quote:
The 35-year-old German was deep into the conspiracy theory scene for years before she dropped out, turning her attention to educating outsiders about the sinister truth behind Third Reich truthers and "chemmies" a.k.a people who believe the government is dumping toxic agents in plane vapor trails. Now she and her husband, Kai, run a Facebook page and Twitter account called Die lockere Schraube ("The Loose Screw"). And they've since incurred the wrath of their former conspiracy colleagues.

quote:
On the internet, Wittschier found people who shared her convictions. "That's how it was," she writes via email. "Back then, I had a friend who was into the same ideological conspiracy [stuff] and we got along pretty well. We believed in the same stuff, browsed the same forums, we used to talk about all sorts of things and most of the time we shared the same opinion." Wittschier felt accepted among these like-minded people, who would ridicule outsiders' attempts to re-educate them: "Those people [with different opinions] are representatives of the system or get paid; so-called sheep, people who don't think."

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Wittschier wanted to share her newly gained knowledge in her old forums. "I felt the need to disabuse them right away, but I soon learnt that they had no interest in being enlighted. Beyond the larger and diverse Allmystery forum, smaller groups of chemtrail believers and those on Facebook pages prefer to stick with their kind," she said. "When I told them, Guys, something's really wrong here, they became really aggressive, like out of nowhere. Contradictions are not a welcome guest. As some of them were old friends of ours they knew who I was, who Kai was, and where we lived. All of the sudden our full name and adress appeared openly accessible on the internet. They called me a bitch, a whore, and a count. They said, I should butt out and that I had become an agent for the other side, the ruling elite."

i've started researching for a possible article related to "groups who punish you if you leave" and i guess i can add another group to the list. i'm curious what the rank of danger is for the groups. islam and the mafia have to be at the top. both have a long history of killing people who leave (or try to). then you have to deal with unions, cults, conspiracy theory groups, etc.

this quote:

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According to Wittschier, the issue goes beyond chemtrailers who threaten the press and any former believers. "With hindsight, it was like a cult," she said. "At first it was very exciting to know secrets that others don't, and to be able to educate others. They were a close community with rules, hierarchies and so on. It wasn't until I swung around I realized the pressure they were exerting at the same time—people with different views were, in my opinion, aggresively and systematically attacked and were blocked or deleted within minutes. I was put under observation and everything I did online got recorded, collected, and noted. I can see a lot of similarities to cults like Scientology. For me they are one and the same thing.

summarizes a lot of the issues with these insulated groups (and to a larger extent, a major problem of political polarization going on in the West, especially by the "Big Left" and evangelicals on the other side).

This post was edited on 4/22/16 at 9:40 am