Jehovahs Witnesses Revealed

I think it’s important to understand mind control / brainwashing and how the Watchtower uses this to control a Jehovah’s Witness.

Steven Hassan is an author and exit counselor to people who leave the cults. In his book Combating Cult Mind Control,  focuses mainly on the Moonies, but list the Jehovah’s Witnesses among the cults. Chapter 2 of this book breaks down the B.I.T.E method of mind control. This is a non religious book, so there is no bias to non Jehovah’s Witnesses. Please take careful note of the steps in each category because you will see these items over and over again in the Watchtower literature. Once you know them, you will be able to quickly identify what they are doing.

Destructive mind control can be understood in terms of four basic components, which form the acronym BITE:
I. Behavior Control
II. Information Control
III. Thought Control
IV. Emotional Control

It is important to understand that destructive mind control can be determined when the overall effect of these four components promotes dependency and obedience to some leader or cause. It is not necessary for every single item on the list to be present. Mind controlled cult members can live in their own apartments, have nine-to-five jobs, be married with children, and still be unable to think for themselves and act independently.

I. Behavior Control
1. Regulation of individual’s physical reality
a. Where, how and with whom the member lives and associates with
b. What clothes, colors, hairstyles the person wears
c. What food the person eats, drinks, adopts, and rejects
d. How much sleep the person is able to have
e. Financial dependence
f. Little or no time spent on leisure, entertainment, vacations
2. Major time commitment required for indoctrination sessions and group rituals
3. Need to ask permission for major decisions
4. Need to report thoughts, feelings and activities to superiors
5. Rewards and punishments (behavior modification techniques- positive and negative).
6. Individualism discouraged; group think prevails
7. Rigid rules and regulations
8. Need for obedience and dependency

II. Information Control
1. Use of deception
a. Deliberately holding back information
b. Distorting information to make it acceptable
c. Outright lying
2. Access to non-cult sources of information minimized or discouraged
a. Books, articles, newspapers, magazines, TV, radio
b. Critical information
c. Former members
d. Keep members so busy they don’t have time to think
3. Compartmentalization of information; Outsider vs. Insider doctrines
a. Information is not freely accessible
b. Information varies at different levels and missions within pyramid
c. Leadership decides who “needs to know” what
4. Spying on other members is encouraged
a. Pairing up with “buddy” system to monitor and control
b. Reporting deviant thoughts, feelings, and actions to leadership
5. Extensive use of cult generated information and propaganda
a. Newsletters, magazines, journals, audio tapes, videotapes, etc.
b. Misquotations, statements taken out of context from non-cult sources
6. Unethical use of confession
a. Information about “sins” used to abolish identity boundaries
b. Past “sins” used to manipulate and control; no forgiveness or absolution

III. Thought Control
1. Need to internalize the group’s doctrine as “Truth”
a. Map = Reality
b. Black and White thinking
c. Good vs. evil
d. Us vs. them (inside vs. outside)
2. Adopt “loaded” language (characterized by “thought-terminating clichés”). Words are the tools we use to think with. These “special” words constrict rather than expand understanding. They function to reduce complexities of experience into trite, platitudinous “buzz words”.
3. Only “good” and “proper” thoughts are encouraged.
4. Thought-stopping techniques (to shut down “reality testing” by stopping “negative” thoughts and allowing only “good” thoughts); rejection of rational analysis, critical thinking, constructive criticism.
a. Denial, rationalization, justification, wishful thinking
b. Chanting
c. Meditating
d. Praying
e. Speaking in “tongues”
f. Singing or humming
5. No critical questions about leader, doctrine, or policy seen as legitimate
6. No alternative belief systems viewed as legitimate, good, or useful

IV. Emotional Control
1. Manipulate and narrow the range of a person’s feelings.
2. Make the person feel like if there are ever any problems it is always their fault, never the leader’s or the group’s.
3. Excessive use of guilt
a. Identity guilt
1. Who you are (not living up to your potential)
2. Your family
3. Your past
4. Your affiliations
5. Your thoughts, feelings, actions
b. Social guilt
c. Historical guilt
4. Excessive use of fear
a. Fear of thinking independently
b. Fear of the “outside” world
c. Fear of enemies
d. Fear of losing one’s “salvation”
e. Fear of leaving the group or being shunned by group
f. Fear of disapproval
5. Extremes of emotional highs and lows.
6. Ritual and often public confession of “sins”.
7. Phobia indoctrination : programming of irrational fears of ever leaving the group or even questioning the leader’s authority. The person under mind control cannot visualize a positive, fulfilled future without being in the group.
a. No happiness or fulfillment “outside”of the group
b. Terrible consequences will take place if you leave: “hell”; “demon possession”; “incurable diseases”; “accidents”; “suicide”; “insanity”; “10,000 reincarnations”; etc.
c. Shunning of leave takers. Fear of being rejected by friends, peers, and family.
d. Never a legitimate reason to leave. From the group’s perspective, people who leave are: “weak;” “undisciplined;” “unspiritual;” “worldly;” “brainwashed by family, counselors;” seduced by money, sex, rock and roll.

Brain washing has somewhat similar steps.

1. Repetitive instruction with books, magazines and meetings all saying the same thing over and over again.
The JW are told not to read anything but what they publish and go so far as to call it “religious pornography”. If caught reading anything other than what they publish, they risk being disfellowshipped.

2. New members are told to break ties with outside friends and limit fellowship with non-member relatives.
This is slow process for new JW’s. First they are told to talk to their friends and family about truth, but when they get any real resistances they are told to avoid contact with them if possible. They are then encourage to make JW friends.

3. Banning the reading of anything the criticizes them.
See explanation in number 1.

4. The denunciation and shunning of ex-members.
We are going to have a chapter on shunning and disfellowshipping, but basically it is when other members never talk with a person who leaves the Jehovah’s Witness. This includes mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, children. Sinful is what that is!

5. Verbal attacks undermining the authority of all outside institutions – religious, educational, medical, governmental.
Over and over again you will see these attacks by the watchtower on all of these systems of authority. Usually they refer to them as from Satan.

6. They have a unique vocabulary with “loaded” language reinforcing the sect’s rules.
For instance they use “new light” and “Gods Organization” to name a couple.

7. They orchestrate superiority / inferiority-guilt complex