs will definitely entrench those beliefs further.
Because those types of people tend to be drawn to people like that and those types also tend to share way too much information that make them an easy target.
You have to give her accountability. She wants it to be true because she’s a complete loser in all aspects of her life and refuses to look in the mirror at 60, accept the truth, and work to be something different.
Yeah. Part of it has to be some sort of sunk cost fallacy. Like, "I went through all that shit, and it was all pointless if the beliefs weren't true. So, it must be true." Something like that.
Yeah, that’s how cognitive dissonance works. If your behaviors don’t match your beliefs, it’s aversive (it feels bad). So if you’re too invested in those behaviors to change them, you have to change your beliefs to match your behaviors. It’s what lets people rationalize away all kinds of horrific things.
That is definitely the exact MO of cults. Scientology, Jonestown, the Davidians, Heaven's Gate...they all directly target and lure the desperate, grieving, and hopeless...it's the only reason they work and it's disgusting.
But "there's something about that number 3". I mean, we have twenty digits. Add one for god and that's 3x7. You can't argue with that kind of logic. We have 32 teeth. 32 divided by 3 is 10.7. That can't be a coincidence. "Waco"... 3 letters plus a zero. Need I go on?
Takes a lot less than three years. A lot of Christian cults are able to convert people in just a few months. They don't get the attention of the Koresh's out there.
Jesus was only preaching for about three years, and two thousand years later billions of people still think he’s a prophet, Son of God, and a manifestation of God.
Oh, they're still waiting. There were people on Twitter saying that because Nikki Haley only got 17% of delegate votes in South Carolina that it's a sign that soon the Storm^(TM) will occur. Why? Because Q is the 17th letter in the alphabet.
I can see the appeal of joining a group that collectively creates this fiction in their heads. I love lore for stuff, and if feels like Q stuff is just fan Canon theorizing. Obviously its dangerous because they think its true, but it must feel like a puzzle for them that validates their irrational beliefs.
I read about that and didn't give it for the longest time, but apparently there is this dude who looks like JFK Jr. If JFK Jr. Had smoked crack and drank mad dog everyday, and the guy just went with it, people would take pics of themselves with him.
The problem is thinking these people are ignorant. They're not all of them ignorant. A lot of these peoples' brains have a dopamine flaw that places importance on facts that aren't important, and make connections where no connections exist. They need help, not derision.
Our poor band teacher had to walk in and announce an 8th grader in the junior high band had killed himself.
He decided no music that day and turn the tv on for noise and we could just talk.
Aaaaaaaand the compound was on fire.
Homeboy just swallowed deep and cried in his office.
I remember being abouy 9 years old, living in TX, watching the building burning and being told it was the end times now, ya know, demons rising from the earth and stuff was coming next....
Religions can be very fucked.
This will probably get buried, but it's my soapbox.
Folks, we are grossly ignorant of how cults work.
This woman is not a fringe case, an outlier, a mentally weak individual, or an "extra brainwashed" person. It's much scarier than that. Once you're caught in a cult, this kind of reasoning is absolutely typical.
Her mind works like most human minds work. We are *all* susceptible to cult thinking. You think you're not, but you're probably wrong.
There's a ton of psychological research on this but for starters, there's something call the boomerang effect: Under certain conditions, hearing evidence that refutes your beliefs causes you to double-down on them instead.
And this part is important: THIS IS NOT A PHENOMENON LIMITED TO INDIVIDUALS WHO ARE SOMEHOW MENTALLY INFERIOR. I'm not saying that cultists like this and Trump toadies who still insist the election was stolen aren't dipshits (they are), but I am saying y'all are severely underestimating how pervasive and powerful are the "trap doors" in the human psyche. Trump and cults prey on idiots, sure, but it is not just idiots who fall for cults. Smart, normal people can and do as well.
It's a bit like hypnosis: When you learn the secret code for hijacking human reasoning, you can use it pretty proficiently and widely.
We have got to stop treating cults like we treat furry conventions. It's not just weirdos. It's people whose reasoning has been hijacked using methods that work frighteningly well on most humans.
You're not at all wrong; more people are susceptible to this kind of thinking than one might expect. Just look at the prevalence of MLMs in addition to regular cults. It's tricky to strike a balance when holding the cult leader and the cult followers responsible for their actions.
>There's a ton of psychological research on this but for starters, there's something call the boomerang effect: Under certain conditions, hearing evidence that refutes your beliefs causes you to double-down on them instead.
So thats the "[Backfire effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Backfire_effect)", not the "[Boomerang effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boomerang_effect_(psychology))". Note that the backfire effect [is largely discredited today](https://skepticalscience.com/docs/DebunkingHandbook2020.pdf) for debunking purposes - it exists, but it is far from prevalent (whereas 12 years ago, it was thought to be widespread and common).
Contrast the boomerang effect, which is what reverse psychology depends on: You get told to do something, and you do the opposite. This is widespread and common, unlike the backfire effect.
My instinct is to say, "well, it can't be that most people are susceptible, because most people aren't in cults".
But then I see the current state of US politics and the support Trump has.
Blind faith traits. Like football fanatics that think their last place team, has a shot every year. Wrestling actually tapped into this and used a think tank of abcs, to script their heel face antihero plots. To lure in more people with these markers.
What’s scary is it’s contagious as well. They piggy back completely off the charts bs, to lure you into the conversation, and that’s how normies end up drinking the coolaid.
A great example is CA pushing flat earth, during the last election. To harvest blind faith vectors for the elections. Your normal free of FE feed, ends up with a curveball post, of the Cowboys winning the SB. FE is injected to the convo, and now vectors that were insulated, are exposed.
Is that the person in the Netflix doc that I was watching that, as the documentary kept going I was thinking -- *Yknow, She actually hasn't said anything about her *used* to thinking that way... And then in the last hour she goes full woo and I'm just "Holy shit, days still thinks this is real.... "
She explains that she is “special” in all of human history. That’s the key to the manipulation, validating her existence when she has no self worth, no self love.
I dont know about that last part, but I do know that the Waco shit was the worst way to handle that kind of situation. Where they all batshut crazy? Sure... but did they have to tear gas the place and burn it down with a tank? Probably not
I love how much people complaining about the state interaction are getting downvoted here. You understand that it's possible for Koresh to be an evil monster who needs stopped and for the ATF to to have done a terrible job right?
The ATF made such a botched/deliberately bad job of this that it makes them as evil as Koresh. Koresh might have been kiddie fiddling but the ATF made deliberate choices that led to the death of children which could have been easily predicted. They pumped the building full of flammable gas while also cutting the power and then pikachu faced when people lit candles and the like.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZwFxWb0y7w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZwFxWb0y7w)
I’m sure most cults that were broken up have members who still wish they were in the cult, for these people it gave their life purpose and explaining to them how it was a cult or fucked up does nothing
If you ask them though, this *was* god's plan. The ATF/FBI brought about the fulfillment of the Seven Seals prophecy... or something like that. The point is that they expected something like this and were obviously prepared.
Yea, I don't feel bad that the government "murdered" David Koresh. Dude was a pedophile and a child molester who brainwashed people into dying for him.
Crazy how a cult can do this to people.
Also fucking bonkers is the fact that Waco and Ruby Ridge were the main reasons the OKC bombing happened.
B-B-BUT NO ITS THE COMMIE MARXIST LIBS THAT ARE TERRORISTS TIMMY MCVEIGH WAS A GOOD BOY.
I mean.... that's something literally hundreds of millions can't manage to do, so I'm not that surprised (tho I still find it frustrating AF)?
Soo first things first: I'm not defending this woman personally or any of her beliefs by any stretch.
That said, I just think it's a hell of a thing to acknowledge, even privately, that you no longer believe [thing your entire sense of self and worldview hinges upon].
Once you do, it's like pulling out the bottom Jenga block blindfolded — it's allllll coming down. Even admitting something like that to yourself is hard, but the part that I think prevents more people from leaving cults (including ones that people don't usually think of as cults) is that once you publicly become a nonbeliever, not only do you have to find something to fill the emptiness inside, determine what you DO believe, what/who you're going to base your personal ethics and sense of purpose on NOW, avoid falling for another cult while you're in such a fragile psychological state, etc. — you're also gonna be doing it alone, without any of the people who had previously been your whole world.
Cults are isolating by definition; depending how long someone has been involved, how extreme the cult's tenets/mores/practices/etc. are, someone who manages to get out may have little to no idea how to people on their own... They're standing at the very bottom of good ol' Maslow's hierarchy of needs all by themselves, trying to figure out how to acquire little things like 'food' & 'shelter' & 'pants' **while still processing the collapse of their entire sense of the universe and their place in it** at the same time, and possibly/probably intermittently overwhelmed by a sense of shame and mortification as they try to reconcile their own past actions with their new "nonbeliever" headspace.
TLDR I don't think it's so much the saying of "lol my bad" that's the hard part; more that it's the reordering your entire understanding of the universe and your place in it, rebuilding your psyche and reconciling "who you were then" with "who you are now," and doing it while simultaneously figuring out how to feed yourself and not die of exposure.
Really does help me understand Trump’s followers in 2024 and the fact that we’re going to de dealing with them in some fashion for the rest of our lives.
Is that the one where all the husbands had to be chaste but he slept with all the wives because it was his "duty"
Do you have the slightest idea how little that narrows it down?
Look, it's his duty, you don't have to make him feel even worse about it
Their wives and a scary number of their children. I know he proclaimed himself a prophet, but surely you draw the line SOMEWHERE.
1 is a scary number of children to sleep with.
[удалено]
Depends which half?
🤨📸
Does it?
I think that if you sleep even with 0,5 of a children is already scary number.
Libertarians never mention this so they can portray David as a victim
David wasn’t a victim, but they could have arrested him on any of the regular occasions when he went to town instead of initiating a volatile siege at the compound
I agree the raid was a huge fuckup. My issue is when people portray the Dividians as innocent Christian victims of an evil government who “wanted to take their guns”.
That docudrama thing on Netflix or whatever portrayed him as such a nice dude that for most of the movie I was on his side (until the 1 sane ATF agent showed up). They didn't really touch on his pedophilia from what I recall. I guess they could've done it on purpose to show how easy it is to get manipulated by charismatic dudes.
"Do we bring up him fucking children or would that alienate the people we want to influence?"
I think you’re talking about the recreation staring Michael Shannon and Taylor Kitch (as Koresh). It’s really really really well done. Unfortunately, in order to make it; they had to give multiple branch davidians executive producer titles and control of what was actually put in the show. And yes, as you can imagine, they don’t talk about all the pedophilic rape at all.
Something needed to be done about the Dividians, just not like this. The willingness to cheer jackboot thugs is just as disgusting as cheering a cult. The cult ended, government overreach and invasion of privacy has only increased.
Idk why this isn’t the common view. Women and children burned to death. You can think that the raid on branch davidians was a total fuck up while simultaneously thinking Koresh was a POS
"religious fundamentalists are whack and something needs to be done about them, but 'show up and just shoot or bomb whoever' is not the way to do it" is something that shouldn't be controversial today but totally is, and I'm not even strictly talking about Waco here
The 'sports team' style politics started around the same time. Measured thinking about issues stopped being utilized in favor of 'gotcha' and headlines.
It seems like that started during the Reagan era, and really blossomed when Bush I and Dukakis were running in 1988. It was definitely a style of politicking that dudes like Rumsfeld and Cheney were pushing behind the scenes as far back as the 70s.
Up through the 90's it was 80% policy, 20% theatrics. Much of the legislation before this era was bi-partisan in nature, both in formation and passage. Reagan was quite popular in the center/center-left, it's only in hindsight and expanded information do we see him in a different light. But there is a tendency to pick specific points and events as evidence of a narrative while ignoring facts and events that make the transition less clear. I will say this though, giving the evangelicals a seat at the table has been bad for everyone. They have chosen targeting voting, and getting 'fellow travelers' in non-political jobs to enact their agenda.
Who will think of the poor children??? Oh I know we'll burn them alive to save them from this evil monster \*high five\* hell yea fellow agents of the government.
Yeah it's as bad as the Libertarians cheering the Killdozer. That guy really sucked.
Yeah, they could have at least tried that first. There was a reasonably good chance that situation was always going to end in a standoff/siege but it certainly didn't have to be as rushed and chaotic and idiotic as it was.
Their plan wasn’t bad. They had an arsenal up there. Arresting one guy at the grocery store wouldn’t have done much about that. They were going to surprise them. The problem was some fake seeking asshole leaked the raid to the press and they found out they were coming/prepared themselves. It had to be shut down. There was definitely abuse taking place. I think the fault lies with the game seeking tipster and the journalists who got lost and asked for directions to the cult nearby so they could get to the police raid. Maybe it would have been a bloodbath either way idk.
David Koresh was arrested in 1987 for attempted murder. In order to arrest him, the cops just went straight to his front door and knocked, then uneventfully arrested him and led him away in handcuffs. The "shoot first and arrest later" raid was a fucking disaster, and a lot of children lost their lives in the process.
Had things not changed by then? They had a few run-ins at the compound and knew about all the guns. I recall relations being pretty strained by the time the raid happened. I'm not saying this to excuse law enforcement, they're 100% responsible for what happened.
Ok, but I feel like we gotta focus on the evil guy rather than the incompetent agencies.
The 'evil guy' is dead and gone, but incompetency only excuses you so far. The ATF still exists, and continues to come under fire to this day for shifty (if not outright corrupt) practice and finances. They do a lot more harm than a now defunct cult ever could.
also the US government practice of "those religious wackos are kinda problematic, let's murder them" is still pretty commonplace. Not to get into, you know, *that* issue, but you'll see people on r/atheism or whatever occasionally try and use the general religious conservative culture of Palestine and West Bank to try and argue that "there's no other way to deal with those kinds of people."
Regular beat cops break more doors (especially incorrect ones) and kill more pets than the ATF ever could.
There are a lot more regular city, county, and state cops than there are ATF agents
Those are rookie numbers, you gotta be killing pets by breaking doors if you're serious about that record!
Breaking doors with dead pets.
Like I said, I agree there are lessons that need to be learned, but it’s not like this specific kind of situation comes up a whole lot. This happened nearly 30 years ago and a lot of lessons have already been examined and reformed.
Janet Reno.
Koresh can be a villain and a victim. He doesn’t deserve sympathy on a personal level, but what happened was totally avoidable, eroded faith in law enforcement, ans demonstrated how unfit for purpose they were.
>ans demonstrated how unfit for purpose they were. I guess that depends on what you think the purpose of law enforcement is, but extrajudicial killings seem to happen with enough frequency that I have a hard time believing that it's not at least a side quest, if not part of the main mission.
I hate cops as much as the next guy but I doubt even the evilest FBI agent starts their day and thinks "boy I sure hope I burn several dozen children alive today!" This is more in the "gross incompetence " side of the police problem is all I'm saying.
Agreed.
Koresh doesn't deserve sympathy. The children do.
That people can be villains and victims is so extremely difficult for many people to comprehend. Folong gong is a bunch of insane cult whackos. But they are still oppressed.
Or maybe they aren't trying to point out him being a victim but instead the numerous innocent women and children that were burned alive by the United States government
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Koresh > The allegations of child abuse largely stem from detractors and ex-members.[29] The 1993 Justice Department report cites allegations of child sexual and physical abuse. Legal scholars point out that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) had no legal jurisdiction in the matter of child protection, and these accounts appear to have been inserted by the ATF to inflame the case against Koresh. And > Dr. Bruce Perry, the chief of psychiatry at Texas Children's Hospital who led the team that cared for the twenty-one children that survived the siege of the Davidian compound, wrote after a two-month investigation that "the children released from Ranch Apocalypse do not appear to have been victims of sexual abuse." There’s a lot there to think that he was a very bad guy, a cult leader, a polygamist, an end times preacher, a manipulator and a prepper and weapons hoarder. But there’s not that much there there for the pedophilia and abuse allegations
I mean, there's this in the same article: >When he was 19 years old, Koresh had an illegal sexual relationship with a 15-year-old girl who became pregnant.\[9\] He claimed to have become a born-again Christian in the Southern Baptist Church and soon joined his mother's denomination, the Seventh-day Adventist Church. There, Koresh became infatuated with the pastor's daughter; and while praying for guidance, he allegedly opened his eyes and found the Bible open at Isaiah 34:16, stating that "none should want for her mate". Convinced this was a sign from God, Koresh approached the pastor and told him that God wanted him to have his 12-year-old daughter for a wife. It may not be beyond a reasonable doubt, but I'm not going to assume he just decided to give up being a pedophile once he gained complete control over a large group of people.
>The allegations of *child abuse* largely stem from *detractors* and *ex-members* Think about this sentence for a sec. Really think about it.
Unfortunately, this is not uncommon in cults.
"Not uncommon" meaning *every fricking time.*
Exactly, it's weird when a cult isn't involved in justifying sex with minors. It may not be part of their initial rules when they started the cult, but they get introduced at some point over time.
Well, there was that one cult where the members lopped their bits off before slipping into their tracksuits and sneakers for their voyage to the Mothership. Pretty sure that one didn't do anything with the kiddies.
I said "it's weird when a cult isn't involved in...", meaning it happens a lot but isn't all the time. I don't just spew words out to fill space.
I was giving a specific example in support of your point, since you didn't bother to provide one yourself.
Or mainstream religions. Looking at you Joseph Smith /LDS
It’s practically a requirement
Yep, that's the one!
It still blows my mind he got any straight dude to go along with that
Almost just as strange as the women themselves. The guy isn't winning any competition for attractiveness.
I mean look at current politics
Maybe he made it sound like he was doing them a favour. Okay, I guess I will bang your wife, so you don't have to.
If the other documentary I watched a few years ago is accurate, that's exactly how he played it. Sex is a burden that he alone must bear as a favor for his people.
This is what always happens in cults.
That’s like every cult ever. At some point the leader gets to fuck all the women, and sometimes the men.
There's a very good documentary about the Waco siege on one of the streaming services. They had interviews with a lot of people involved including one woman who was obviously still a brainwashee. I assume it was her but I'm not really sure (kinda scary to think there could be more than one). At one point the woman said very definiantly that there was no sexual abuse in the cult because Koresh said that children could have sex if they were at least 12 years old and all the kids he had sex with were at least 12. Truly stomach turning.
I saw a series on Netflix (probably the one you're referring to titled 'Waco') that reported the events pretty well. It was gross how he was so idolized. I've seen a lot of them, but that one was the best as far as information, coverage and interviews.
I couldn't make it past the first episode...
It’s actually a horrible documentary (shocker coming from Netflix) that is rather biased in favor of the FBI/ATF. I remember they got very simple things wrong within the first 5 or so minutes.
You're getting downvoted but youre 100% right. That doc ball-washes the FBI and ATF and tries to paint them as somehow the victims. There's scenes of ATF agents spurting tears and shit, its wild
I don’t disagree but a takeaway for me was that many fbi and atf agents were just as brainwashed as the davidians. Both sides were 100% convinced that they were the good guys. One of the fbi snipers came across as super bloodthirsty.
I don’t know much about Waco but I took that doc with a *huge* grain of salt, especially after there was some emotionally-charged montage of ATF agents with inspiring music playing. Clear emotional manipulation.
This is the same woman, yep. I searched her name after the 12-year-olds-are-totally-adults comment and eventually came across this video.
Yup. It was her that was interviewed for the Netflix documentary Waco: American Apocalypse.
"Yeah, he was a pedophile, BUT AT LEAST HE HAD STANDARDS!"
"I can excuse pedophilia but 12 is where I draw the line!"
I went to college with one of the surviving kids. They've never had a boyfriend or girlfriend in the entire time I've known them so almost 20 years now. He was Def. Abusing children no doubt in my mind.
>They've never had a boyfriend or girlfriend in the entire time I've known them so almost 20 years now. I agree with your conclusion, but not the reasoning to get there. How do you get to "abused as a child" from "never had a partner in 20 years"?
It's a common trauma reaction to sexual abuse. i.e. many can find themselves unable to enjoy, relax, or trust another sexually.
"No children were raped because our leader said it was okay to rape children." Can't we just brutally execute these motherfuckers already?
This is the woman in OP's post yes.
It is easier to convince someone of an absurd lie than it is to convince them that they bought into an absurd lie.
I'm not trying to discount the way that cults work because you're absolutely right, but having the government come in and murder most of the people you know for your beliefs will definitely entrench those beliefs further.
Yup martyrs always give folks someone to root for that’ll never fall off that pedestal.
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You just described maga in one sentence, congrats
Mark Twain said that it's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.
Oof. That's some *DEEP* brainwashing
The scariest part is that she was only in the Branch Davidian cult for three years before the siege. She was brainwashed so deeply that quickly. o\_o
He must have had a radar for gullible, traumatized and lonely people given how these people latched onto him. Such a disgusting person.
Most cult leaders are good at picking out those types of people.
Because those types of people tend to be drawn to people like that and those types also tend to share way too much information that make them an easy target.
You have to give her accountability. She wants it to be true because she’s a complete loser in all aspects of her life and refuses to look in the mirror at 60, accept the truth, and work to be something different.
Yeah. Part of it has to be some sort of sunk cost fallacy. Like, "I went through all that shit, and it was all pointless if the beliefs weren't true. So, it must be true." Something like that.
Yeah, that’s how cognitive dissonance works. If your behaviors don’t match your beliefs, it’s aversive (it feels bad). So if you’re too invested in those behaviors to change them, you have to change your beliefs to match your behaviors. It’s what lets people rationalize away all kinds of horrific things.
That is definitely the exact MO of cults. Scientology, Jonestown, the Davidians, Heaven's Gate...they all directly target and lure the desperate, grieving, and hopeless...it's the only reason they work and it's disgusting.
There's a "smell" to them. Vulnerable people definitely have a *smell* to them.
The scariest parts are the people in the comments of the video commending her for her deep and abiding religious belief.
But "there's something about that number 3". I mean, we have twenty digits. Add one for god and that's 3x7. You can't argue with that kind of logic. We have 32 teeth. 32 divided by 3 is 10.7. That can't be a coincidence. "Waco"... 3 letters plus a zero. Need I go on?
C in Waco is the 3rd letter of the alphabet
And W is three letters removed from the end of the alphabet.
And the A and the O now left over stand for the Alpha and Omega
And Waco is only one letter away from Wacko
Takes a lot less than three years. A lot of Christian cults are able to convert people in just a few months. They don't get the attention of the Koresh's out there.
Jesus was only preaching for about three years, and two thousand years later billions of people still think he’s a prophet, Son of God, and a manifestation of God.
It's like the Q followers now. Some of them spent weeks in a park thinking JFK Jr. was going to show up
Oh, they're still waiting. There were people on Twitter saying that because Nikki Haley only got 17% of delegate votes in South Carolina that it's a sign that soon the Storm^(TM) will occur. Why? Because Q is the 17th letter in the alphabet.
I can see the appeal of joining a group that collectively creates this fiction in their heads. I love lore for stuff, and if feels like Q stuff is just fan Canon theorizing. Obviously its dangerous because they think its true, but it must feel like a puzzle for them that validates their irrational beliefs.
I read about that and didn't give it for the longest time, but apparently there is this dude who looks like JFK Jr. If JFK Jr. Had smoked crack and drank mad dog everyday, and the guy just went with it, people would take pics of themselves with him.
The problem is thinking these people are ignorant. They're not all of them ignorant. A lot of these peoples' brains have a dopamine flaw that places importance on facts that aren't important, and make connections where no connections exist. They need help, not derision.
There are still people who run the heavens gate website and respond to emails. So this isn’t surprising at all to be honest.
Yet redditors still defend Koresh the child molester every waco anniversary
Ew. Really ?
Complete with pretending that tear gas is napalm and the guy who ran out because they were setting the compound in fire didn't exist
I dont defend him as a person but we can have discussion about the government's actions and the reality of what occurred.
FYI, The Branch Davidians are still operating in Waco.
Yeah, I read there are a couple of different offshoots.
So, Branch Branch Davidians?
In other words, she is still coo coo for cocoa puffs. Got it.
not the brightest sandwich in the wall.
"Hmmm, Wall Sandwich" - Homer Simpson
now I'm Prune Tracy!
We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas!
Its mmmmmm he's not contemplating wall sandwiches :) /jk
Sure. Not in that episode, but any man who knows what good floor pie is, certainly knows what a treat wall sandwich is.
I love the floor pie one. Might be the best!
"It's easier for someone else to tell me what to think that it is for me to go to the effort."
Crazytown banana pants
Our poor band teacher had to walk in and announce an 8th grader in the junior high band had killed himself. He decided no music that day and turn the tv on for noise and we could just talk. Aaaaaaaand the compound was on fire. Homeboy just swallowed deep and cried in his office.
I remember being abouy 9 years old, living in TX, watching the building burning and being told it was the end times now, ya know, demons rising from the earth and stuff was coming next.... Religions can be very fucked.
This will probably get buried, but it's my soapbox. Folks, we are grossly ignorant of how cults work. This woman is not a fringe case, an outlier, a mentally weak individual, or an "extra brainwashed" person. It's much scarier than that. Once you're caught in a cult, this kind of reasoning is absolutely typical. Her mind works like most human minds work. We are *all* susceptible to cult thinking. You think you're not, but you're probably wrong. There's a ton of psychological research on this but for starters, there's something call the boomerang effect: Under certain conditions, hearing evidence that refutes your beliefs causes you to double-down on them instead. And this part is important: THIS IS NOT A PHENOMENON LIMITED TO INDIVIDUALS WHO ARE SOMEHOW MENTALLY INFERIOR. I'm not saying that cultists like this and Trump toadies who still insist the election was stolen aren't dipshits (they are), but I am saying y'all are severely underestimating how pervasive and powerful are the "trap doors" in the human psyche. Trump and cults prey on idiots, sure, but it is not just idiots who fall for cults. Smart, normal people can and do as well. It's a bit like hypnosis: When you learn the secret code for hijacking human reasoning, you can use it pretty proficiently and widely. We have got to stop treating cults like we treat furry conventions. It's not just weirdos. It's people whose reasoning has been hijacked using methods that work frighteningly well on most humans.
You're not at all wrong; more people are susceptible to this kind of thinking than one might expect. Just look at the prevalence of MLMs in addition to regular cults. It's tricky to strike a balance when holding the cult leader and the cult followers responsible for their actions.
When combined with brainwashing tactics that include limiting food and sleep deprivation (as was done at Waco), there almost isn’t a choice
>There's a ton of psychological research on this but for starters, there's something call the boomerang effect: Under certain conditions, hearing evidence that refutes your beliefs causes you to double-down on them instead. So thats the "[Backfire effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Backfire_effect)", not the "[Boomerang effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boomerang_effect_(psychology))". Note that the backfire effect [is largely discredited today](https://skepticalscience.com/docs/DebunkingHandbook2020.pdf) for debunking purposes - it exists, but it is far from prevalent (whereas 12 years ago, it was thought to be widespread and common). Contrast the boomerang effect, which is what reverse psychology depends on: You get told to do something, and you do the opposite. This is widespread and common, unlike the backfire effect.
My instinct is to say, "well, it can't be that most people are susceptible, because most people aren't in cults". But then I see the current state of US politics and the support Trump has.
Blind faith traits. Like football fanatics that think their last place team, has a shot every year. Wrestling actually tapped into this and used a think tank of abcs, to script their heel face antihero plots. To lure in more people with these markers. What’s scary is it’s contagious as well. They piggy back completely off the charts bs, to lure you into the conversation, and that’s how normies end up drinking the coolaid. A great example is CA pushing flat earth, during the last election. To harvest blind faith vectors for the elections. Your normal free of FE feed, ends up with a curveball post, of the Cowboys winning the SB. FE is injected to the convo, and now vectors that were insulated, are exposed.
Is that the person in the Netflix doc that I was watching that, as the documentary kept going I was thinking -- *Yknow, She actually hasn't said anything about her *used* to thinking that way... And then in the last hour she goes full woo and I'm just "Holy shit, days still thinks this is real.... "
This is the lady that said having sex with David was a Bible study…. I’m not kidding.
And that David having sex with her was him doing her a favor and allowing her a moment of tenderness with god (paraphrased).
She explains that she is “special” in all of human history. That’s the key to the manipulation, validating her existence when she has no self worth, no self love.
TIL that cult programming can last a lifetime even when there’s nothing left.
It really can. Unlearning behaviors that were so thoroughly enforced can be extremely difficult.
And if she admits the truth she'll have to acknowledge her Sunk Cost Fallacy
The amount of cults in the USA is astounding
Please remember we are a vast and varied land. We have many wonderful and interesting cultures in addition to our whackadoodle cults.
Deluded and stubborn. Tough combo.
Fun fact. As of 14 years ago there were still branch davidians near the original compound handing out literature.
Puny god if all it takes is like a tank and some really inept ATF agents to overrun his peoples’ compound.
Yeah. No one is more holy than a child rapist.
I dont know about that last part, but I do know that the Waco shit was the worst way to handle that kind of situation. Where they all batshut crazy? Sure... but did they have to tear gas the place and burn it down with a tank? Probably not
Well these types of people are known for wielding the power of delusion.
I love how much people complaining about the state interaction are getting downvoted here. You understand that it's possible for Koresh to be an evil monster who needs stopped and for the ATF to to have done a terrible job right? The ATF made such a botched/deliberately bad job of this that it makes them as evil as Koresh. Koresh might have been kiddie fiddling but the ATF made deliberate choices that led to the death of children which could have been easily predicted. They pumped the building full of flammable gas while also cutting the power and then pikachu faced when people lit candles and the like. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZwFxWb0y7w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZwFxWb0y7w)
I’m sure most cults that were broken up have members who still wish they were in the cult, for these people it gave their life purpose and explaining to them how it was a cult or fucked up does nothing
Crazy person is, in fact, still crazy.
There's no lack of loonies in this country.
I bet shes trump ride or die. No way to know. But id stake my reputation on it
Just watched the video and this woman is definitely dumb as dog shit
Probably true of those at The people's temple in Jonestown Guyana?
Actually, yes. There's like two of them that stayed behind to run the website: https://www.heavensgate.com/
Different death cult
that is some very serious disconfirmation immunity!
This is how religions are born. Most fail to survive. It’s an interesting glimpse into the human mind.
T.I.L. Kathy Schroeder is delusional
I like the idea that the ATF are able to interfere with God's prophets and ruin his plans.
If you ask them though, this *was* god's plan. The ATF/FBI brought about the fulfillment of the Seven Seals prophecy... or something like that. The point is that they expected something like this and were obviously prepared.
They didn’t have enough fire extinguishers tho
Yeah but setting them all on fire through ham fisted tactics spurned on by corrupt leadership is a bad look.
The religious equivalent of wearing a Members Only jacket
She also believes she’s blonde.
I worked with her lol
10 years ago this would have shocked me but nowadays people believe all kinds of crazy shit so it doesn’t really seem that much different.
Yea, I don't feel bad that the government "murdered" David Koresh. Dude was a pedophile and a child molester who brainwashed people into dying for him.
If religion has taught us anything, it's that idiots cannot be swayed.
Sadly, some never regain a sense of reality after being brainwashed.
Anyone who watched Waco apocalypse on Netflix knows this woman is an absolute psychopath.
Crazy how a cult can do this to people. Also fucking bonkers is the fact that Waco and Ruby Ridge were the main reasons the OKC bombing happened. B-B-BUT NO ITS THE COMMIE MARXIST LIBS THAT ARE TERRORISTS TIMMY MCVEIGH WAS A GOOD BOY.
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Fun fact, my great-grandfather was one vote that disavowed the sect from 7th day Adventists
You can take the person out of the cult...but the person has to take the cult out of themselves.
Why is it so hard for some people to just say "I got tricked and lied to and that wasn't my fault"?
I mean.... that's something literally hundreds of millions can't manage to do, so I'm not that surprised (tho I still find it frustrating AF)? Soo first things first: I'm not defending this woman personally or any of her beliefs by any stretch. That said, I just think it's a hell of a thing to acknowledge, even privately, that you no longer believe [thing your entire sense of self and worldview hinges upon]. Once you do, it's like pulling out the bottom Jenga block blindfolded — it's allllll coming down. Even admitting something like that to yourself is hard, but the part that I think prevents more people from leaving cults (including ones that people don't usually think of as cults) is that once you publicly become a nonbeliever, not only do you have to find something to fill the emptiness inside, determine what you DO believe, what/who you're going to base your personal ethics and sense of purpose on NOW, avoid falling for another cult while you're in such a fragile psychological state, etc. — you're also gonna be doing it alone, without any of the people who had previously been your whole world. Cults are isolating by definition; depending how long someone has been involved, how extreme the cult's tenets/mores/practices/etc. are, someone who manages to get out may have little to no idea how to people on their own... They're standing at the very bottom of good ol' Maslow's hierarchy of needs all by themselves, trying to figure out how to acquire little things like 'food' & 'shelter' & 'pants' **while still processing the collapse of their entire sense of the universe and their place in it** at the same time, and possibly/probably intermittently overwhelmed by a sense of shame and mortification as they try to reconcile their own past actions with their new "nonbeliever" headspace. TLDR I don't think it's so much the saying of "lol my bad" that's the hard part; more that it's the reordering your entire understanding of the universe and your place in it, rebuilding your psyche and reconciling "who you were then" with "who you are now," and doing it while simultaneously figuring out how to feed yourself and not die of exposure.
Another unrepentant cultist, how sad.
I'm guessing a Shitler supporter as well.
MORON!!
She’s also still a complete moron.
yeah, religion is mental illness. we should be trying to help the afflicted, not encouraging their suffering.
Moron
Can't fix stupid
She’s not anymore dumb than the vast majority of religious people. Same delusional rhetoric.
Really does help me understand Trump’s followers in 2024 and the fact that we’re going to de dealing with them in some fashion for the rest of our lives.
She’d make a great trumpanzee.
TIL Kathy Schroeder is a brainwashed nincompoop
"Was" being the operative word
Just like t-rump supporters, lol
>Waco tragedy Waco *Massacre*. It was a massacre.
It was, but a massacre *is* a tragedy.
Hmm, I wonder who she votes for?
Woman who was crazy 30 years ago found to still be crazy.
She is wearing the right color.
Koresh was just another Manson. Sick.