this post was submitted on 24 May 2026
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Solarpunk Farming
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In my experience, if a group specifies they're not a cult, they're often a cult.
The first photo of people on the page is the hottest, fittest people they could find.
Not really the best sign at all! That’s what cults do.
An example in person was Children of God’s “flirty fishing.” Scientology does this too, which is a reason they keep their most famous members close. Tom Cruise is an amazing advertisement for the cult.
If the first people you see are half-naked models, run.
Edit to add that it’s remarkably foolish to say “it’s not a cult.” As Zombie said it’s literally what all cults say.
Even the most notorious cults obviously didn’t start as cults. I’m pretty sure the People’s Temple said “it’s not a cult” all the way up to the “white night” mass murder/suicide.
Note that the About page of this one talks about how the two founders spent their entire life savings to do this.
That’s a nascent cult! “It’s not a cult” isn’t cute, it’s alarming.
It didn't cross my mind to be honnest. Their about page didn't give that impression. Also, I looked up a bit Spencer Scott and I found some decent articles. For example: Solarpunk: Refuturing our Imagination for an Ecological Transformation.
Personnaly, I wanted to find specifics about their decission-making process. I didn't manage to really. I suppose if they had a model of horizontal organizing, they would be talking about it? In the same time it looked like a decent enough project, so it seemed like worth posting.
On second thought, does this project seem to you like it could be a cult?
I don't know tbh, I just saw "It's a vibe, not a cult" and made a flippant remark because of my own personal experience of an "anarchist" cult.
Anything on their website is something they want people to see, so it would be very difficult to tell based on that.
I think we should generally give the benefit of the doubt and trust first but rescind that trust immediately and absolutely if proven otherwise. So I think you've done right by posting, I'm just old and jaded. Ignore me :)
I think it's very important to share these kind of thoughts, to protect ourselves and others. So thank you for your remark!
Have you experienced a cult?
Unfortunately. I was their youngest member! Got outta there as soon as I joined the dots though.
Turns out, not all anarchist groups are who they say they are.
When one person funds the whole operation, is the landlord instead of member ownership, is the member who determines if you know enough theory to join, is the only member proposing rules and sabotages members who vote against those rules, there's a high chance they're not anarchists. It's a cult of personality based around a façade of ideology. Those who flatter dear leader are given enough freedom to think there's no hierarchy, but as soon as they challenge the leader that hierarchy quickly gets brought into play. There was a high turnover of people, as we each woke up to the deception, only a handful of sycophants remained long term.
I'm still an anarchist, one liar and their sycophants hasn't put me off that idea. In fact I know more about political theory now than I did back then and am even more for it. But I'm far more critical of self labeled organisations now. Just because a group/person says they're something doesn't necessarily mean they are. Even if they put up a really good façade.
Thank you for sharing.
I think anarchism is an interesting example, because even though I subscribe to it myself, I see that it is easy to exploit theory to shut people up.
As long as they don’t promise to get you into heaven, kill you, or rape kids… it doesn’t sound like a cult to me.
Ah, an aspiring cult member
https://youtu.be/UJdeh91YRzc