Latest / This Jungian Life Podcast / SHADOWLAND: Self-Harm Cults – The Story of Sarah

Transcript

SHADOWLAND: Self-Harm Cults – The Story of Sarah · This Jungian Life Podcast

• 0:10
  Speaker 1: This is Shadowland, a new podcast experience from This Jungian
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Life that explores the lives of people who work and
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: take refuge in the hidden places of our culture. We
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: hope our work will bring insight, compassion, and understanding to
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: the darker side of human experience. In that spirit, we
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: meet Saru, a mother whose daughter was rescued from the
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: self-harm cult called 764. This dangerous group has been identified
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: by the FBI, who continue to prosecute their leaders. Despite
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: those efforts, it continues and targets children. We explore how
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: she discovered her daughter's entrapment, the process of recovery, the
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: growing danger of these types of groups, and the toll
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: it has taken on her. Sarah's ongoing work investigating these
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: cults requires that we protect her identity. We are using
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: a pseudonym, altering her voice, and obscuring her face. So,
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: I'd like to introduce Sarah. whose daughter was drawn into
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: this frightening 764 group, who was put at great risk,
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: and Sarah has gone to great lengths to help and
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: save her daughter. Sarah, why don't you orient us to
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: the story?
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: What happened? We thought at the time that this saga
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: began a little over two years ago, I got a
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: call at the end of the day from my daughter's school.
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: She was 11 years old and in sixth grade at
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: the time. And I was told that she had carved
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: a word into her wrist and that they were calling
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: the CAT team, which is a mental health team. Fast,
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: quick-responding team. Really, it's the police department that takes you
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: to a psych ward, to be honest. Yes. And the
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: night before, we had all gotten into an argument about
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: her iPad. We had taken that away because her grades
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: were not performing. She was just not turning in assignments
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: and doing very poorly. And she was really upset about
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: having lost the iPad. And so the next day, the
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: school guidance counselor told us that she had carved a
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: word into her wrist and that they had called the
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: police and that the police were going to be taking
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: her on an involuntary hold to the children's psych ward.
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: Oh, my God.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: And had she been self-harming before or was this the
• 3:22
  Speaker 3: first time? Wow.
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: This was the first time.
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: Do you know what the word was?
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: Yes, it was... name from Discord. Discord is a platform
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: that children use on the internet to play games and
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: communicate with each other. So it was her handle, basically,
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: her username. So I rushed over there. I saw it.
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: It was horrific. And I tried to get the truth
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: out of her. I tried to get some semblance out
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: of what had happened. And the most I was able
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: to get was she said that there was somebody that
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: she needed to have access to her iPad because there
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: was somebody she was keeping alive. And if she didn't
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: talk to this person, they were going to kill themselves.
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: And I said, well, that's a conversation that I think
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: is too... heavy for you to be carrying, and that's
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: not something that I want you involved in, so we're
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: going to need to talk about this. In retrospect, knowing
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: what I know now, I think, how did I not
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: push that further? You know, why were alarm bells not
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: going off? Why wasn't I going to the police with that? But,
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: you know, at the time, we were focus more on her,
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: what she was doing, getting her home, getting her safe,
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: helping her make good decisions. You know, not on the
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: idea that there was this threat and that she was
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: a victim. I mean, that just was nowhere on our radar.
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: Jung felt that houses have a particular significance in dreams.
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: He said, a house depicts a life situation. One is
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: in it, as one is in a situation. Jung noted
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: that when patients brought him dreams of houses, or even
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: when he himself dreamed of them, they were always unfinished,
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: always in need of another room, or there was always
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: a mysterious corridor attached to one's actual residence that led
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: to rooms that were not there in reality. And when
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: the dreamer awakened, there was always the conscious feeling that
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: one should solve the question of this house. to do
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: something with it. This month, for our Dreamography project, we
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: are asking you to send us your dreams about houses
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: for analysis on a special episode. One person who sends
• 5:56
  Speaker 3: a dream will win a copy of our new book, Dreamwise,
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: Unlocking the Meaning of Your Dreams. Follow the link in
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: the show notes to send us your dream.
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: So we got her out of the psych ward, got
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: her hooked up with therapy. And over the next two years,
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: had her in pretty intensive therapy for self-harm. Every couple
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: of months, I would see new cuts. And I would
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: think it's episodic. And I... researched everything I could on self-harm,
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: all the studies I could. And I understand it's largely
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: an adolescent phenomenon. It's largely self-limiting. That is to say,
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: it usually runs about a two-year course. I had been
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: insisting to everyone that it's tied to social media, especially
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: my daughter, who would deny that. Yeah.
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: When you say tied to social media, what do you, yeah,
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: say more about that.
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: So I didn't know how, but my gut was telling me,
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: knowing my daughter, That she would have taken a picture
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: of this and uploaded it to her friends. And it
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: would have been, especially given how big and bold it was.
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: Big and bold. You mean the cuts?
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: The cut.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: The original cut sign. Because it wasn't mine. It wasn't little.
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: It was massive. It was symmetrical. It was art, like
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: a piece of art, you know? And it's not something
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: that you're going to do at random. It was for show.
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: And again, knowing my daughter, it's like my instinct was
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: saying she's doing this to show someone. So I assumed
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: that social media meant she was taking pictures, maybe showing
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: her friends at school, sending a video of it or
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: something like that. So over the next two years, there
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: would be various periods where I would take the phone away.
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: We'd go for periods without the phone, you know, because
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: of behavior problems. And I would search through the phone.
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: really disturbing things on the phone and would not get
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: satisfactory answers. And I would, what my therapist would call,
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: spend all this time trying to crack the code, which
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: is to say, try to understand her and what's going on.
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: So I saw screenshots of memes of pretty horrific self-harm
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: wounds Of Nazi ideology. Of Hitler putting his fingers together
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: to form a heart.
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: Of gore.
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: That really, really freaked me out.
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: And when you say gore, what do you.
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: Mutilated dead bodies. Mutilated dead bodies. Some child porn. When
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: I would see these things, I would think, what's wrong
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: with her? And so I'd talk to her therapist and
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: I'd bring her in and we'd talk and she'd say, well,
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: I just thought that was interesting. Or the gore, she said,
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: you know, looking at it medicinally, it's like cadaver. I
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: want to know these body parts, the names of them. And,
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: you know, she'd come up with these explanations, you know, or, oh, Satanism.
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: That was the other thing that I saw that was disturbing.
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: She'd say, oh, I just saw that and I wanted
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: to scare my friends. So I downloaded it to send
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: to my friends to scare them.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: And did you find that she was forwarding these various links?
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: There was evidence of that on the phone, inasmuch as
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: she was inviting other people? No.
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: No, I didn't, actually. Okay. No, and that's a good question.
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: And I didn't think to go and see who she's
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: sending those to. I wish I had. I mean, I
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: don't have any of those devices now, but I mean,
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: I wish I had. In an effort to understand this,
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: I would just read everything I could about psychiatric diagnoses,
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: borderline personality disorder because of the self-harm, antisocial personality disorder, psychopathy, sociopathy.
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: you know, all of these stuff, nothing fit, nothing fit.
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: And in the meantime, you know, I had her tested
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: for neurodivergencies and, you know, that came back positive. She's
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: gifted and has ADHD and has autism, as do most
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: of the members of my family. So it wasn't a
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: big surprise. But it certainly wasn't an explanation for any
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: of this, because nobody else in the rest of the
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: family was into anything like this. So about six months ago,
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: there was one day in particular, we had been on vacation.
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: She and I were sharing the same hotel room, and
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: it had been a lovely trip. She was talking with
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: her friends, and she was happy. By talking with her friends,
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: I mean chatting on her iPad or phone or something.
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: And I know now, having reconstructed things from the timeline,
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: that within an hour of us getting home, we had
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: been traveling internationally, within an hour of getting home, she
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: cut up her legs, like 300 cuts, hundreds of cuts
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: on her legs with razor blades. And so she had
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: been planning that while we were in the same hotel room,
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: and she was happy. Jonathan Haidt in The Anxious Generation
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: says that today's children are unparented even while sitting in
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: the same room with us because of the internet. And boy,
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: does that ring true. I had no idea who my
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: daughter was talking to or what she was talking about.
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: And we were in feet of each other. Right.
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: Who was she talking to? What do you know now?
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: Well, I still don't know the particulars of that. But
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: when I saw her legs within a day or two
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: of her doing that and immediately got her into a
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: residential treatment program for self-harm, doing DBT, what's called dialectical
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: behavioral therapy, which is the gold standard for self-harm. So
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: if somebody were to present to a therapist with a
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: team that is cutting or self-harming they would probably recommend
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: dbt therapy um and i was very fortunate that um
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: i was able to find a very very good residential
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: program that specialized in that um while she was there
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: the fbi came to our house and said um Your
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: daughter has been the victim of a cult called 764.
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: And I'll tell you, my husband's first instinct when hearing
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: about this was to say, this can't be true. You know,
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: this sounded like satanic panic. This is just too Pizzagate.
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: This just sounds weird.
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: So shocking, so outrageous.
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: It's so shocking. It's like, this is... It's too sensational.
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: This just can't be true. But unfortunately, it's true. And
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: so 764 is a terrorist organization. It is classified as
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: a terrorist organization worldwide, not just in America. It exists
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: right now in 23 countries worldwide. It's decentralized, which means
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: there's not a formal power structure. So there's not one
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: person you can take down and have the organization fall apart.
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: There's not a formal hierarchy to it. It's very unclear
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: to know who the members are at any given time.
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: And you can say you're a member and kind of
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: make yourself a member, but who knows if, you know,
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: who's on the roster at any given time? Nobody really knows.
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: Just to give you some history of this group, and
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: I obviously have immersed myself in this the last few months,
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: the organization looks to have been started sometime around 2018, 2019,
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: out of France by a young man, a med student
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: at the time, ironically, named Rohan in Antibes, France, through
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: an online group called Cult, which is spelled C-V-L-T. He
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: has now recently, just in the last couple of weeks,
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: been indicted by the United States. And so there will
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: be a whole other prosecution going on here. Um, if
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: he's extradited, but he started this under the name cult.
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: And then, uh, there was somebody named Angel Almeida that was, uh,
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: really involved with it, uh, up in New York, uh,
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: who was prosecuted. And through him, the FBI was able
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: to link, um, these activities to 09A, the order of
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: nine angles, which is a satanic group, um, But I
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: think I would say the organization was still fringe until
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: COVID hit. And in 2020, there was a child named
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: Bradley Cadenhead out of Texas, who was about 15 years
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: old at the time, who had been a member of
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: Colt and started his own group, a splinter group called 764. Now,
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: 764 were the first three numbers of his zip code
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: in Texas. his group really exploded from there and just
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: took off worldwide. And the group focused primarily on two things. One,
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: extorting young girls, and by young, I mean 9.
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: 10, 11, 12.
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: Into getting child pornography and having them self-harm. And the
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: extortion is just horrific. They would tell the girls, we
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: have your IP address. From the IP address, they would
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: trace the parents' names. They would trace the address and say,
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: we're going to call the SWAT team to your house.
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: If you don't take more pictures, or if you don't
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: hurt yourself, or if you don't kill your pet and
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: live stream it, we're going to raid your house right now.
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: And so over time, you end up with hundreds of
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: girls deeply traumatized because of this. Caden Head was arrested, prosecuted.
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: He was convicted in Texas and given... He was sentenced
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: as an adult then, but much of his activities took
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: place as a juvenile. He was still given 80 years. Now,
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: I would say there's probably one conviction every week somewhere
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: around the world. In relation to this, I mean, the
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: FBI has a task force and they're working very, very
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: hard to try to get a handle on this. So
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: 764 is an accelerationist group. And for those who are
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: not familiar with that term, accelerationism is the idea that
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: you can bring about societal collapse and you want to
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: bring about societal collapse because ultimately it's good for everyone.
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: It's the greater good. And you can bring about societal
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: collapse through acts of violence and destruction. They don't focus
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: on the rebuilding of society after the destruction. It's all
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: based on the destruction. And so the accelerationist movements, which
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: are on the rise worldwide and are largely, largely tied
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: to extreme right-wing movements, Nazi movements, target... children, mostly boys,
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: but they do target girls, and we'll talk about that
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: in a second in a different way. They get them
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: to commit acts of violence, and they've taken the playbook
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: from the jihadists and used the same methods that have
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: been used with ISIS and stuff in the past. So
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: they start getting kids in as young as 9, 10
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: years old, The way they found them and the way
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: we believe my daughter was found was playing Roblox.
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: So yeah, so Roblox is a very popular game for
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: kids online.
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: The most popular. The most popular website.
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: Kind of wholesome and creative and all that stuff. But
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: when kids play it, they can come into contact with
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: strangers and they can talk to strangers. Is that right?
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And those strangers need only be two or three
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: years older than them. That's it. You know, to a
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: large extent, these are kids terrorizing other kids, which is
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: hard for a lot of people to grasp. I mean,
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: there are adults involved in this and there are adults
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: being prosecuted, but the large majority of this is children,
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: older teens terrorizing younger girls. So we think my daughter
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: had been contacted on Roblox as soon as the pandemic started,
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: which is when she first got access to the internet. Mm-hmm.
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: And they started sending her pictures of gore. And by gore,
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: I mean pictures of mutilated dead bodies, human bodies, and
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: animal bodies, dead animal bodies. And so that goes on
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: for some time. In her case, I think it probably
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: went on for a couple of years.
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: Can I just, I just want to get into one detail.
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: So the initial contact is made on roadblocks where there's
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: some kind of like public chat or something like that.
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: Did they get her off into a Discord server or
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: a Telegram channel? or something?
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: The initial approach is in this relatively public space, but
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: then they kind of entice them over into more private spaces.
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: Is that right?
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: Yes, that's right. Roblox, Minecraft, and Instagram are the three
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: private places most commonly used. And then they're asked to
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: chat over in private locations on Discord servers. And then
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: the majority of the grooming takes place on Discord. Now,
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: of course, the children don't see it that way. They
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: say that they're talking with their friends on Discord.
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: By the way, I heard that Fortnite is another gaming
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: site where the initial approach happens as well.
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: I wouldn't be surprised.
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so another popular game. But yes, so there's a
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: kind of love bombing that initially happens.
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: Right, there's a love bombing. My daughter said she felt
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: these people really understood her, which is classic cult programming.
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: They tell you, we understand you. But really what they're
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: doing is telling you how to think in very subliminal ways.
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: I want to say this before I forget because it's
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: so crucial to understand. These kids are not in classrooms.
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: They're not watching movies. They're not reading books. They're not
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: coming to this radicalization by the ways we would expect.
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: They are coming to radicalization by memes. This is radicalization
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: by memes. There's a professor up in Canada, Mark Angentino,
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: who writes on this and is probably, I would think,
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: the world's leading expert right now on 764 issues, who's
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: the first I've seen to identify this, that indoctrination is
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: occurring by memes. So these kids get one sentence in
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: a comic, And then they start forming a worldview, but
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: they see 30, 40, 50 of those comics a day.
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: And that is how they start seeing the world. And
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: so girls are gradually taught to really to destroy themselves
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: and boys are taught to destroy others. That's the root
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: of the accelerationist agenda. And Before they get there, the
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: kids will be desensitized with gore. Gore is usually the
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: first step. And that desensitization process can take a year
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: or two. Then, you know, when the levels are down,
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: when the guards are down, it can move into child porn, self-harm.
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: And when you say child porn, is it that they're
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: having these girls take pictures of themselves? What is the
• 22:52
  Speaker 3: production of the child sexual abuse material?
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Pictures of themselves. Definitely. You've got kids as
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: young as nine and 10, you know, and, and it
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: will sometimes just be one picture. That's all they need.
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: One picture. And then it cycles into extortion, which sets
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: in motion, this flood of ongoing photographs that the children
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: feel compelled to produce videos, videos and, and photographs. There's
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: also very sadistic behavior, um, 764 is notorious for its
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: animal abuse, and a lot of the kids are made
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: to harm their pets. Bradley Cadenhead, one of the things
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: he did was have a girl cut off the head
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: of her hamster. He was trying to get her to
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: kill herself before her mother walked in and stopped the situation.
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: Within 764, the perpetrators compete for clout, which is like
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: popularity in high school or junior high school. It's just
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: called clout online. And they achieve clout by getting their
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: victims to do more and more extreme things. So they
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: will target girls who have eating disorders, for example, or
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: cause girls to have eating disorders. and get them to
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: get down to the lowest weight possible. And so the
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: ones who get girls into the 60 pounds, 70 pound mark,
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: have more clout than the guys who are grooming the
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: girls at 90 pounds, for example. And so they will
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: collect pictures of rib cages and stuff like that. With
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: animal abuse, they'll get the girls to harm their own pets,
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: post pictures of animal harm, animal abuse. They will force
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: children into incest with the younger siblings and record that.
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, again, this is all photographed or videoed or even
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: in some cases live-streamed.
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: And live-streamed, yes. And the ultimate end goal, the most
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: notoriety that you can have is if you get someone
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: to commit suicide.
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: Live-streaming it.
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: Live-stream their suicide. There have been numerous cases of live-stream suicides.
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: So how far.
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: Did your daughter get drawn into this world?
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: I don't know. We don't have the answers yet from
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: the FBI. The FBI has told us she's a victim.
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: We know that she made self-harm videos. She's admitted to that.
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: But she denies everything else. She denies any ideological ties.
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: She denies... friendships with them, says that she was just
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: kind of loosely affiliated with them. She saw things, but
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: she wasn't influenced by them. And all of that reaction really,
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: really bothered me the first few months. It angered me
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: that she wouldn't fess up to her involvement in this.
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: But I've since come to understand that that's actually, believe
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: it or not, normal. The National Center for Missing and
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: Exploited Children explained to me that she's a trafficking victim
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: and that trafficking victims will often have Stockholm Syndrome and
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: protect their abusers because they've identified with the group. So
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: it's a friend group. Professor Argentino, who I mentioned earlier,
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: published a piece a couple of days ago where he said,
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: that children will choose their abusers in these online groups
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: above family and friends, because that's where their identity at
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: this point in their life lies, which is actually kind
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: of typical of adolescent development. So, you know, there's those
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: dynamics at play. I understand that. I don't have full
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: disclosure from her. We don't have full disclosure yet from
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: the FBI. I have been looking into this so much
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: that what I can say is that as horrible as
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: all of this sounds, I'm very, very thankful that we
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: have her. We have her safe. I know where this
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: could have gone, given where I've seen it gone with
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: other people. And, you know, I'm grateful that we've gotten
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: her out.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: Yes, of course you are.
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: You know, I just want to say that in Africa,
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: there were warlords who would come and get the 12-year-old
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: boys out of their homes at night and then put
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: a gun in their hands and a gun to their
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: head and said, if you don't shoot your parents, we'll
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: shoot you.
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: Joseph Kony.
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: And, you know, I think once you've done that, your
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: allegiance to your abuser is... kind of unshakable because, and
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: I think it's a, it's a very kind of similar, um, dynamic, right? You've,
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: you've done some terrible things, um, sort of in the
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: name of belonging to this group. And, uh, and it
• 28:28
  Speaker 3: does kind of rearrange your priorities, especially like you're saying for,
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: for adolescents. And I think that the strong need that
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: adolescents have for a sense of belonging, um, can uh
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: is is part of how we can understand this and yeah.
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: And and they're trapped right because a huge percent a
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: huge the teeth of this organization is what's called doxing
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: if you're if you're not familiar with doxing that's when
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: i explained earlier with they'll a lot of these kids
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: have malware which enables them to get the information from
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: talking to you that has your passwords you know that
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: can get your uh your IP address, your home address,
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: your parents' name, all of this stuff. And they tell you,
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: we'll publish this stuff. And there is a place on
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: the internet to publish that. I'm not going to say
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: the name of it. It doesn't need to get any
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: more credibility. But these kids all know about it. You
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: can go to that place. If you're talking to a
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: certain person, you can go to that internet, that website,
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: look them up and see if they've been doxxed. and
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: you can get a rundown on them. So the kids
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: become afraid of being doxxed, put on this website where
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: they're forever vulnerable. They're forever vulnerable. So it's not just
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: the sense of belonging. They're trapped. They're pushed into this.
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: And so many of them just don't see a way
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: out they don't see that they can talk to their
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: parents they can talk to a professional you know you've
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: got kids going through psych wards i mean so many
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: of these children who self-harm are put into psychiatric units
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: for self-harming they go through at least the initial 72
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: hour observation period if not longer and don't mention this
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: um By the way, that's the way the FBI found us,
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: was from the admission records at the hospital. We believe
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: they did a query for cut signs. Now, a cut
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: sign is where you carve or cut the name of someone.
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: And it's not a real name. It's the handle, the username,
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: into your body. And so a lot of these perpetrators
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: will have their victim carve their name into them. They
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: collect pictures of the girls doing that. And then they
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: publish them in what's called a lore book, L-O-R-E, lore book,
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: on Telegram. And those are their trophies, if you will.
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: So pictures of bloody bodies with their name on them. Oh, geez.
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: You know, that end up being permanent scars in these children.
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: So I want to step back to something that you
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: had said, which struck me, and also I noticed in
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: the research. that there was an upswell of this during
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: the COVID isolations. And some of the research around at-risk
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: youth suggests that children that are experiencing isolation, depression, and
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: identity confusion makes them more vulnerable. And of course, during COVID-19,
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: kids are at home. They're isolated. They're upset, dysthymic, depressed
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: because their entire routine of their lives have been disrupted.
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: And by virtue of them being young, of course, they're
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: in this identity formation stage. So you have an entire,
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: you know, nations of kids that are more vulnerable during COVID-19,
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: as well as spending all their time online because that's
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: how the teachers are attempting to teach them. Parents are
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: normalizing enormous amounts of, uh, online time so they can
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: have any kind of connection to the outer world. So
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: it was this terrible storm of vulnerabilities that allowed predators
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: like this to gain access to more children than they
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: might normally.
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: You know, I thought about this, and yes, it did
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: happen for us during COVID, and that's when the... The
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: 764 phenomenon really exploded with Caden Head. But I really
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: want to push back against some of that narrative. This
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: is still going on very strongly now without COVID. I
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: think this would have happened regardless of COVID because of
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: our phone-based childhood. When I talk about this to people...
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: They're usually sort of shocked and disgusted and say, inevitably,
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: maybe one out of four people will say, well, it's
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: Lord of the Flies. And my response to that is,
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: you know, the lesson from Lord of the Flies, when
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: we all had to read that in high school, was
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: we were taught wrong. You know, we all sat around
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: asking the big question, is man inherently evil? Is man
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: good or is man evil? That wasn't the big lesson
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: from Lord of the Flies. It's children need to be parented.
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: That was the lesson. If children are not parented, look
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: what happens. So yes, this is Lord of the Flies
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: because these kids are not being parented online. And so
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: you've got victims receiving horrible trauma, but you've got perpetrators
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: who are also victims in their own sense, because they
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: too have been groomed into this world, who are looking
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: at life sentences, and their parents are suffering the consequences
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: of that as well. My daughter was not at risk.
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: She is from an upper-middle-class family, educated parents, had been
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: learning several languages, had activities, had plenty of things. I mean,
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: demographically should not have fallen into this, with one exception,
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: and that is that she does have some neurodivergencies. And
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: a lot of these kids are neurodivergent, whether ADHD or autistic.
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: And the risk there is because those are the kids
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: who statistically spend more time online.
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, one of the reasons why, one of
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: the aspects I think that captures me about this is
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: exactly what you're talking about, Sarah, that I think we
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: haven't fully yet realized. the power of the internet to
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: influence us, especially when we're teenagers and, and that really
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: good things can be spread on the internet, really wonderful things,
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: but really dark things can too. And, and per the
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: Lord of the flies comment, I mean, I, I think that,
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: you know, I mean, we're offering this as part of
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: our shadow land series and, So what you're describing to me,
• 35:42
  Speaker 3: I can't think of another word for it other than evil.
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: And Jung thought a lot about evil and felt like
• 35:50
  Speaker 3: it existed. It wasn't just the absence of good. And
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: he said, we have to know about man's potential for evil.
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: And here it is, and it always exists, right? It's
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: not like this present situation has created it. I mean,
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: this is part of us. This is This is in
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: human nature in some sense. But what has been allowed
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: to happen is it's been allowed to spread quickly. People
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: who are interested in doing this can find each other
• 36:21
  Speaker 3: very easily. They can easily find victims. There's something about
• 36:25
  Speaker 3: the technology that has enabled it and accelerated it.
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: So I'm going to go a step further than that
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: and say that actually these groups cultivate it. in the
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: same sense that they cultivate mental illness. And we'll talk
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: about that next. But if we can talk about the
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: evil first, a lot of the memes that I was
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: talking about talk about anger and what to do with
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: your anger, how to destroy things. It says things like
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: channel your anger to kick windows, destroy property slash tires.
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: So kids are taught those things. And what if you're
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: not angry to begin with? You're kind of taught that
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: you should be angry. And then you start wondering, why
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: am I not angry? What's wrong with me? So then
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: when you do feel some anger, you're like, yeah, there
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: it is. That's right. So then you end up with
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: normal adolescent issues, like some exclusion at school. And you
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: respond to that in ways that you've been conditioned to,
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: which is to say to overreact. So last night, I
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: read the manifesto of Solomon Henderson, who was the school
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: shooter from Antioch, Tennessee. He was a 764 member. He
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: was friends with and influenced by Samantha Rupnow, who was
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: also a 764 member. They were both accelerationists. She was
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: responsible for the shooting in Madison, Wisconsin in December, and
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: Henderson was in Antioch in January. Both of them talked
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: about really kind of the virtue of unleashing their anger
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: in ways that I've never seen but are similar to
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: each other, right? And so, in reading Henderson's manifesto, And
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: it really does take you inside the mind of an accelerationist.
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: He's a very, very bright teenager, but groomed and misguided
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: and set down the wrong path probably several years before
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: by these accelerationist forces. And you get the sense that
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: he really thinks that he's doing the world a favor
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: by doing this destructive act, by getting rid of himself,
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: because he's Black, and this all floats on racism. There's
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: a lot of self-loathing in his manifesto for being Black,
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: and for committing an act of destruction, because that destruction
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: and tearing down the world is a good thing. So,
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: you know, I used to say that even Nazis have
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: the blessings of their conscience. These kids are taught at
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: some level that the way they're being taught to act
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: is natural, instinctive, right. and good for the world. And that,
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: of course, is where parenting is necessary. I mean, had
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: I known any of this, of course, we would have
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: just swooped in, took her away. And oddly enough, my
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: instincts here, as I saw this self-harm over the years,
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: was that I just wanted to pick her up and
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: take her to a cabin and in the middle of
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: the woods somewhere where there was no electricity. I kept
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: having that fantasy, and now I know why. It was
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: because I really wanted to cut her off from the internet.
• 40:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you could feel that on an intuitive level, that
• 40:25
  Speaker 3: somehow this was being fed by some source. It wasn't
• 40:29
  Speaker 3: just organic. It didn't just arise within her. And you're
• 40:35
  Speaker 3: talking about it being cultivated, and I'm just thinking, yeah, well,
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: that's kind of what indoctrination is, right? Like we're You're
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: taught something. You're given a belief system. You're taught how
• 40:45
  Speaker 3: to think about things. You're taught how to think about yourself.
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: You're taught how to think about, you know, the meaning
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: of your life and what you ought to be doing. And,
• 40:53
  Speaker 3: you know, the truth is that we can all be indoctrinated.
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: That's the thing is that we're all susceptible to this
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: kind of influence. So even kids without, I mean, yes,
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: you know, kids with more vulnerabilities are getting drawn in.
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: at higher rates. And, you know, Joseph, you make the
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: very good point that there was a great deal more
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: vulnerability during COVID when life was incredibly online. But it
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: really could just kind of happen to anyone who was
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: sort of maybe having an off few months or was
• 41:31
  Speaker 3: just spending a little too much time in the wrong
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: corners of the internet, or whatever.
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: Or the right corners of the internet. I mean, Roblox
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: is the single largest, most popular game played worldwide. So
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: if you just happen to be there where somebody tries
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: to talk to you, and that leads to something else.
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: I mean, you can just... It's just a set of
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: circumstances set in motion.
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: You don't know that this kid is going to be
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: in this kind of dangerous place two years later. It
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: happens so gradually. The child wouldn't have chosen to be
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: there and make those decisions. But over time, they've seen
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: these memes. They've heard these people say these things. They've
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: sort of come to believe these things are normal. which
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: actually sort of leads me to one really important point.
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: I think it's really important that we distinguish between the
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: way that girls are indoctrinated versus the way that boys
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: are indoctrinated. The organizations, the acceleration of movements are largely
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: gender stratified. That is to say, the perpetrators are largely
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: male and the victims are largely female. There is some
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: crossover from that. Natalie Rupnow, the school shooter, was female.
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: as they get older, the girls will tend to, if
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: they're still in what's called COM, this is called COM,
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: which stands for the community. 764 is a big part
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: of COM. As they get older, if the girls are
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: still in, they tend to turn into the perpetrators at 16,
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: 17 years old, rather than remaining victims. But the boys
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: are lured in with pictures of weaponry you know, automatic rifles,
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: violent games, soldiers, the Nazism, the sort of destruction, the
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: things that just cause them to be destructive towards others, violence.
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: The girls, on the other hand, are taught that being
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: crazy is a good attribute, that mental illness, mental illness
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: is glorified. And I know some other people have been
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: noticing this. If you just ask Siri, is mental illness
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: glorified among Gen Z? You know, there's dozens of articles
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: that will pop up. If you're on TikTok and you
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: create a profile for a 13-year-old girl, within four minutes,
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: 40% of that feed will be self-harm and depression-related content.
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: Mental illness is cultivated among young girls these days, starting
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: at about 10 years old.
• 44:33
  Speaker 3: And you're saying this is kind of true just in general,
• 44:36
  Speaker 3: but especially within groups like 764?
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: I think it's true in general, but it is the
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: linchpin or the lifeblood of groups like 764. You have
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: to have... You have to have a perpetrator, but a
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: perpetrator has to have a victim. And the victims have
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: to submit willingly. And one of the ways they get
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: the girls to do this is by convincing them that
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: they're crazy and that it's good to be crazy. And
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: so that's where looking at the indoctrination that the girls
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: have been forced to contend with is critical and frightening.
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: Their memes say things like, the best woman on earth
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: is autistic and crazy. Uh, how I sleep at night,
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: knowing that I'm evil, you know, picture of a cute
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: little girl. All of the images, um, are like soft colors, pink,
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: pastel colors, um, a lot of hello.
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: Kitty, that anime sort of.
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: Anime, uh, or what's called trauma core, which is a
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: certain aesthetic. You can search for that online trauma core. Um,
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: It's a very soft aesthetic, but there will be some
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: blood in the background and a lot of self-harm associated
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: with it. So you'll see pictures of girls holding teddy
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: bears and looking very cute, but then they've got cuts
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: on their arms and legs. So that type of girl
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: is present in all of these memes. And oddly, the.
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: Mental illness known as borderline personality disorder is specifically globbed onto.
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: And that's really quite interesting because, first of all, borderline
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: personality disorder is not a diagnosis that any licensed therapist
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: or psychiatrist is going to give to a child under
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: 18 because they can't, right? It's a personality disorder and prohibited.
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: But second, one of the core features of it is self-harm.
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: So when these kids are taught to self-harm and rewarded
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: for self-harming, cheered for self-harming, praised for self-harming, they then
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: look for some explanation of the self-harming, and self-harming is
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: listed under borderline personality disorder. So then they identify with
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: the rest of it. Well, what's the rest of it?
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: The rest of it is basically strong emotions. Well, you know,
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: teenage girls tend to have strong emotions. I mean, so
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: it becomes very hard then for these young girls to
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: look at that diagnosis and say, that's not me. And
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: so most of these girls self-identify as having borderline personality disorder.
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: By the way, statistically speaking, over 90% of all the
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: kids in Calm self-identify as having mental illness. And that's
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: part of that whole glorification process. One FBI agent I
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: spoke to said what that also does is that it
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: alleviates them from the responsibility of poor decision-making, you know,
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: so they can say, well, I didn't, you know, I
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: was autistic. I'm autistic, that's why I did that. And
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: so they don't have to do better. There are also
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: some issues that come in here about gender and transgender
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: kids can be at risk in these groups as well
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: for the victimization.
• 48:30
  Speaker 3: You know, just to build that out a little bit,
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: there was a very well-reported piece in the Washington Post
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: from just a few months ago about um samuel hervey
• 48:40
  Speaker 3: who was a transgender man who um was in a
• 48:45
  Speaker 3: mental health crisis um i think it was in 2021
• 48:49
  Speaker 3: and uh you know there was a a teen girl
• 48:54
  Speaker 3: somewhere in eastern europe who started speaking with him and
• 48:57
  Speaker 3: encouraging him i think he was already expressing some suicidal
• 49:01
  Speaker 3: ideation online and if i remember this right she was
• 49:04
  Speaker 3: like oh go through with it go through with it
• 49:06
  Speaker 3: and so He was one of these suicides. He eventually
• 49:09
  Speaker 3: live streamed him a self-immolation.
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he set himself on fire. Yeah.
• 49:15
  Speaker 3: One of the things about about that just that that
• 49:18
  Speaker 3: i i wanted to lift up and you you were
• 49:19
  Speaker 3: sort of alluding to this before is the the the
• 49:22
  Speaker 3: perpetrator who was a teen girl you know she spoke
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: to the reporters and she's remorseful for what she did
• 49:29
  Speaker 3: she claims there was another suicide a few months later
• 49:32
  Speaker 3: um But she was she was in not a great
• 49:36
  Speaker 3: space and she was kind of groomed into this. So
• 49:40
  Speaker 3: there is something about maybe maybe like we would just
• 49:42
  Speaker 3: say kind of vulnerable kids who, you know, to use
• 49:47
  Speaker 3: your words, there's a real there's a real kind of
• 49:49
  Speaker 3: cultivation of depravity. You know, it's not necessarily like these
• 49:55
  Speaker 3: are terrible kids who just start doing this. It's like
• 49:59
  Speaker 3: there may be there may be there may be some
• 50:01
  Speaker 3: vulnerability involved. and they're inculcated into it.
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: Absolutely right. Yeah, that girl went by the handle FMLK,
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: which she made up because she thought it was what...
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: They used the term edgy. She said that she was
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: groomed by Kush. And yes, there were two victims in that,
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: and she's in Eastern Europe. And I think what's interesting
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: about her story is that she... says that she was
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder, but here she is at 18,
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: you know, now when they're doing the interview, 18, 19
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: years old and has significant remorse and significant guilt. Um,
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: so she bought the, um, you know, she bought the
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: diagnosis enough to allow her to continue with these acts. Um, and,
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: and one of the things I actually had observed in
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: some of the stuff that I did see, um, during
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: the two years that I didn't know what was going on, um,
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: was some of the memes that my daughter had saved
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: where people would have the hashtag no empathy. I had
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: never heard that phrase before, you know, as a hashtag,
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: no empathy. And, um, it's like a badge of honor
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: with them. So, um, it kind of frees them up
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: from having to make moral choices, um, And there are
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: little bingo games that they make where they check off
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: all of the faults that they have, and one of
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: them is lax empathy. And usually boys and girls will
• 51:43
  Speaker 2: all check that. So part of the grooming process here
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: is to get them to sort of disavow any sense
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: of personal empathy. So when I talk to parents about this,
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: that's one thing I want to let them know. If
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: you ever hear that phrase, no empathy, be on the lookout.
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: If you see self-harm in any form, you should be
• 52:11
  Speaker 2: on the lookout. You should be looking at what your
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: child is looking at online.
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: The FBI has put out a public service announcement regarding
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: these kinds of groups. And they have a list of
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: warning signs, which I'll just read because we're in that topic.
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: Sudden behavior changes, such as becoming withdrawn, moody, or irritable.
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: Sudden changes in appearance, especially neglect of appearance. Changes in
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: eating and sleeping habits. Dropping out of activities and becoming
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: more isolated and withdrawn. Scars, often in patterns. fresh cuts, scratches, bruises,
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: bite marks, burns, or other wounds, carvings such as words
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: or symbols on the skin, wearing long sleeves or pants
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: in very hot weather, threatening to commit suicide, and openly
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: talking about death, not being wanted or needed, or not
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: being around. So those are some of the things that
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: the FBI has done. has put forward for general consideration
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: in terms of signs that your child needs more attention,
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: more help, more supervision.
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: And maybe a bark phone while you're at it.
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: Tell me about that.
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: For those who aren't familiar, a bark phone monitors text messages,
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: any sort of social media websites that your child has
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: been to, and alerts you, the parent, to any sort
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: of concerning content. I had my child been on a
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: BART phone, we would not have gone down the roads
• 53:57
  Speaker 2: we had the last two years or so. I do
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: want to make one other point about the girls and
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: mental illness. One of the things they will do is
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: compete with each other to see who can be the sickest.
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: And in the way that the boys will compete with
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: each other to see who can do the most harm,
• 54:20
  Speaker 2: who can be the the most sinister, the girls will
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: see who can cut the most, who can cut the deepest,
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: who can use the most heinous cutting instrument, who can
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: stalk their boyfriends or a guy they like the most.
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: And then something I unfortunately have just learned about called
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: bed rotting. Are you familiar with that term? No. Yeah,
• 54:52
  Speaker 2: I see your side, Lisa. Bed rotting is a big
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: part of the culture for the girls here, something that
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: is being cultivated. And the girls will compete to see
• 55:03
  Speaker 2: who can bed rot the most. Now, bed rotting basically
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: means doing nothing but staying in your bed on your phone.
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: And that can be taken to absolutely absurd extremes. So
• 55:15
  Speaker 2: they will not use the bathroom, for example. They will
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: urinate and defecate in a corner of their bed. eating
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: food that has been, like, in the bedroom for weeks
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: on end. They will take pictures of moldy food to
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: see who can eat the grossest thing. You know, who
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: can go 24 days straight without being out of the
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: bed at all? And so, ultimately, what that is is
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: that sense of destruction, self-destruction, right? Remember, the acceleration is
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: to get boys to be destructive towards others and girls
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: to be destructive towards themselves. So, bed rotting is just
• 55:53
  Speaker 2: kind of, you know, the ultimate here apart from suicide.
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: And so suicide, which you might see in a lot
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: of these memes abbreviated as 988, which is because of
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: the suicide hotline number, a lot of girls are indoctrinated
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: towards suicide. And so they will default into this mode
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: of i have to kill myself if anything goes wrong
• 56:27
  Speaker 2: which sort of lends itself to that traditional borderline personality
• 56:32
  Speaker 2: disorder paradigm but you know really steers them away from
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: healthy coping mechanisms um but you know if they they
• 56:41
  Speaker 2: get into a fight with their parents the first thing
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: they do is they want to kill themselves well i'm
• 56:46
  Speaker 2: on twitter constantly looking for these kids And a lot
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: of these girls are in the eating disorder pages, the
• 56:57
  Speaker 2: self-harm pages, the suicide pages. And they will just jump
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: immediately to suicide after an argument with their parents. Like,
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: it's a natural consequence.
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: And by jumping to it, you mean that they threaten it?
• 57:15
  Speaker 2: Suicidal ideation. Yeah, they'll talk about it.
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: But particularly a suicidal threat as a way of... navigating
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: or trying to shift the power dynamic with the parents?
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: No, because I don't know that the parents even know
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: that this is happening. But the kids will get online
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: and start talking about how they're going to kill themselves.
• 57:35
  Speaker 2: And so, just to put it in perspective as to
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: how common this is, nobody even responds anymore. There's probably
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: 15 or 20 girls that I follow that will threaten
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: every week or two, nobody responds because everyone's so used
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: to it. It's like shtick. It's part of that girl's profile.
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: As my daughter would say, it's LARPing. LARPing stands for
• 58:04
  Speaker 2: live action role-playing. So it's not like people come to
• 58:07
  Speaker 2: their aid and say, no, don't do it. It's so commonplace.
• 58:12
  Speaker 2: And so then, unfortunately, you've got this situation where parents
• 58:16
  Speaker 2: don't really know What's real? What's not? What's a threat?
• 58:21
  Speaker 2: What's not? And the mental health system doesn't understand currently
• 58:27
  Speaker 2: that there's a milieu that rewards talking about suicidal behavior,
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: just like there's a milieu that rewards cutting. you're seen
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: as badass. You're like the kid with a cigarette when
• 58:49
  Speaker 2: I was in school in seventh grade. You're edgy. But
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: if you cut now, you're that kid. You're hot or
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: cool or whatever. The same thing with suicide. It makes
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: you edgy to talk about it. So unfortunately, those terms
• 59:07
  Speaker 2: are then conflated and you know, parents are kind of
• 59:12
  Speaker 2: left in this position of not knowing if something is
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: a serious attempt or teenage edginess.
• 59:19
  Speaker 3: You know, and by the way, that line between those
• 59:22
  Speaker 3: two things can be pretty thin because some, you know,
• 59:26
  Speaker 3: suicide is often an impulse. It's an impulsive act. So
• 59:29
  Speaker 3: it may be that you're sort of testing the limits
• 59:33
  Speaker 3: and seeing how edgy you can be, but then, you know,
• 59:36
  Speaker 3: a little bit of distress and maybe you've done something
• 59:39
  Speaker 3: that you didn't even really think you were ever going
• 59:41
  Speaker 3: to do. You know, so especially if there are lethal
• 59:45
  Speaker 3: means around. One of the things related to this idea
• 59:48
  Speaker 3: about milia, I think that the eating disorder community has
• 59:51
  Speaker 3: had a little bit more familiarity with this because there
• 59:54
  Speaker 3: have for a long time been pro-ana websites and pro-ana behavior,
• 59:59
  Speaker 3: pro-ana is pro-anorexia. And it's these websites and online communities where,
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 3: you know, anorectics will encourage each other and valorize anorexia
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 3: and kind of compare weights. And, you know, people that
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 3: have been in the eating disorder treatment world have known
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 3: for years about what's called deviance training. You have to
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 3: be very, very careful with group treatment with people with
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 3: eating disorders because what's going to happen is they're going
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 3: to teach each other how to be better anorectics. So
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 3: you go into an eating disorder treatment center and it's
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 3: likely that you're going to pick up a few tricks
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 3: about how to purge or how to hide your food
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 3: or whatever. But it seems like part of what you're saying, Sarah,
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 3: and I appreciate this, is that many mental health clinicians
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 3: haven't caught up that this is now kind of happening
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 3: in other spheres as well. Like you said, that some
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 3: of this is growing out of, as you called it,
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 3: a milieu. There's a social phenomenon. It's not just a
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 3: kind of a story of personal psychopathology. But there's a
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 3: social milieu that is supporting it or even, like you said,
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 3: kind of cultivating it.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 2: That's right. That's right. It's very much like gang culture.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: You know, these kids wouldn't be carjacking and doing the
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: vandalization if their friends weren't there to support it and
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 2: give them the props and the kudos for doing it.
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 2: And so putting them in therapy is not how you
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 2: stop that behavior. You stop it by getting them out
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 2: of the game. So, you know, my daughter said last
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: night to a sibling, I'm not crazy anymore. I don't
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 2: cut anymore. I'm not crazy anymore. Which, you know, kind
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 2: of brought me to tears. Just to hear her say that,
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 2: both of those at the same time, that she does
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 2: not identify as being mentally ill. And does not see
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 2: herself as a self-harmer anymore. But she's been away from
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 2: this environment for at least six months now. And, you know,
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 2: that's likely to continue. So, you know, the mental health
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: industry does not understand yet that we're dealing with indoctrination,
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: cult-like experiences. In fact, the FBI defines this as a cult.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 2: and a terrorist organization. And honestly, that is what America,
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: if there's one thing that I can say about school
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 2: shootings here, it would be that is what America is
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 2: missing about school shootings.
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, say more about that, because you've mentioned school shootings
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 3: a couple times. Help us make that connection.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, America has yet to understand that school shootings are
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 2: cultivated in this country. The children who do that, yes,
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 2: they have some mental illness. I mean, obviously, somebody has
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: to in order to go through with these things. Yes,
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 2: they have access to horrible guns, but first and foremost,
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: they are radicalized. All of these school shooters have got
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: ties to something usually called TTC, the true TCCC, the
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 2: true crime community. Um, they will admire other mass shooters
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: or school shooters. A lot of incels admire, um, Elliot Rogers,
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 2: who was the, uh, UC Santa Barbara shooter. Incel stands
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 2: for involuntary celibate. So a lot of young men who
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 2: were just terminally online and don't date, um, will call
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 2: themselves incels. Um, and Elliot Rogers who did the UCSB shooting, um,
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 2: wrote a very long manifesto about how he was angry
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 2: at women and they deserved it because he couldn't get
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 2: a date. That hatred for women, that misogyny, is very
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 2: similar to the ethnic or racial hatred that came out
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 2: in Samuel Henderson's last book, The Last School Shooters, Antioch
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 2: School Shooters, Manifesto on Race. Again, he and Rupnow were
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 2: both related to 764. A lot of these kids idolize
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 2: Dylan Roof. It's like a subculture in and of itself.
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 2: And so if you really pay attention to the school
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 2: shootings and look at who that kid is and who
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 2: he was inspired by, chances are you're going to find
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 2: that they had ties to an online community where they
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 2: were hooked up with other people admiring mass shooters and
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 2: they had this accelerationist idea that you know they were
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 2: somehow doing the world a favor by doing something so
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: extreme and that this was an appropriate venue for their
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 2: hate and for their.
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 3: Anger You know, Joseph, I'm wondering if you and I
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 3: can sort of speculate for a minute just about how
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 3: we see this kind of from a union view. And
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 3: one of the things I'm aware of is that 764
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 3: and some of these other groups recruit at least the
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 3: iconography of a cult organization. So there's a kind of
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 3: Satanist wing to it. At least they'll use the aesthetics,
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 3: they'll They'll draw pentagrams and other imagery that's taken from Satanism.
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 3: And it seems to me that that's not surprising in
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 3: a way. It fits because there's an archetype here that's
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 3: been constellated. And we know that when archetypes are constellated,
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 3: there's always a positive pole and a negative pole. And
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 3: archetypes and a constellated archetype can fuel a mass movement,
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 3: which it seems to me that we're in the realm
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 3: of here. And, you know, and I'm also really struck
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 3: by just the kind of nihilism, you know, as you said, Sarah,
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 3: that it's not there isn't there isn't a it's not
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 3: it's not like violence is a means to an end,
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 3: which is, you know, certainly questionable. But there's no higher
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 3: purpose here. It's destruction and evil really for its own sake.
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 3: Or if I'm going to be really sort of cynical,
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 3: I would say it's teenagers trying to be as edgy
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 3: as possible.
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 2: The FBI has redefined all of this as nihilistic terrorist movements. Right.
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 3: So yeah, Joseph, I don't know if you had thoughts
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 3: about that.
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: Sarah, one of the things as Jungians that we attempt
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: to do is to look at archetypal dynamics. And we
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: think that if those are understood, it allows people to
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: differentiate from those forces and recognize that they are being
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: influenced by something. When we look at archetypal dynamics, this
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: war between the light, which creates culture, what we think
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: of as goodness and darkness, which is related to chaos,
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: is something that has been acknowledged as a psycho-spiritual struggle
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: for thousands of years. The difference, I think, in modern culture,
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: which makes us more vulnerable, is that we've abandoned some
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: of those mythic religious stories. And we don't think that
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: evil is psychospiritually real. And evil is real. I mean,
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: it's real from that deep, archaic, psychological level. But in
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: the ancient world, for instance, in ancient Egyptian culture, there
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: was ever a war between Apep and Ra, Ra being
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: the god of the sun and of goodness and of culture,
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: and Apep being the god of utter chaos. And the difference,
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: I suppose, between the ancient world and what we're seeing
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: now is the only rituals related to Apep, the god
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: of chaos, are ones to protect you against it. But
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: what it gave us in that ancient context is a
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: symbol of the chaotic problem and a definite ethical stance
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: that one has to work against it. And part of
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: the mythology is that Apep is ever seeking to destroy
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: the sun itself. to destroy light and plunge us all
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: into a kind of hideous darkness. And because that was
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: openly known, openly discussed, and that there were repetitive psychological
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: rituals wanting that chaos to be away or defeated. There's
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: a papyrus in the British Museum that provides evidence bells
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: to protect oneself against OPEP. We don't think about that
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: from a supernatural standpoint, but from a psychological protective and
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: hygiene standpoint. Jung had said rather famously that when we
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: jettisoned mythology and even religious imagery from modern culture, we
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: lost ways of imagining these archetypal forces. And when they
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: fall out of imagination, they tumble into the unconscious and
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: exert their influence without us realizing it. And so that is,
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: from a Jungian standpoint, part, I think, of the difficulty
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: and the vulnerability that all of us as moderns have.
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: And when these archetypes are triggered, which is what we're seeing,
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: I think, in 764, because there is a bizarre, frightening
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: religious component to it, what we're seeing is that these
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: ancient and primordial forces then can erupt violently and create
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: an enormous amount of discord in a culture. And those
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: who are particularly vulnerable to being possessed by these archetypal
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: forces can gain a charisma.
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's really great.
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 2: I agree with you. And Jonathan Haidt in The Anxious
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 2: Generation talks about practices that we've lost, like with community
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 2: in gathering together for church services. And Haidt is an atheist,
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 2: but the practice of the community in singing songs, in
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 2: having potlucks, in having the social gatherings, of having common
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 2: good that everyone is working towards. Those practices have that
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 2: destructive force, and we've lost those in going towards, you know,
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 2: phone-based childhood as well.
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 3: You know, that's a great point, and I think we
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 3: think about that in Jungian terms. Jung spoke about the
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 3: religious function of the psyche and said that we are
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 3: wired to relate to something larger than ourselves. And if
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 3: we aren't assisted in finding a channel to relate to
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 3: those archetypal energies through traditional religions, say, for example, we'll
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 3: find others, and some of them may be quite dark. So,
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 3: you know, that's another way of understanding this, that it's
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 3: that there is something archetypal at the heart of this,
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 3: which means that it's, in some sense, extraordinarily attractive because
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 3: it carries these larger-than-life energies. And Joseph, I just love
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 3: what you said about the Egyptian god of chaos. And
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 3: it made me think, too, of the Norse mythology with Fenrir,
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 3: who will someday swallow the sun and And even it
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 3: occurred to me that this idea of accelerationism, that they're
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 3: going to bring about the collapse of the culture, the
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 3: collapse of the society, it very much is like the
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 3: Norse mythological idea of Ragnarok, the collapse of humanity, when
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 3: the sun will be swallowed and the earth will return
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 3: to chaos. Which is interesting because... You know, Jung very
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 3: much thought that Nazism was a return to a kind
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 3: of Germanic, pre-Christian... Paganism. Right.
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 2: Well, and interestingly, when you were talking, the one larger-than-life
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 2: figure I would say that these kids, unfortunately, that these
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 2: kids think of, that I see on Twitter, where I
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 2: look for these kids, is Hitler.
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: Who Jung... wrote about being so horrified by what he observed,
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: trying to understand, one, how could an entire nation of
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: people be possessed by a singular horrific purpose? And who
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: was Hitler such that he could inspire this kind of terrible,
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: terrible horrors? And he sought to describe what he called
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: as a manna And it requires somebody who is, in
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: a sense, somewhat psychotic, that the inner worlds are so
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: real to them, the outer world is so fragmented and unrelatable,
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: that when there's an activation of these ancient archetypal forces,
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: it makes the individual something of a spokes vessel, a
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: living representative of the archetypal force. And one of the
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: ways that we can identify that is in the use
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: of language. The language of the unconscious is particularly grand, mythic,
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: speaking about the gods, speaking in these very broad, poetic
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: archetypal terms. And we can see that in the language
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: of leaders who have been possessed by archetypes. So this
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: idea of destiny, of darkness, of the dark gods, of rituals,
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: of summoning the dark gods, that's all archetypal language. And
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: from what I understand about some of the leaders who've
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: been imprisoned in this movement, they will often cry out
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: in court that they themselves are dark gods. or emissaries
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: of these gods and that these cultural forces, law enforcement,
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: have no power over them. And that's very congruent with
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: Jung's observation of Hitler. He thought Mussolini was not quite
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: as horrible because he seemed like a kind of average
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: Italian peasant. But in his observation of Hitler, he found
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: something much less human in the way that he was
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: representing himself.
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 3: Joseph, with you talking about Hitler, I mean, this is
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 3: a series called Shadowlands. And so just to say for
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 3: a minute, we talk on the podcast a lot about
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 3: the positive shadow and the way that shadow returns to
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 3: us often at midlife to help us integrate what maybe
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 3: we cast aside earlier and that there's a lot of
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 3: positive stuff in the shadow. But there really is stuff
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 3: in the shadow that needs a moral stance. that does
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 3: need to be banished or controlled or repressed even. And
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 3: I think what we've been talking here today is definitely
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 3: part of that.
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: In that spirit, I would like to read part of
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: one of the prayers against Apep, against the darkness, against evil,
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: which is a translation of this ancient Egyptian papyrus. to
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: get a feeling of the stance that this ancient culture
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: developed in order to resist these forces. Fall on thy face,
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: O Opep, thou foe of Ra. Get thee back, thou enemy,
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: thou rebel, who hast neither arms nor legs, or thy
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: snout shall be cut off from the rest of thy face.
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: Thou art fallen and felled, for Ra, Harakti, has felled thee.
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: He has crushed thee, he has condemned thee. The eye
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: of his body chastises thee, and thou art fallen into
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: the flame which issues from its fiery blast, which comes
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: forth in its moment of action. Its fiery blast is
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: on thee. Thy raging is dispelled by Isis through the
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: spells of her utterance. Thy soul is cut up, thy
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: vertebrae are severed. Horus has made thee impotent. The children
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: of Horus break thee up, for thou art destroyed in
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: their moment. Back, get thee back off. take thee off,
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: thou art fallen. Very dramatic, of course. And I imagine
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: these things were accompanied by rituals in order to make
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: a psychological impression. So I think our modern abandonment of
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: even an acknowledgment of the archetypes of evil has in
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: fact made us more vulnerable to them. I think a
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: lot of parents also don't necessarily raise their children in
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: an explicit religious environment. Many parents will think, justifiably so,
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: that I'll let my children choose a religion if they're
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: interested in it later on in life. But what we
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: know statistically is that children who are not introduced to
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: the mythopoetic world of religion when they're young generally have
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: no interest in it when they are older. That this
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: mythic layer of psyche needs to be cultivated in children.
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: Many of us have experienced religious abuse through its extremes,
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: so I understand the great caution that people take. But
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: providing some kind of mythic framework to children of the
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: war between good and evil, which in the beginning is
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: externalized because children literalize things, then becomes internalized, and then
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: they're able to have a stance against these images and
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: archetypes that can be triggered inside of them. And through
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: this symbolic process is the beginning of learning about ethics. So,
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: That may seem far away from the world of phones
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: and web and editors from across the world that can
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: reach into our children's phones. But Jung would probably speak
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: to it on one level, at this mythic level.
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 3: That's really beautiful. Sarah, how is Jenny doing now?
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 2: Well, like I said, she's stopped self-harming. And just recently
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 2: I heard her tell a sibling that she's not crazy anymore.
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 2: So those are wins.
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 3: Those are really big wins.
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 2: I mean, she's very young. She's 13. So we're very
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 2: fortunate that we still have a lot of time to
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 2: steer her in the right direction, get her some help.
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 2: And I'm, first of all, very, very thankful that we
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 2: found out. And second, that we found out while she
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 2: was young so that we can get the help she needs.
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 3: How are you doing? I know that you've been doing
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 3: so much research on this and just immersing yourself in
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 3: this really dark stuff and dealing with your daughter, who
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 3: I know you've been very worried about.
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 2: Well, I've been better. I had a friend Friday say that...
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 2: For the last couple of years, there's just a sadness
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 2: about me, and I can't refute that. It is what
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 2: it is. With that said, I have to step back
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 2: and be proud of the decisions that I've made to
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 2: get us where we are. It wasn't easy. There's a
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 2: lot of bucking the system, if you will, that I've
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 2: had to do, both with the mental health system, with
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 2: law enforcement, with my family, with my daughter. It's not
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 2: like anybody was ever standing right by me saying, you go,
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 2: let's do this. It's that everybody had a position that
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 2: they wanted filled and everybody wanted their way. So my
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 2: daughter wanted unfettered use of the internet. And so her
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 2: disruption and anger and tears over not having that, you know,
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 2: I had to balance against, um, uh, social services demand
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 2: that she not have any access to the internet, um,
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 2: which was actually very useful to me. And, um, you know,
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 2: family members who couldn't deal with this and, um, tune out, um,
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 2: and just leave it all in my hands. Um, so it's, uh, it's, um,
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 2: Definitely very, very challenging. And yeah, yeah, definitely lonely. Definitely.
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 2: So I needed to cherish moments when she says she's
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 2: no longer self-harming. And I read on a parenting group
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 2: the other day where somebody was talking about how delightful
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 2: teenagers are. Somebody else said, you know, speak for yourself.
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 2: Some of us barely get out of it alive.
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 3: That's true.
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 2: And I thought, well, yeah, my experience is shaping up
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 2: towards one of those. But look, there's certainly a lot
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 2: of reward in trying to prevent other families from heading
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 2: down this path, to warn other families, not just the victims,
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 2: but the perpetrators. You know, these mothers of these 15,
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 2: 16-year-old boys who are getting life sentences are losing their
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 2: children too.
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 3: And those kids were groomed as well, weren't they?
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 2: Those kids were groomed as well. Right.
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 3: Are there other resources that you can point listeners to
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 3: if they want to learn more or maybe if they're
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 3: parents who are in this situation or afraid they might
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 3: be in this situation? Are there places online where the
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 3: parents are connecting?
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: Not yet.
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 2: Not yet. There's a Facebook group called Parenting in a
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 2: Tech World that has started to mention some of this.
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 2: But that's basically a bunch of parents who know that
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 2: tech needs to be monitored. And that's where I first
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 2: found out about the Bark phone. I know there are
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 2: other phones in production right now that have that same goal,
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 2: parent monitoring. Jonathan Hates the Anxious Generation is a good
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 2: place to start.
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 3: And his website has a lot of resources on it.
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and Gene Twenge. And they both publish regularly on
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 2: Substack as well. If you just simply Google 764, you'll
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 2: get a Wikipedia entry that was recently constructed that's actually
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 2: pretty good and talks about the movement. But that's not
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 2: going to give you the memes. That's not going to
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 2: give you an idea of the indoctrination that your child
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 2: is seeing. So from there... I would just take a
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 2: look at your kid's computer, look at their screenshots, look
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 2: at their conversations if they're having any on Discord. What
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 2: are they watching on TikTok? Watch the feed with them.
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 2: And importantly, if they're not letting you, cut it off.
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 2: Cut it off. That's what I should have done. My
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 2: daughter was secretive. She hid these things from me. She
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 2: wouldn't let me watch with her, and we'd skirt around
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 2: and try not to have an explosion and confrontation and stuff,
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 2: and I should have just taken it. I should have
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 2: just taken the phone. I should have taken the media access.
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 2: If your child's being very secretive, ask why.
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 3: Well, we want to thank you so much for coming
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 3: on and sharing this really important story with our listeners.
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 3: We'll try to put some information in the show notes, too.
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: We wish you all the best. in this really difficult,
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: difficult time.
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 3: Thanks for listening. To submit a dream, suggest an episode topic,
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 3: or join our mailing list, visit our website, thisjungianlife.com. If
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 3: you enjoyed this episode, give us five stars and a
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 3: good review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 3: your podcasts. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and make sure
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 3: to click the notification bell to be alerted whenever we
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 3: upload videos. And keep up with all things TJL by
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 3: following us on Instagram, Facebook, X, and TikTok.