In this episode of WTF Is On My Mind?!, Mark Vicente pulls back the curtain on one of the most insidious tools of social control: shunning — not just as a personal act of rejection, but as a systemic, psychological weapon masquerading as moral high ground.

This isn’t just about cults. It’s about how cult behavior has gone mainstream — how families, political factions, media outlets, and activist circles now use public exile and cold silence to punish dissent and demand conformity. Drawing on a recent New York Times opinion piece that unintentionally exposes the creeping logic of ideological purity, Mark examines the difference between healthy boundaries and coercive exile, between critical thinking and performative allegiance.

He also reflects on his own experience inside NXIVM, where shunning was formal doctrine — and how eerily familiar those same dynamics look in our current cultural climate. From mocking deaths to cutting off loved ones for their beliefs, we’re in dangerous territory when belonging becomes conditional on orthodoxy — be it political, medical, or spiritual.

But all is not doom and gloom. This episode also looks at how the spell can break — how real human connection, outside the algorithms and echo chambers, can restore our capacity for nuance, empathy, and even disagreement without destruction.

Mark’s take is blunt, piercing, and layered with lived experience — and it just might make you think twice about who’s really being “cultish.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/13/opinion/family-politics-arguments-right-wing.html

https://www.reddit.com/r/redscarepod/comments/1m0iyya/nyt_is_it_time_to_stop_snubbing_your_rightwing/

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The views and opinions expressed on WTF is on my Mind?! do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the podcast or Mark Vicente. Any content provided by guests are of their opinion and are not intended to malign any religion, group, club, organization, business individual, anyone or anything.

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