Is FOX News a Cult?

Is FOX News a cult?

Clinical psychologist and attorney Bryant Welch says yes. Here's an excerpt from an article of his about it.

Fox News is Not Just Biased -- It's a Cult

For cults, like Fox News, their objective is total control of the victim's mind so that the viewer becomes the easily manipulated pawn of the cult. The cult leadership is not satisfied to merely convince the listener of a particular point of view. The cult wants to effectively pull the levers inside the listener's mind, and direct that mind lock, stock and barrel. The cult will measure its own success by the relative ease with which it is able to do this.

As with any successful vehicle of thought control in a democratic society, overtly coercive tools of domination are not available as they are in more traditionally authoritarian regimes. People must not only join the cult voluntarily, they must also join without any awareness they have joined a cult.

Fox succeeds in both of these tasks in large part because they successfully penetrates their viewers' minds in such a way that the viewers do not experience Fox News as telling them what to believe, what to do or, for that matter, even as advocating for what Fox News believes.

Instead, the Fox viewer has the experience of hearing something they believe they have already known or felt before, whether they have or have not, not unlike a déjà vu experience. The difference between psychological suggestion and independent thought is lost on the person succumbing to psychological suggestion.

Similarly, on an emotional level, Fox News elicits feelings of resentment from people, feelings which may be there to some extent, but which become far more pronounced by the time the extensive Fox commentary is over. Fox cleverly mirrors and amplifies these feelings explaining why any "sane" person would have the same feelings. The most common emotions in these cases are anger, disgust, and contempt. Humanistic emotions of compassion, love, and humor are almost totally lacking.

Many of the rest of us, the "non-adherents," if you will, cannot understand how people can stand to listen to Fox News with its non-stop onslaught of what we experience as invective. What we don't allow for in our assessment, because we don't experience it, is the extraordinary relief Fox "commentary" provides to the minds of its adherents. It keeps listeners feeling certain, justified, and stimulated all day long, 24-7. This is no trivial psychological service.

Fox appears to provide a 24/7 fortification of people's "own" political beliefs. And it is presented in a manner that ostensibly justifies a badly felt need for an emotional catharsis, especially rage, generated by the confusion people feel over the complexity of modern political and cultural issues. Helping people organize a suitable target for this rage requires creativity, good organizational skills and an interest in domination.

These psychological "services" make Fox a Trojan Horse ostensibly bearing psychological gifts that give Fox free entry to the mind of its listeners and enabling it to surreptitiously exercise longstanding Orwellian techniques of thought control. Well orchestrated, repetitive talking points, limited to a very few key "loaded words," to borrow Orwell's term, take on great psychological effectiveness. The words become mental implants, not arguments or policy justifications.

In this and other ways, the mind is gradually seduced into letting Fox have its way with the subjects' psyche with remarkably little resistance. People display a robotic acquiescence to positions and attitudes that heretofore had never been of concern to them.

We have all experienced this striking transition with our own friends and acquaintances, and many of us have even experienced it with loved ones. It is as if one day they are there and reachable and the next they are shut off from us, unreachable by rational discussion. Some literally have a faraway look in their eyes. These are like the terrifying encounters that families of young people confront when their child has been "captured" by a cult. The Fox News cult is one that appeals to "children of all ages."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bryant-welch/fox-news-is-not-just-bias_b_337961...

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[5nickeldoor5]

Fox is the only station that tells more than one view point. They leave it to our audience to make up our own mine. Unlike CNN, MSNBC that have guest on then are they are rude too them. It doesn't matter who the person is unless they are the left they are treated very rudely.The left don't think americans are smart enough to make up their own mind so the stations do it for them. Chis the tingle up the leg overhearing a man speak pretty discussing.At least fox have people of both views.

[Inigobalboa]

@2222554

"pantheist atheist" WTF

There's plenty of fossil records and other kinds of evidence, like DNA.

I am an atheist. I don't believe in your god, does that mean I am in cult? What Cult? Who is leader?

[Liztawna]

fired clown...jajajajajajjaa

[Liztawna]

@maykomarquez Oh yes....jajajajajaja next Rush L, Sara Palin, Tea Party..etc...

[maykomarquez]

VOTE *RON PAUL* FOR PRESIDENT 2012!!!!! ITS A REVOLUTION!!!!!!

[MrOmeMan]

@2222554

where does atheism and evolution fit as a cult? there's no unified atheist groups... seems you don't know the meaning...

[TheIAchilles]

God Bless Fox News.

[computerpurple]

HA , HA , HA Fox News a cult oh no it is not. People's free will is still intact.

[saintsnbraves2]

FNC is the best.

[2222554]

Atheism is a cult, see pagan atheists and pantheist atheism. Evolution is also a cult as it is a belief of a supposed history without any actual fossil records.

So I don't even have to watch this video to know that whoever made this video has no room to call the kettle black when they themselves belong to a cult...