How Indoctrination Happens

In Christian Nationalism and elsewhere, the tools are identical

Photo by Jackson Simmer on Unsplash

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I was in kindergarten the first time I heard I was going to hell.

Hell was a lake a fire. A gaping furnace over which my five-year-old self dangled by a spider’s filament. A place of eternal torture and suffering for anyone who rejected Jesus.

In kindergarten, I wasn’t too young to learn what happened to crucifixion victims. Whipped with a cat-of-nine-tails, a whip with sharp objects that plowed the skin. Sometimes, my childhood pastor shouted, a victim’s insides fell out from the beating, and they died before they made it to their cross.

But if they survived, they dragged their crosses to their crucifixion spots. Their bodies were stretched out - naked, beaten, mangled, bloody - and nailed by hands and feet. Skin, muscles, tendons all tore when the cross was dropped in its hole.

Crucifixion victims hung for hours, sometimes days. Eventually, they suffocated.

I had nightmares about burning in hell. More nightmares about being crucified. I begged God to save me when I was five, hoping to make the nightmares stop.

I did not understand that the nightmares and the fears unleashed by these sermons were being intentionally triggered, a tool for indoctrination.

But how does a child block out trauma? How does a pre-teen cope with near-constant violent messaging? As I grew, descriptions became more graphic and violent. Hell burned hotter. Crucifixions became even more gruesome.

I was asked to imagine someone I loved spending eternity there. Repeatedly, for almost two decades, I was treated to this imagery.

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This is how I was indoctrinated in Christian Nationalism. Day-by-day. Scene-by-scene.

The horrific imagery I outlined above served as a constant source of childhood and teenage trauma. As I grew, it grew with me. More blood. More gore. More heat. More suffering. All to keep my brain’s amygdala open and receptive to Christian Nationalist indoctrination.

I didn’t understand how my amygdala had been assaulted until I started EMDR therapy in my 50s. I’d spent almost two decades trying to undo this conditioning. Intellectually, I knew what it was; I understood it was bad.

But every time I encountered a trigger, I couldn’t shut off my reactions. Sometimes, I’d lose two weeks or a month to the aftereffects of one event.

“What is wrong with me?” I asked my therapist. “Why can’t I stop this?”

She explained that the amygdala is the brain’s fear processor. Consistent fear responses are buried there, and it is some of the most difficult brain programming to access. We were able to reprogram my amygdala with EMDR therapy. Had I not gone through that process, I wouldn’t be able to do this work.

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All kinds of indoctrination, including the Christian Nationalist variety, use fear to cause trauma in the brain’s amygdala.

The fear response makes the brain more receptive to consistent messages the indoctrinators want to implant. They can then use a specific set of tools to control their victims.

Jim Stewartson

is an expert on this kind of psychological conditioning. I recommend his work to understand the components of indoctrination. I’m trying to connect with him to invite him to chat with us (in case anyone here has an in.)

In the following newsletters, Stewartson goes through the five basic steps abusers use to indoctrinate their victims. Please read the linked newsletters for descriptions of each step. They are:

• Red-pilling and trauma - purposefully exposing someone to violent, upsetting situations and imagery

• Dissociation - how a victim of red-pilling and trauma protects herself while seeking to reintegrate

• Salvation - a savior arrives with steps to help a victim reintegrate

• Refreezing - a set of messages that the savior constantly reinforces to control a victim

• Mimetic synchrony - complete adaptation of messaging in all spheres of life (SOURCE: Jim Stewartson’s newsletters below)

Hypervigilance: How MAGA Short Circuits Rational Thought

Mimetic Rage: Why Epstein Leads to Sacrificial Violence

Readers seeking to understand more about how many Americans are indoctrinated on multiple fronts and what we may be able to do about it should support Stewartson’s work.

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How Stewartson’s five steps apply to my indoctrination

Red-pilling and trauma

Continuous exposure to violent, gory, nightmarish scenes of torture, death, and hell from kindergarten opened my brain’s amygdala.

Dissociation

As a child, I tried all kinds of things to escape during church. I drew in my Bible. I tried to sleep during church. I played with small toys. I made up stories. I daydreamed.

And I didn’t stand a chance.

Salvation

My pastor presented himself and those he elevated as the only vectors we should heed to escape hell-fire.

Refreezing

My pastor’s endorsements applied to all aspects of life: Religion; media; entertainment; dining; reading; education; academia and expertise; journalism; travel; shopping; and so much more. They were reiterated constantly and reinforced by the church and school community.

Over time, this trained me to refuse to listen to anyone who even hinted at another point of view. At the first signs of disagreement, I shut down, deployed my programmed responses, and fled the scene.

Mimetic synchrony

I can flip a switch in my brain and recall this indoctrination decades later. It becomes the most all-consuming force in a person’s life. Once a victim reaches this phase, they have an answer or a thought-terminating cliche for everything. It is extremely difficult to talk with them about anything they don’t want to hear, and it is near-impossible to persuade them to entertain any other viewpoint.

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Tomorrow, I’m going to cover how to recognize these people in the wild so that readers can stop wasting time trying to change their minds.