How conspiracy peddlers and cult recruiters make you *feel* like you're "thinking for yourself" when you're actually not.
I run into a lot of people who proudly insist that they didn't get into conspiratorial or woo belief through brainwashing, but through thinking for themselves!
Yeah, yeah, it sure felt that way, didn't it?
But is that really what happened, though?
People who are really good at indoctrination and brainwashing won't tell you what to believe. Instead, they'll tell you that they're just going to show you the evidence and let you make up your own mind.
And then, they show you the "evidence" they want you to see, curated and presented in a way so that the only conclusion you can make is the one they wanted you to make all along.
Let's say, for example, you have someone trying to convince you that ancient mythologies describe extraterrestrial beings visiting Earth. They might tell you that many ancient mythologies and texts describe beings coming down from the sky, and try to claim these beings are extraterrestrial aliens.
You might not notice that they're pulling a rhetorical slight-of-hand if you're unaware that:
"Sky god" can mean a lot of things, from a god of rain to a personification of the sun or even the very sky itself.
Not all gods are sky gods in any sense; EG, vegetation deities are very much associated with the earth.
Ancient beliefs were often rooted in animist worldviews and many deities actually embody aspects of nature, including the many of the gods they're trying to pass off as extraterrestrial aliens.
Myths and beliefs were constantly evolving and changing; just because some people believed things a certain way 2000 years ago, doesn't mean people believed the same things 5000 years ago, let alone 10,000 years ago. (Look up the differences between the gods of Classical Greece and the gods of Mycenaean Greece, for example.)
A text they're referencing reflects a very specific set of beliefs that have nothing to do with aliens, genetic engineering, or whatever they're on about. (The Book of Enoch has angels being horny, not conducting genetic experiments.)
Next, they might tell you that certain feats of engineering (for example, the pyramids) would have been impossible for "primitive" people to accomplish, and therefore must have required alien assistance. This might seem compelling if you don't know a lot about ancient construction methods, let alone how the ancient Egyptians were quite good at math, and how they experimented with and refined the designs of pyramids over the years. (The step pyramid and the bent pyramid are pretty much always left out by ancient alien theorists.) "Aliens built it" also sounds a lot more believable when you aren't aware that archaeologists actually found the villages the workers lived in while they were building the pyramids, and found actual graffiti left by workers inside the pyramids.
At some point they might show you a set of hieroglyphs that supposedly depict flying aircraft. What they aren't telling you is that these are literally just two sets of normal hieroglyphs superimposed over each other because they filled in the original hieroglyphs and carved over them, and then the fillings fell out. Yep, it's really that simple.
So this whole time, you feel like you're thinking for yourself when what you're actually doing is thinking on the rails they set out for you. You don't even realize you're being railroaded toward a specific conclusion because you're only seeing what they want you to see, the way they want you to see it.
There are, of course, other tactics to make you feel like you're thinking for yourself when your thoughts are actually being railroaded. For example, you might be presented with a slurry of assertions, cryptic statements, and questions that are all designed to guide you toward a pre-determined conclusion. Here's an example I thought up off the cuff:
Ancient pagans worshiped the sun.
Secret societies know ancient truths.
Why does Grandma Helen plant yellow marigolds?
Just a coincidence?
What does the name "Helen" mean?
What other "coincidences" are there?
Look for yourself.
Think for yourself.
Yellow.
Where else can you find yellow?
Grandma Helen could be the most run-of-the-mill Christian ever, but this rhetoric encourages people to see Grandma Helen, plus anyone who ever does anything with yellow ever, as some kind of cryptopagan. You aren't being directly told that Grandma Helen is a cryptopagan. Instead, you're being conditioned to perceive her as one by being presented with a limited set of assertions (some with actual truth behind them!), plus a means of continually reinforcing this perception if you accept the premise.
The piece I wrote was inspired by QAnon, whose MO has been compared to an alternate reality game and noted to be that of a fictional plot device rather than a real whistleblower. This is an extremely good article on the mechanics of QAnon and how it tricks people into believing they're thinking for themselves when they're actually thinking exactly what Q wants them to think; I really recommend giving it look.
So yeah, people who are genuinely competent at brainwashing or indoctrination won't make you feel indoctrinated or brainwashed - they'll make you feel as if you came to these conclusions on your own by simply manipulating what you're allowed to see and how you see it.
