I keep wanting to form some kind of housing cooperative for people seeking refuge from abusive situations, seeing as how there's currently fuck-all meaningful resources for adult survivors of childhood abuse. I know that despite this being completely nonviolent, legal, voluntary, and well-intentioned operation, that most people won't care or will actively support when some extremists decide to infiltrate and sabotage that effort. Manufactured consent and all. Why does nobody else do things like this? What has prevented the vast majority of other American leftists from simply crowdfunding their own communes, leaving the larger economy, and building their own means of production so that they aren't dependent on the rest of the world for permission to build systems of mutual aid?
To add onto this, turning into a cult becomes more likely the more you are physically isolated from mainstream society, and the more sudden and stark the change from nonmember to member is.
Turning into a cult becomes WAY more likely if there is an official religious affiliation.
Plus, at least in my experience, a lot of these projects have one or two charismatic people who are holding the whole thing together, and if they don't accidentally a cult the whole thing falls apart if they lose interest.
The more people who are involved in the community's executive functions, the more stable it is. :kropotkin-shining: