Photo by Jr Korpa on Unsplash
Recently, a news headline hit both US and UK airwaves that shocked the world: a Texan father shot his British daughter to death shortly after they had a heated argument over Trump. More specifically, these details from the New York Post stood out to me:
The daughter, Lucy Harrison, was arguing that Trump’s stance on sexual assault was bad. She asked him what he would think if she were assaulted by Trump.
The father, Kris Harrison, was an alcoholic on a relapse. He also said he wouldn’t have cared if Trump assaulted her.
He asked Lucy if she would like to see a gun he got, then shot her. Then, he called his wife to look at their dead daughter’s body.
More shockingly, a grand jury in Texas refused to indict him. This is a murder on a UK citizen over Donald Trump. It’s also a case of filicide by a father. He was not charged in her killing.
A father.
A father killed his own daughter over Donald Trump.
He chose Donald Trump over his own daughter to that extent.
Think about that. Really, think about that. He chose a man who doesn’t even know he exists over his own child. For most of us, this type of murder is unfathomable — truly unthinkable.
However, if you have a background in cult psychology or grew up in a cult, this makes all the sense in the world. You might be wondering how this could happen. Let me explain.
Cult 45 behaves like a cult because it involves indoctrination as well as identity removal.
Let’s talk about both indoctrination and identity removal separately.
Indoctrination
Indoctrination is the first step to cult membership outside of love bombing, which is often optional. This is when the cult floods you with information, repeating it until it’s ingrained in your brain. America
Considering how much dark money is poured into things like Turning Point USA, it’s obvious how much indoctrination is being used against Americans. Knowledge is power. Controlling knowledge is power. Controlling the dialogue is also power.
FOX has been instrumental in brainwashing a large portion of America, or at least, priming them for heavier brainwashing outlets like Breitbart or OANN. They are all synced up to make it seem like they’re selling a common story.
This is by design. The more people hear something, the more likely they are to believe it. After a while, it becomes “crazier” to not believe those statements than it does to believe it.
Identity Removal
Did you ever notice how often cult members all dress the same, talk the same, use the same slang, and think the same? This is thanks to a behavior known as identity removal.
Cults keep people inside by removing the person they once were, often in favor of a cult follower personality. It happens in one of many ways, including:
Loading up on busy work. A lot of cults will keep you busy, busy, busy with small, inane tasks. It cuts into your sleep. You might have missed doing certain things or talking to certain people before but you’re just so tired…You slowly lose touch with who you used to be.
Shaming it away. Shame is a remarkably powerful behavior modification tool. It’s why people get embarrassed when they don’t go for the status quo. It hurts — especially when paired with ostracism. People will go to great lengths to avoid the feeling of shame.
Blackmail. Blackmail is a powerful motivator because it goes beyond shame. It can ruin a person’s life. A lot of people have alleged that Scientology blackmails people — though there is currently no evidence that this is true.
Shunning is also a major tool in most cults. Have you ever had friends just stop talking to you? It’s a brutal betrayal. Rejection hits the same parts of your brain that physical pain does. Needless to say, people will do almost anything to make sure they keep their community and friends nearby.
In some cults, retaliation happens. Jim Jones was notorious for beating his followers. Charles Manson went so far as to kill someone who he didn’t like. Retaliation from cults is swift, brutal, and often glazed as a “matter of respecting god.”
Peer pressure often does the rest. This often happens through cult members who try to ask questions to get you to stop doing non-approved things. This might be your “bestie,” who asks, “Why are you even talking to those people? They hated you. We love you.”
Slowly but surely, cultists are goaded into dropping their identity in favor of going with what the leader says. By the time they may want to leave, they may feel they’re in too deep, sacrificed too much, and will lose everything if they stand up for themselves.
This is often why right-wing people are worried about leaving the right-wing. They’re terrified of the retaliation, abandonment, and shaming they’ll feel.
People don’t realize this, but cults regularly test their members to ensure everyone remains loyal.
Imagine that you’re a cult leader. You want your cultists to work on your farm so you get money. So, you make sure none escape. You make sure that everyone does what you say and that there’s no uprising.
You make sure you have eyes everywhere. People aren’t allowed to stay alone for too long. There’s always more busywork. In Jim Jones’s Jonestown cult, followers were regularly subjected to “white nights” that required them to drink fake cyanide…up until it became REAL cyanide.
Followers who disobeyed Jones were beaten senseless. Eventually, the day came when it was no longer a drill. It killed about a thousand people — and very few refused. (Those who refused to die got shot.)
One of the bigger tests that cults use to reinforce loyalty is sacrifice.
Many cults tend to ask followers to give up something they really care about. This is a practice that goes all the way back to prehistoric days. The more you sacrifice for a group, the more invested you are.
Part of this is because we, as humans, tend to think that we need to keep sacrificing more in order to get a return on investment — even when it’s a sinking ship. The Sunk Cost Fallacy makes you feel like you need to dig your heels in more rather than cut your losses.
What happened to Lucy Harrison was pretty obvious, at least to me:
She spoke out against Trump.
Her father had too many drinks, but saw the argument as an affront to his identity.
So, he shot his own kid to death — because Trump mattered more than she did.
I think, in its own way, the killing of Lucy Harrison was a sacrifice for the altar of 47.
Most Trumpers who “sacrifice” ties with their kids don’t murder their own children. Rather, they just cut ties with them or stay aligned with Trump despite adult children warning them that this would sever family ties.
Sacrificing works because it gives cultists one less thing they can go back to if they choose to leave the cult. So, it reinforces identity loss and also cuts much of what they could lean on if they leave.
I can’t help but wonder how many estranged parents are going to flip out once they realize what they gave up.
For those who have never experienced cult life before, it must be mind-boggling to see parents prioritize a man they’ve never met over their own children. It must be even more shocking to see parents kill their own children over politics.
Trump has no idea who Mr. Harrison is. He never will. He has no interest in meeting him. Yet, Harrison was willing to throw out his own flesh and blood for the sake of Trump and the GOP.
Chances are fairly decent that Kris Harrison woke up from his indoctrination the day he killed his daughter. Sadly, it’s too late for him to be able to recover his old life. All he can do is recoil in horror over what he did.
Trump didn’t ask for him to kill his kid. The GOP didn’t ask for it either. But his daughter was still a sacrificial lamb — one of many adult children who either lost their families, their homes, or their well-being to the cult of the right wing.
Kris seems to have thought that the cult would reward him for his loyalty. He went “whole hog” on the Jim Jones of politics. As it turns out, that doesn’t really work out very well for cultists.
After all, look at what loyalty got the folks who lived in Jonestown.
Leopard print and marble tubs.
