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Tuesday, 16 January 2024
quote [ We were taught to literally worship Chris Butler and Wai Lana when in their presence. We would be taken into their house and everybody except Chris Butler was made to wear surgical masks in his presence. We would lay on the floor and pray to them in worship when Wai Lana or Chris Butler entered or left the room. ]
This was popular on the old SE, whenever a new episode would drop. Connection to crazy former Congresswoman/Presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard in extended
Ninjai: The Little Ninja for nostalgia/a reminder/if you weren't around for it. They started promoting Karma Kula, a live-action martial arts thing after Ninjai had gone silent for a while, and that's where the screencaps at the link are from.
The cult, from wikipedia A 2022 Insider article has also referred to SIF as "an abusive 'cult'" and mentions how Butler teaches that "homosexuality is evil" and how his teachings are not to be questioned by members. Butler denies he has ever said anything hateful. And then, remember Tulsi Gabbard? Rep from Hawaii who ran for President in 2020 as a Democrat, on a platform of seeming like a Republican and/or a Russian asset? Guess how she grew up? Butler taught vegetarianism, sexual conservatism, mind-body dualism, and disinterest in the material world. He taught a virulent homophobia, skepticism of science, and the dangers of public schools. He had been associated with Hare Krishna, and in fact claimed to have been given his Sanskrit name, Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa, by the founder of the Hare Krishna movement, but by the time he encountered the Gabbards, he’d started his own group. His teachings revolved around worship of Krishna but differed from those of Hare Krishna, in that he instructed his followers to learn from only a single guru — himself — and did not require them to shave their heads or wear robes. The lack of formal dress allowed the group an anonymity he encouraged. He forbade them from visiting India, which is not typical of Hare Krishna, and, also against Hare Krishna practice, married. His wife was one of his followers, Wai Lana, a popular yoga instructor who later had a long-running instructional yoga series on public television. (Abraham, Tulsi’s husband, has helped with filming Wai Lana’s videos; his mother also works for her.) Whenever Butler traveled, he’d have the homes he stayed in lined with tinfoil, to protect against electromagnetic radiation. There were links between her campaign financing and the cult/Ninjai a long time ago: Well, you can find a blog about a golf tournament between Sai Hansen, Mike Gabbard, and Eddie Tamayo. More importantly, Sai Hansen seems to work for the Ninjai Gang, some kind of anime--which is managed by the ubiquitous Mark Fergusson, also of Healthy's, Down to Earth, etc. I seriously doubt that's a coincidence.
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Comments
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thehollowmen said @ 7:27am GMT on 16th Jan
O_O
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steele said @ 8:46pm GMT on 16th Jan
I knew Gabbard had a background with a Hindu Nationalist group, but I had no clue about Ninjai. I quite liked it. Little rot for my nostalgia.😅
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herese said @ 3:52am GMT on 18th Jan
Gabbard's 2020 campaign platform was (more or less) the same as Sander's platform, which is to say (essentially) democratic-socialist. Medicare for all and all that. Since then she sounds quite a bit more libertarian, and has (seemingly) been embraced by libertarians because of a certain cross-section of her views. She's really only been downgraded in officialdom because she took a slightly more nuanced view of the pandemic than most of the establishment, and said (out loud) that NATO's proxy war in Ukraine against Russia is ill-advised, which is only crazy (to say publicly) if you want to remain in the establishment's good graces... She seems to have lost a lot of her historical ability to see and talk about the nuances of reality, lately, particularly regarding trans people and immigration, which is, in those specific areas, kind of republicany, and so she could be said to have gone off the deep end, a little, but I'd hardly call her crazy, and she's always seemed like the real deal to me, as far as politicians go, in that she seems to actually have principles and lives by them, though I guess I can't rule her out as long-game controlled opposition. She's also hobnobbing with at least one billionaire now, so that's not exactly helping her anti-establishment cred, even though it's the "anti-establishment" billionaire. (Hint: I don't think he's really anti-establishment.)
Having said all that, she's one of the few voices in the public sphere that has talked and is talking about actual real, important things instead of *only* endlessly rehashing the 24h circle of manufactured quasi-bullshit along with everyone else, and IMO is on the right side on most of the really important issues, which is something I can say about very few politicians. It does sound like that cult is full of dangerous whackadoodles, but so is Davos, so WTF do I know. |
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herese said @ 4:30am GMT on 18th Jan
Holy crap. Shit. I just looked at some of her recent posts, which I stopped seeing in my feeds for some reason, apparently a couple months ago... I guess I was assuming too much based on the things she's said over the years. She's one of them now, totally crazy. Ouch. Sadness.
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damnit said @ 5:25am GMT on 18th Jan
Ninjai is one of those flash series that literally insisted upon itself with each iteration for its own good.
I totally forgot about it until now. This also reminds me of this girl who ended up in a Final Fantasy 7 cosplayer cult: started out as a cosplay group that took roleplaying too much. Reading it made me feel skeeved out by fandom culture. |
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