Can anyone shed any light on the consensus to call Andy's cults "cults of personality"? This is a strange misuse of the term, which refers to a specific totalitarian tactic: a political regime elevating its leader to mythic status through manipulation of mass media, propaganda machines, the arts, etc. Hitler, Mao, Mussolini, the Kims of North Korea, and Stalin were socially successful - in part - because of the very deliberate cults of personality that they and their propaganda teams built around them. The term was popularized by Khrushchev, who used it to criticize the idolatry of Stalin (which Khrushchev argued was anti-Marxist).
Has the term taken root because people want to stress the fact that Andy's cults are built around his personality - that they are all sustained by his charisma? Because that is just a straight-up cult. The "of personality" is redundant if it's just being used to suggest that Andy's personality plays a big role in how he manipulates people, since all cult leaders do this. No cult leader sits around waiting silently, hoping that people will just assume that he's interesting. My guess is that, short of being used because people don't know what the term means, it's being used colloquially for exaggerated effect, the same way that people might refer to TV commercials as "propaganda" or to a strict person as a "dictator." It just strikes me as a strange use, given that so many AA blogs stress that small inaccuracies are one of Andy's favourite ways to discredit the AA blogs' warnings. I can imagine Andy being like, "And they say that it was a cult of personality! It wasn't politically-motivated at all!" Or even (not incorrectly) calling Godwin's Law on the AA blogs for the kinda sorta comparison to Hitler (and other dictators).
Terminology question
Has the term taken root because people want to stress the fact that Andy's cults are built around his personality - that they are all sustained by his charisma? Because that is just a straight-up cult. The "of personality" is redundant if it's just being used to suggest that Andy's personality plays a big role in how he manipulates people, since all cult leaders do this. No cult leader sits around waiting silently, hoping that people will just assume that he's interesting. My guess is that, short of being used because people don't know what the term means, it's being used colloquially for exaggerated effect, the same way that people might refer to TV commercials as "propaganda" or to a strict person as a "dictator." It just strikes me as a strange use, given that so many AA blogs stress that small inaccuracies are one of Andy's favourite ways to discredit the AA blogs' warnings. I can imagine Andy being like, "And they say that it was a cult of personality! It wasn't politically-motivated at all!" Or even (not incorrectly) calling Godwin's Law on the AA blogs for the kinda sorta comparison to Hitler (and other dictators).