You can pretty much believe anything you want these days. No evidence is needed to believe in the divinity of Donald Trump when you are in the MAGA cult .

The MAGA cult is no different than any other cult. And, the outcomes will be much the same (Understanding Cults and Religions).

Beliefs and myths are assembled semiotically through what is known as apophenia. Apophenia is the disposition of creating and attributing links between things as a network of beliefs. The urge to find connections enables the power of bringing together belief in ownership and power.

In the end it is only I who understand what is really going on, such is the power of groups like Qanon. All cults enable the most profound sense of belonging and certainty.

One of the key markers of being in a cult is not knowing what is cultish and holding to a special sense of truth and unique knowledge (https://archive.org/details/cultish-the-language-of-fanaticism-epub). Once in a cult, membership and belonging confirm the network of beliefs that one wants to believe. When cultic beliefs are normalised by a group then the volume and affirmation of the group confirm the worldview. In reality, there is no connection between beliefs but these are attributed and confirmed by the group.

Most cults have a comprehensive network of strategies that are knitted together to create a system of belonging and certainty.

This is what happens in the zero cult (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/zero-the-great-safety-delusion/).

If one explores the interconnected strategies of the Nazi or MAGA cults, they are the same (https://scholarworks.calstate.edu/downloads/th83m549p).

When one looks at the use of media, social media, posters, tv, marches, banners, slogans, rituals, rallies, parades, publications, symbols, signs and myths, they are all framed in the same way. The same applies to the cult of zero: https://visionzero.global/. Just click on the link for ‘resources’ and one will see all the same strategies to convince people of the reality of zero as with any cultic belief. This is how apophenia works. See the list of strategies below:

And of course, each year the zero congress affirms belief through rallies, gatherings, slogans, workshops, music, symbols and assembly of believers.

The formation of truth in belief is confirmed by numbers and the volume of those who belong against the enemy, however they are branded. In MAGA it’s ‘leftist radicals’, in Nazism it is the Jews and in Safety=Zero (https://safetyrisk.net/how-to-escape-the-safetyzero-cult/) it is anyone who opposes zero. The key in any cult is to demonise the enemy and through ‘reaction formation’ build a narrative that brands ‘the other’ as the enemy.

What breaks the power of apophenia is critical thinking, ethical mindfulness and deconstruction. In safety, such skills are demonised because compliance is king and certainty is right. The last thing traditional safety (1 and 2) wants is anything negative (https://safetyrisk.net/fixated-on-the-positives-in-safety/). Nothing aids this more than confusing slogans as ‘principles’ and ensuring that ethical thinking is discouraged. Slogans are one of the best weapons of the cult to keep the masses uneducated, dumb and compliant. Indoctrination and propaganda are the ‘bread and butter’ of any cult.

The best resistance to cultic apophenia is awareness of how cults work and the encouragement of critical thinking, ethics and deconstruction. We study such foundational skills in the work of SPoR. Once cults have been exposed and deconstructed that is not the end of the story. In SPoR, we reconstruct a new way of understanding risk and persons that is practical, positive in a method that ‘works’ (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/it-works-a-new-approach-to-risk-and-safety-book-for-free-download/).