My newest piece of propaganda is a little process enforced on people by an extremist religious cult (Alcoholics Anonymous), and supported by the monopolizing courts of the state. I’m talking about the “12 steps”.

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
11. Sought though prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

These “12 steps” are rather like the “10 commandments”. Everyone thinks they’re great, no one knows what they are, and they show the true colours of a nasty religion. In this case, the Alcoholics Anonymous’ religion of anti-individualism and submission. And if you’re an atheist, you better forget about it.

Step 1 and 2 are the most important for the conditioning process. They break down your desire to get better, make you believe that your alcoholism makes you an irredeemable “sinner”, and that only “God” can save you, through of course submission to the AA program. This is somewhat problematic… if “God” can save you, then why hasn’t it done so already? What about alcoholics who are already submissive Christians? I’m sure such a thing is easily explained away by AA doctrine.

This AA version of “original sin” is a microcosm of Christianity itself- with themselves as the profiting party instead of a church. This writhing, submissive attitude is the opposite of what is needed to discipline oneself. To gain discipline, one must have willpower and confidence in oneself. Like any other cult or religious system, the AA has nothing to gain from people gaining willpower and confidence in themselves. It must attract alcoholics and keep them for as long as possible. Therefore it must foster the absurd myth that alcoholism is a permanent disease.

Now, alcoholics are more prone to falling for this rhetoric because they are likely to feel out of control, and unable to quit, or they will tend to be sent to the AA because they lack that control. On the other hand, the shifting of the blame is to their perceived advantage. They are told that they are not responsible for their own cure, which no doubt relieves many of them. Thus only reinforces the culture of submission further. With freedom comes responsibility: and with the loss of freedom inevitably comes the loss of responsibility.

In reality, about 5% of alcoholics per year get out of it without any help or support- the same percentage that become sober on AA (but of course they are never allowed to realize they are sober).

The rest of the steps are basically a reinforcement of the submissive attitude, with a cult of confession added (because that is, after all, what AA meetings are all about), and a last point at the end to help propagate the AA cult and its beliefs.

The “12 steps” are propaganda. They are a tool to remodel the alcoholic’s mind in order to submit and serve the interests of the AA cult. In doing so, they indoctrinate their victims into a collectivist mindset.

Unfortunately, the state also uses the AA cult as a tool to hook alcoholics on collectivist beliefs. Because of this widespread support, the cult and its evil doctrines have ensconced themselves in society. Only if it became common knowledge that the AA is an extremist religious cult, would there be any hope of stopping its anti-individualist conditioning.

If you have a propaganda item you’d like me to look at, just post it in the comments. I welcome all suggestions.