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[–]Alienhunter糞大名 6 insightful - 2 fun6 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

I don't care what they think. But the point is to make it seem like everyone agrees with you. It's narrative control. If you search something and get only one viewpoint, someone who doesn't know what is going on will only see that.

Now this is I think an ultimately self defeating tactic. But this is the same ideological failure that led to the downfall of religious attendance in the west. When you're in an environment where you cannot so much as question dogma, it stifles any and all discussion, intellectual development, and encourages ideological laziness, which is the core reason why people dog pile on the dissenter in the first place, it's far easier and more fun to jump on the person questioning your beliefs as an enemy, rather than attempt to engage in good faith and force yourself to evaluate your own beliefs in order to defend them adequately.

Once such an environment is in place it cannot function beyond authoritarian approaches. As there cannot be discussion. Cults operate in a similar manner, one person ends up dictating the rules and schisms and problems are simply ignored, once the leader dies or is ousted and there's a power struggle, it forces the debate that should have been going on the entire time, and that leads to schisms.

They must shut down discussion to maintain their authority. For if they didn't then they would lose the pretense of power and would have to actually engage in a defense of their positions that doesn't boil down to empty tautologies.