Deleted BuzzFeed Article Titled: "The Bizarre Online Cult Of Stefan Molyneux"

19/08/2014 – UPDATE: Molyneux, a man who claims he does not believe in intellectual property, had two videos linked in this piece removed, claiming copyright infringement. Luckily, I anticipated it, and wrote down what he said! Both removed videos have now been replaced with quotes of what he said. Enjoy!
- PD

Like all cult personalities, Stefan Molyneux cuts a superficially charismatic figure. Tall, bald and smiley-faced, the increasingly popular 47 year old Canadian runs FreeDomain Radio, the world’s most popular philosophy podcast. He’s interviewed people like Noam Chomsky; he gives public talks about economics, and he’s even been fortunate enough to have Joe Rogan helplessly nod in agreement with him for 3 hours during a nauseatingly fawning encounter. A self proclaimed libertarian anarchist, those who stumble across Molynuex will more than likely be greeted by videos in which he argues (poorly) for free-market solutions to the worlds woes: that everything, including law, justice and security, can be provided by an unregulated market system.

Fine. It’s just his point of view, and, agree or disagree with him, Molyneux’s online bloviating about a political system that’s never going to become a reality is at first seemingly innocuous. His followers are free to click, watch, agree, and tip their fedora in solidarity.

Behind this Youtube philosopher, however, is a growing cult of personality in which devout followers adhere to alarmingly absolutist (and widely discredited) teachings.
If, for some reason, Molyneux’s videos have spoken to you in a profound sense, and if you’re willing to donate 50 or more dollars a month to FreeDomain Radio, you can become one of its ‘Community’ members. These members are, for the most part, people who have fully committed to Molyneux’s teachings on ethics, philosophy and family. It is to these followers that Molyneux discusses and often endorses the appalling practice of ‘Defooing’.

‘Defooing’ – a term coined by Molyneux – is the practice of cutting any and all ties with ‘corrupting influences’ in one’s life. These corruptions can range from an immoral acquaintance to an abusive parent or spouse. In theory, defooing would be fine if Molyneux were merely advocating leaving abusive or unhealthy relationships; however it seems as far as Molyneux is concerned, virtually all friends and parents are corrupt and worthy of cutting ties with. In a 2005 essay in which he discussed his philosophy, he scathingly wrote

“So face it: your parents were bullies, or weak curriers of favour, or manipulative emotional infants themselves. You have no respect for them, for respect requires courage, and courage requires logical morality. You do not love them, since love demands virtue, and manipulating children into blind obedience is not at all virtuous.”

Numerous people have cut ties with their friends and families as a result of Molyneux’s teachings on relationships and family. Parents have been never spoken to again. Friends have been lost. Jobs have been quit.

‘Defooing’ and practices similar are widely discredited by psychologists. Molyneux’s wife – a psychologist – was even accused of professional misconduct for advocating it to callers to the show. In fact, such is the damage people feel that Molyneux and his wife have done: there are three websites dedicated to warning people about the dangers of joining their online community.

“You’ll watch videos related to the topics that you’re interested in, whether its atheism, or whatever, and gradually he sort of bleeds in stuff about relationships and psychology” says Alex, a young woman who cut ties with her family at the behest of Molyneux. Although she has since reunited with her family, Molyneux’s teachings greatly damaged her life, causing her to drop out of her college major, quit her job, and cut all ties with her loved ones. “I was committed. I was a true believer”

Finding herself increasingly interested in Molyneux’ teachings, Alex became involved with the FDR community, eventually becoming a member of Molyneux’s inner-circle, a select group of ‘Philopher Kings’ who are in direct contact with the libertarian luminary. She and the others in this small group were even at times invited to Molyneux’s house.

“I was listening to the podcasts non-stop…I would listen to 6 or 7 a day. [After she eventually left the FDR community] What I learned about later was this concept of’ information overload’ that happens in cults. Once you’ve absorbed a certain amount of information, you lose your critical faculties…so, you have these podcasts that are like, one, two, three hours long, and once you’ve absorbed all of these different tangents, he hits you with stuff that’s really, really radical. But, by that point, you’ve sort of been depleted of your resources to think about these things critically. That’s where the real shift starts to happen.”

At least consistent in applying their philosophy to themselves, both Molyneux and his wife have cut all ties with their respective families. His wife, who he often references on his show, had a relationship with her family until she met Molyneux and he convinced her that her childhood had not been happy at all. Alex’s experience was almost identical to that of Holy Molys first victim – Molyneux encouraging her to sever ties with her family and friends in the name of his absolutist conception of morality. “I listened to the podcast about confronting your family, and the different ways that you felt that they’d made mistakes when raising you. Very quickly I went towards the podcasts that were like, ‘Well, this is how they’re going to respond, and this is why, and this conversation is actually futile.’ And I went really quickly from that to defooing. I left my home in the middle of the night, moved in with my boyfriend, and just stopped responding to my parents. They were thinking of filing a missing persons report at the time.”

Once a successful young woman with a boyfriend, a job, and a college course, Alex soon found herself poor, alone, and miserable. “I had two conversations with Stef, one was about childhood, and the other was about how frightened I was to defoo. I didn’t really have a contingency plan.”

Two years after defooing, Alex still found herself living her life in search of the approval of the FDR cult. “I broke it off with my boyfriend. I had been getting the feeling that, Stef thought our relationship wasn’t healthy. It’s a very common thing that happens. And so, I broke it off, and was ready to become more deeply involved in the group, but here I was again, no job, no money, nothing. I was kind of in a state of catatonic depression for a while.”

In conjunction with deliberately isolating new members of his community – a practice that is commonly accepted as being a trait of cults - Molyneux also releases videos in which he discusses ‘the facts’ about popular or historical figures. The subjects of his scholarly ‘Truth About’s range from Abe Lincoln to Chelsea Manning.

These videos without fail advocate a free-market approach. In his critique of Lincoln, Molyneux argues that the American civil war – and indeed the problem of slavery – could have been solved if the southern states had been allowed to secede. Apparently, the north could have simply purchased all the captive laborers , and then promptly set them free. It didn’t seem to occur to him that the Confederacy may not have wanted to sell their sources of unlimited free labour, and that slavery remaining legal in the seceded south might still have been potentially problematic.

Unrelenting in his quest for poor taste, on the 28th of May – the day Maya Angelou died – Molyneux posted on his Facebook asking if he could be directed to any source materials regarding the authors life. Two days later, ‘The Truth about Maya Angelou’ was uploaded to YouTube; the only harsh truth revealed being the lack of research that goes into Molyneuxian exposés.

In his critiques, Molyneux almost without fail brings up traumatic events from the individual in questions childhood. He then uses these juvenile misadventures to explain what he regards as his subjects foibles. In making the childhoods of public figures he is criticizing central to their flaws, Molyneux is underhandedly reinforcing his other teachings about parenting and relationships. Everyone is flawed because of a bad childhood, and what is needed for the moral progress of the species is a year zero approach in which followers of Holy Moly cut all ties with past corruptions in their lives and begin anew.

As well as reinforcing his widely discredited views on relationships and family, these videos serve a very important function for the cult of Molyneux: in his demystifying and criticizing heroes of history and lore, he’s also tacitly adducing his own prestige to his followers. The philosopher king is slowly but surely discrediting people commonly accepted as moral heroes, all the while portraying himself as an ethical, economic and relationship guru.

Adding more problems, in his role as a dating guru, the right-wing Renaissance man is an unapologetic misogynist in his attitude toward women. The cognitive dissonance required in order to take Molyneux seriously as a social critic and philosopher became particularly obvious when he turned his sights on woman-hating mass murderer Elliot Rodger.

Unsurprisingly, in revealing ‘the truth’ about Elliot Rodger, Molyneux pointed the finger at two of his usual targets: women and socialists. The latter because they have normalized the notion that it’s okay to redistribute wealth with the use of force, and the former because someone – presumably some gold digging slut – must have gotten the idea into young Elliot’s head that wealth can be traded for beautiful girls. When Rodger realized that this wasn’t so, he snapped.

For a philosopher king, Holy Moly doesn’t seem to realize that the kind of rhetoric he espouses on his channel both validates and encourages people with views similar to Rodger’s. Addressing a caller in a video titled ‘The Matriarchal Lineage of Corruption’, Molyneux went on a particularly vitriolic rant, in which he blamed women for the presence of evil in the world, saying

“Women who choose the arseholes will fucking end this race. They will fucking end this human race if we don’t start holding them a-fucking-countable…They’re the gatekeepers. Look, women who choose aresholes guarantee child abuse. Women who chose arseholes guarantee criminality, sociopathy, politicians; all the cold hearted jerks who run the world came out of the vaginas of women who married arseholes. And, I don’t know how to make the world a better place without holding women accountable for choosing these arseholes. Your Dad was an arsehole because your mother chose him. Because it works on so many women. If ‘arsehole’ wasn’t a great reproductive strategy, it would have been gone long ago. Women keep that black bastard flame alive. They cup their hands around it, they protect it with their bodies. They keep the evil of the species going by continually choosing these guys. If being an arsehole didn’t get women there would be no arseholes left. If women chose nice guys over arseholes we would have a glorious and peaceful world in one generation. Women determine the personality traits of the men because women choose who to have sex with, and who to have children with, and who to expose those children to. I get that you’re angry at your Dad, and you have every reason to be angry at your Dad. Your Dad is who he is fundamentally because your Mother was willing to fuck him and have you; willing and eager to fuck the monster. Stop fucking monsters: we get a great world. Keep fucking monsters: we get catastrophes. We get war. We get nuclear weapons. We get national debts. We get incarcerations and prison guards and all the other florid arseholes who rule the world. Women worship at the feet of the devil and wonder why the world is evil. And then, you know what they say? “We’re victims!..Poor us!”. And some women are absolutely…but dear god in heaven…men will become whatever women want them to become, because women are the gatekeepers…So, I think that if you accept that women are central to the cycle of evil in the world, then you will be able to see how it really reproduces. Evil is of matriarchal lineage – in the present. I’m not talking about Mongol hoards and rapes and blah, blah blah. Evil passes through the Mother. It’s Jewish. It’s a Matriarch.”

Basically, evil is a thing because women have sex with men that Holy Moly doesn’t approve of. The free market apparently does not provide the best results when female consent is concerned.

Although Molyneux’s teachings (and in particular his attitude towards women) are increasingly insane with every podcast, Alex is optimistic that eventually, people will discover the kind of person he really is, “Stef has become demonstrably more unhinged, and I can only see the trend worsening until anyone with a reputation to uphold won’t want to be associated. As far as the new young one’s he’s continually drawing in, hopefully more and more criticism will accumulate that exposes the insanity through this whole thing, so it can’t be buried like it was when I first became involved”

And so followers of Molyneuxian morality must ask themselves: if Elliot Rodger had heard about ‘The Matriarchal Lineage of Corruption’, do you think he would have been encouraged or discouraged to commit his crimes? What’s the difference between the rhetoric above, and the kind Rodger wrote in his manifesto?

“The most meanest and depraved of men come out on top, and women flock to these men. Their evil acts are rewarded by women; while the good, decent men are laughed at,”

This kind misogynistic rhetoric isn’t an isolated incident either, a recent Facebook post of Holy Moly’s saying

Apparently, a young woman’s sexual appeal is designed to ( how he knows definitively what a woman’s sexual appeal is for has never been disclosed) attract a quality man: a nice guy (!?) – like Stefan Molyneux, and presumably, people who follow his philosophy and ethical teachings.

Feral, fedora wearing, fringe-right wing idiots with delusions of grandeur, who think that feigning friendship with a female entitles them access to up their skirt: ‘Nice Guys’ have to a great extent become the laughing stock of cyberspace. This stereotype, though often funny, actually serves to defer attention from the casual violent sexism that is so ubiquitous among followers of Molyneux and those like him. Worryingly, many loyal viewers of the world’s largest and most popular philosophy podcast hold a sincere and deep seated belief that women are at fault for the wrongs of the world because they’ve been granted the right of choosing who they do and do not have sex with.

When Elliot Rodger committed his horrendous crimes, many concluded that misogyny had a major role to play. Even more people dismissed these claims, and said that resentment and hatred of women was not a cultural issue. What’s alarming about the cult of Molyneux, is that very few of his fans – if any at all – seem willing to challenge his psychotic position that evil could be eradicated from the world if women would just get their shit together.

Likewise, when actor Robin Williams passed away, Molyneux was quick to conclude that it was the fault of women, saying

“Womens’ inability to resist free stuff offered to them is equivalent to men’s challenges in resisting the sexual advances of fertile and beautiful women….Don’t expect to get paid if you get fired from your “job” of being a wife….Robin Williams died from an addiction…women’s addiction to free stuff…America must stop its addiction to feeding the wounded vanities of hypergamous women.”

Video available at: http://youtube.com/watch?v=diyuAXzN7yo.

Like most cult personalities – and, in a weird mix of tragedy and irony – Holy Moly also seems to be a pretty severe narcissist. In another podcast, which has since been removed, Holy Moly said

“It’s not up to me whether this show succeeds or fails. I don’t have the option of failing. Because, the kind of communicator who can translate complex philosophical ideas into emotionally actionable to-do lists for people is so rare that they come along every couple of hundred years if humanity is lucky. I don’t have the choice to fail. I don’t have the option to fail. Not because I want to be front and centre in the moral progress of the species, but because the moral progress of the species is absolutely essential, and I have a child. Failure is not an option, which means I have to do whatever it takes to make this show succeed. I have to be as honest and provoke as much discontent and disagreement with people, sometimes as is absolutely necessary. This is not my horse to ride. This is not my career to pursue. This is what is necessary for the world. This is what is necessary so that children don’t get hit, and half of penis skin doesn’t get slashed off from babies. This is what is necessary so that good people achieve their goals and bad people get fucked. This show is really about bad people getting fucked, and good people getting successful, right? In the same way that my cancer treatment was about cancer cells getting fucked, and the good cells not….And the reason I’m telling you this, is not so you understand my show and my motivation, you know? It’s the Bob Marley thing. In one of his songs he says ‘I am playing for mankind’. I am playing for mankind. One love. I am speaking for mankind, I am speaking for the future. I have to be as good at what I’m doing to save lives.”

“He [Molyneux] records absolutely everything. Even when hes just out of the grocery store. One of the other members told me he said he does it because ‘wouldn’t it be amazing if you could hear Socrates having a conversation with his barber’. Sometimes you’re aware you’re being recorded, sometimes you’re not. It adds a whole “walking on eggshells” vibe to everything.”

Usually, when a prophet’s teachings are dedicated to saving lives and minimizing harm, they don’t have families blaming them for the suicide of their child. It’s also usually pretty easy to distinguish their ramblings from those of a psychotic killer.

And so, increasingly, followers of the teachings of Holy Moly are abandoning their friends and family. They’re being taught that their parents were abusive to them. They’re being taught to blame women for the presence of evil in the world.

Aggressive, belittling, and constantly psychologising those who question him, ironically, those who abandon their family at the behest of Molyneux have guaranteed themselves the abusive parental figure he’s so manipulatively convinced them they’re fleeing from.

As a general rule, if you have to keep denying that you’re the leader of a cult, chances are you are in fact the leader of a cult.

Kony Pony Bologna

For those of you who've been following my Twitter I've been after an internet cult of personality with a political agenda. No not TZM, they're pretty much dead and we'll get another glimpse of that this weekend when they open the coffin for another peek of the whole corpse. I'm talking about this KONY 2012 bullshit.

DISCLAIMER - LET ME STATE RIGHT HERE AND NOW SO YOU UNDERSTAND ME:
I'M NOT SAYING IT'S A SCAM, IT'S NOT A SCAM. THAT WOULD BE A TERRIBLE THING TO SAY AND COULD OPEN THE DOOR TO ALL KINDS OF LITIGATION AGAINST ME! I WILL SAY THAT I THINK IT'S A PILE OF ALIEN ZEBRA SHIT BECAUSE AS YOU KNOW ALIEN ZEBRA SHIT (or AZS for short) STUPID VIRAL VIDEOS THAT BEGS FOR MONEY!

Now that we got that out of the way I want to expose why this is a total AZS in a few key points for you to quickly understand, unlike the video, and get back to reality.

1. Kony is a monster, but a very little and outdated one. There's no question that Joseph Kony is an asshole. He did kidnap kids, his army did rape and loot and pillage, all that bad stuff. He started this 26 years ago. When I was still a baby and before most of the KONY 2012 sycophants were even born. His violent military cult, LRA (Lord's Resistance Army) has been largely inactive for the last 6 years and dissipated into other areas where they don't do much. Kony was a bad man, and is now in hiding in another country. It's clear though various government intelligence that Kony himself is no longer in Uganda and might very well be dead. So making him famous is a task that will go nowhere and might even turn out to be a 100% waste of time if he's dead, as to a 95% waste of time if he's not.

People thing they got the whole African situation figured out because a AZS video landed on YouTube with some very laid out emotional propaganda and little facts. What facts they do lay out are overly simplified and out of date and in words for a child to understand. This is not how you relate complex geopolitical problems to the public, especially if it's wrong. Which it is.

2. War is not the answer. The film makes it very clear that we should urge our congress critters to use military force in Uganda to capture Kony. Now for a lot of kids that like KONY 2012 that means that we will send our troops to Uganda where they will prance in the daisies holding hands with the African children until they catch the big bad wolf and then a large parade will commence as the put the wolf in a cage and parade him around and everyone is happy. That's not the way it works. There will be guns, there will be jets, there will be violence, there will be bombs, there will be gunfire because these are the tools of the military. You can't expect a tool like the military to have a new function like you can't expect a hammer to also serve as a screwdriver. You are advocating a war which comes with the whole package. The LRA will not turn over or comply peacefully. They are religiously motivated and will die for their cause and kill our troops as well.

If you think the Iraq war was bullshit, you can't be for a police action in Uganda. If you do, you are a hypocrite because the mission is identical except Kony isn't the leader of a state.

3. Ugandans don't want us there. African regions have a long history of violence and bloodshed. You can't fix it by sending western people to join in the violence and bloodshed NOR DO THEY WANT US TO. The Ugandan people have been pretty vocal about KONY 2012 and it's been overwhelming opposition. When Ugandans tell you "Don't worry about Kony, we have it under control" that should be a red flag right there.

4. Making Kony famous will do jack shit. Yay, now more people know about him. So what? Africa knows about him, he's not news like he was to use a week ago. This has been around for 26 years. He is famous there. Unless you plan on having US citizens go wander around Africa, this will not do anything. Sorry. Like all the Facebook links, RT every tweet, he's not getting anymore famous there. You could point to Iran but I would just argue 2 points about that. One, it was current events, not 6 year old information not applicable then, and two, the retweets had information for the Iranians to help fight back including police warnings and proxy lists. So no, you're wrong.

5. Invisible Children is a giant emotional propaganda AZS producing organization. Now when people say 'propaganda' they usually mean bits of information they disagree with for mass consumption. It's just a derogatory word. However in this case it's not. This is a well crafted manipulative video that isn't designed to give you any valid information, it's there to play on your emotions. Even more so than Zeitgeist movies. It all focuses on this guy and his crotch fruit showing his emotions and that kid from Africa crying. From start to finish it was just tugging your heart strings not giving you information like a documentary should.

So when you buy their stupid "action kit" you send them 30 bucks. 9 bucks goes to the 'cause' and the other 21 dollars goes to buying them tickets to fly around the world, stay and nice hotels, eat good food, buy them nice cars...etc. This is based on their tax forms. Now they put out a statement saying "Well yes, charities have overhead" which is AZS in it's own right. No charity has that much overhead. Charities pride themselves on keeping overhead as low as possible and try to stay under 30% where as Invisible Children think it's the other way around.

There's plenty of great (not just good) charities that help out Africa. Red Cross and (RED) are 2 good ones of the top of my head. Invisible Children  just seems like I'm enriching the lives of white American hipsters more than helping poor African children. Especially since most of the 30% doesn't ... actually this needs it's own number.

6. If you support Kony 2012, you support kidnapping children and gang rape. 
"The enemy of my enemy is not my friend." 
When you give money to Invisible Children, some of that 30% goes to the Ugandan and Sudanese Army which are no strangers to atrocities. These groups picked up the ball where Kony left off. In fact, the government of Uganda is the same government is currently trying to pass a law making it a crime punishable by death to be gay. This army will be the ones who will enforce it. This army has been known and is well documented that they find young women and girls and gang rape them sometimes to the brink of death. The Sudan armies pale them in comparison even kidnapping children for recruiting.

So yes, by supporting KONY 2012 you are actually doing more harm to Uganda than not sending money. Who knew some cheesy cheap bracelets could help cause such chaos and destruction. If you lost money to this, demand it back. Send back your action kit and demand a refund. You won't get it but it will send a message. But I hoped you learned a valuable lesson from this as most people who joined TZM did, you just can't watch a video and think you got life all sorted out because you laughed and cried at the right parts. Life is complex and can't be summed up in a video with cool editing and effects. The things you support have other implications that are never presented to you in them and consider your 30 bucks a lesson well learned.