Jamie Raskin Says He Has Consulted Cult Experts To Communicate With Extremist Colleagues

[Spunkylama]

Jamie Raskin Says He Has Consulted Cult Experts To Communicate With Extremist Colleagues​

Democratic lawmaker said he has warned some far-right colleagues that if they don't snap out of it, they'll be selling "incense and flowers at Dulles Airport."

Jamie Raskin Says He Has Consulted Cult Experts To Communicate With Extremist Colleagues

Democratic lawmaker said he has warned some far-right colleagues that if they don't snap out of it, they'll be selling "incense and flowers at Dulles Airport."

www.huffpost.com

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) revealed that he has sought advice from “cult deprogrammers” on how best to communicate with his extremist Republican colleagues — and “pull them away” from their alternative realities.
He has told some of those colleagues, “If you guys don’t get out of this, you’re going to be fit when it’s all over only to be selling incense and flowers at Dulles Airport,” Raskin recounted Thursday in Washington, D.C., at a “Truth and Trauma” talk hosted by Georgetown University’s Center on Faith and Justice.

“They’ve abandoned critical thinking skills,” added Raskin, who sits on the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.
He said deprogramming experts have told him to be “as warm and affectionate and as personable as you can be with them and make them remember what life was like before they got into the cult.”

But “you have to be very emphatic about what the truth is and what facts are versus what is just derangement,” he added.
He pointed to far-right, QAnon-supporting Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) as an example of those in the legislature who are acting more like members of a “religious cult” than lawmakers. Greene was stripped of her committee assignments shortly after taking office last year for her embrace of racist and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, as well as expressing support for executing prominent Democrats.

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[Emily L]

Spunky, I think he has a point, but I don't think it applies to everybody who supports Trump. I know some intelligent people who like (most) of his policies.

But I also know some people who are just as Raskin describes. They think Trump can do no wrong. They also say that they wouldn't mind if Trump became "president for life." When I say, "But what if he were to turn evil and do bad things?" they wave it off and say, "That's impossible."

That just doesn't sound like typical political support--it sounds like religious devotion. And it's kind of scary.