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In Reply to: Re: understanding TF as a social movement posted by For historical perspective on January 18, 2006 at 12:21:28:
I think what you say is quite reductive, and the problem is in fact reducing things to quick cliches.
Whatever may be said about Manson, there were a number of young people who loved him, obeyed him, and were willing to do 'anything' for him. If you read the documents in the archives, and how the young women in his 'family' acted and behaved, you understand a lot more about the complex recipe it takes to put together groups like The Family.
Sure, Manson may have been a freak, but there were people willing to think he was God. And let me remind you that all of us here in different degrees thought Berg was like God, or close to 'God' or whatever. And many things that 'happened' happened because many of us gave away the control over our lives and actions to Berg and HIS ideas.
I think the Manson story is extremely important because of the people involved in it. Read the biographies of Susan Atkins, Tex Watson, Leslie Van Houten. These people could have easily been people in Berg's "family."
As much as I realize the power of persuasion and the fraud aspect in what Berg was and how he 'conned' people, I also think that it is important to rememeber he would have been nobody, were it not for the power that all of us GAVE HIM. He only had the power he was given. If you believe he did have a revelation, well he did. Little matters about whether you can establish the 'revelation' was 'real' or not. That is why I talked about what is real and what is surreal.
I am interested in the process of how an individual gets to abdicate his/her own will and character to somebody else. There was undue influence, INDEED, but I repeat, Jim Jones, Manson, Berg would be NOTHING without the people willing to make them who they are.
