Quote:
"Any of the following are strong indications of belonging to an authoritarian group: 1. No deviation from the party line is allowed. Anyone who has thoughts or feelings contrary to the accepted perspective is made to feel wrong or bad for having them. 2. Whatever the authority does is regarded as perfect or right. Thus behaviors that would be questioned in others are made to seem different and proper. 3. One trusts that the leader or others in the group know what’s best. 4. It is difficult to communicate with anyone not in the group. 5. One finds oneself defending actions of the leader (or other members) without having firsthand knowledge of what occurred. 6. At times one is confused and fearful without knowing why. This is a sign that doubts are being repressed."
Sound familiar?
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The similarities are striking, but even more so is the fact that we once thought each of these factors to be unique to the LC. So many of the elements that were deemed to be unique to the LC were exactly the things that were the most abusive, and interestingly, the exact same things found in other abusive groups.
I've struggled with this a lot. We each took certain aberrant factors of the LC as a sort of 'proof' that the LC was the place to be. These are the very things that are common to abusive groups. The terminology differs, but the same elements are always at play.