Probably the most infamous cases of mass mind control involves religious cults, with the People’s Temple Jonestown Massacre in Guyana, South America being the most tragic. In 1978, Jim Jones, most likely suffering from megalomania, forced 912 followers into committing mass suicide. Attempts to rescue the followers, ultimately by a member of the US House of Representatives, ended in the representative’s murder and the deaths of all sect members.
The totality of Jim Jones’ control was blamed on a religious extremism administered through a charismatic leader with a regimen of 24/7 control of mind and body. In today’s world, religious cultism is not dead, but is still a problem.
There is a more extensive form of mind control involving millions of Americans, not in the religious sense but in the political sense. There is no immediate threat of death for humans but, in effect, a deadly threat to a democracy founded well over 200 years ago, the American experiment in democracy.
We are speaking of Rupert Murdock’s News Corporation, which has potential access to a global audience of 4.7 billion people, three-fourths of the world’s population. Its Fox News Channel acts as the ultimate political cult in the United States.
Unlike religious cults, it does not hold your body captive, only your mind. It is not the dystopian world with a totalitarian superstate that we see depicted in the movie or novel called 1984, but one using many of its tools, like doublespeak and saturation learning. A form of bizarre doublespeak is 1984’s Ministry of Truth, the total opposite of truth, which in turn reminds us of Fox’s claim of “fair and balanced.”