Cult`s Activities Essays - Manson Family, Cult, Charles Manson

Cult`s Activities Cult activity has been on the rise over the past few decades. With it there has been an increase in the fear surrounding it. From this fear, society has learned much about cults, how they get members and what to look out for as far as cult recruiters go. Society as a whole has also learned what can be done to deal with cults. Cult activity and the fear that surrounds it Throughout the last couple of decades more and more stories of illegal cult activity or murders by satanic cults appear on the news each night. This surge of reported cult activity has caused a spark in public interest. There has been a large increase in the fear that surrounds cults over the past couple of years. A cult is "a therapeutic or unconventional religious movement (McBride, 1985, 22)," and the more cults that fall beneath the public eye, the more serious the fear of cults becomes. Much of this fear has been sparked by major cult related incidents such as mass suicide by the People's Temple or the murder of Sharon Tate. These incidents, and incidents like them, grab the nation's attention and create widespread panic. But as the nation reads about these stories in the paper, the same questions seem to surface. Questions like "How does this happen?" or "What can we do to stop this from happening again?" are often asked. The panic and fear of cult activity in our country seems to continue to grow with the more unbelievable stories that hit the news. The first big news event that was cult related occurred in 1969. Five dead bodies were found by the maid at 10050 Cielo Drive. Beautiful actress Sharon Tate who was pregnant at the time, and her friends Steven Earl Parent, Abigail Folger, Voytek Frykowski, and Jay Sebring were found butchered thoughout the residence (Bugliosi, 1974, 18). The murders themselves grasped the nation's attention, but it was when the murderers and their motives surfaced that the fear began. It was in February of 1970 that the motive of these murders was discovered (Bugliosi, 1974, 283). Through police investigation, it was discovered that the murders were cult related. Charles Manson and members of his cult, known as "The Family," were to blame. Manson and family lived on a ranch in California. Manson was an avid fan of The Beatles and believed that this rock band spoke to him though their lyrics. He particularly liked The Beatles' White Album which included the song "Helter Skelter." Manson interpreted this song's lyrics as a prophecy of a race war that would take place between the blacks and the whites. In this war, he believed the black man would rise up and slaughter all of the whites. So Manson's plan was to take his family out into the desert and hide in a bottomless pit until the war was over. After the war, he believed the blacks would realize all they ever knew was taught to them by the white man, and if they wanted to survive, they would need a white person to tell them what to do. That is when Manson and his Family would surface from the bottomless pit, and be the rulers of the world as the master race (Bugliosi, 1974, 284-290). The only problem with Manson's prophecy was that Helter Skelter never came. So he sent Family members out to kill Sharon Tate and friends and instructed them to make it appear as if the blacks did it. He tried to accomplish this by writing words in the victims' blood all over the walls like "Arise," "Helter Skelter," and "Death to the Pigs." All this was done in hopes of starting the race war (Bugliosi, 1974, 424). The trial for this terrible crime was so publicized that it played a very significant role in creating cult fear. The next largely publicized cult related incident occurred in 1979 with the mass suicide in Jonestown (Green, 1993, 34). Jim Jones started his cult in California. His cult was referred to as the People's Temple, and his followers called him Reverend Jim Jones. Jones operated his cult under the cover of a home for depraved children. He managed to round up 300 children, some taken illegally, and around 600 men and women who wanted to help these children. Jones then left California, and headed to Guyana (Miller, 1990, 42). It was there that he convinced his 900 followers, made up of men, women, and children, to drink orange squash

Definition and Examples of Spin in Propaganda

Definition and Examples of Spin in Propaganda Spin is a contemporary term for a form of propaganda that relies on deceptive methods of persuasion. In politics, business, and elsewhere, spin is often characterized by exaggeration, euphemisms, inaccuracies, half-truths, and excessively emotional appeals. A person who composes and/or communicates spin is referred to as a spin doctor. Examples and Observations I would define spin as the shaping of events to make you look better than anybody else. I think it is . . . an art form now and it gets in the way of the truth.  Ã‚  (Benjamin Bradlee, executive editor of The Washington Post, quoted by Woody Klein in All the Presidents Spokesmen: Spinning the News, White House Press From Franklin D. Roosevelt to George W. Bush. Praeger Publishers, 2008) Manipulating Meaning Often associated with newspapers and politicians, to use spin is to manipulate meaning, to twist truth for particular endsusually with the aim of persuading readers or listeners that things are other than they are. As in idioms such as to put a ‘positive spin on something’or a ‘negative spin on something’one line of meaning is concealed, while anotherat least intentionallytakes its place. Spin is language which, for whatever reason, has designs on us...As the Oxford English Dictionary confirms, this sense of spin emerges only in the later 1970s, originally in the context of American politics.   (Lynda Mugglestone, A Journey Through Spin. OxfordWords Blog, September 12, 2011) Deception We live in a world of spin. It flies at us in the form of misleading commercials for products and political candidates and about public policy matters. It comes from businesses, political leaders, lobbying groups and political parties. Millions are deceived every day†¦all because of spin. ‘Spin’ is the polite word for deception. Spinners mislead by means that range from subtle omission to outright lies. Spin paints a false picture of reality, by bending facts, mischaracterizing the words of others, ignoring or denying evidence, or just spinning a yarnby making things up.  (Brooks Jackson and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, unSpun: Finding Facts in a World of Disinformation. Random House, 2007) Spin and Rhetoric The implicit sense of immorality attached to spin and rhetoric leads lawmakers and candidates to use these words to undermine the sincerity of the opposition. As then House Leader Dennis Hastert declared in a 2005 debate over the estate/death tax, You see, no matter what kind of spin our friends on the other side of the aisle try to use, the death tax simply isnt fair...All of this points to an atmosphere of moral ambivalence that surrounds the modern practice of spin and rhetoric. At the level of principle, rhetorical speech is most often seen as disingenuous, inauthentic, and even morally dangerous. Yet at the level of practice, it is often accepted as an inevitable and necessary part of competitive party politics.   (Nathaniel J. Klemp, The Morality of Spin: Virtue and Vice in Political Rhetoric and the Christian Right. Rowman Littlefield, 2012) Managing the News [One] way the government manages the news is by inserting into newscasts prepackaged reports that get their message out or put a positive spin on the news. (Note that the power of government to censor is much greater in many other countries than in the United States and in some other industrial democracies.)  (Nancy Cavender and Howard Kahane, Logic and Contemporary Rhetoric: The Use of Reason in Everyday Life, 11th ed. Wadsworth, 2010) Spin vs. Debate Democrats have been known to conduct their fair share of spin. During the presidential election campaign season of 2004, some liberal Democrats indulged in inflammatory and unsubstantiated attacks on the right by comparing the Bush administration to Nazi Germany, associating the Republican Party with a racist fringe candidate, and allegingwithout evidencethat Bush advisor Karl Rove was the mastermind behind the attacks on John Kerrys war record. These occurrences of manipulative rhetoric [led] one commentator on political spin to conclude that, in the heat of the campaign, reasonable debate is again falling by the wayside.  (Bruce C. Jansson, Becoming an Effective Policy Advocate: From Policy Practice to Social Justice, 6th ed. Brooks/Cole, 2011) Spin Doctors [In a 1998 interview that Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott] gave to the Independent, . . . he said we need to get away from rhetoric and back on to the substance of government. That statement apparently constituted the basis for the Independents headline: Prescott bins the spin for real policies. The spin is an allusion to New Labours spin-doctors, the people responsible for the media presentation of the Government and for putting a media spin (or angle) on its policies and activities.  (Norm Fairclough, New Labour, New Language? Routledge, 2000) Etymology From Old English spinnan, draw, stretch, spin