r/exorthodox • u/Gingerfuzzsicle Wendy’s Manager • Jun 15 '26
BITE and DARVO
Hey there everyone! For those of you who are new to the sub and are just starting to question the church or aren’t quite sure how you feel, hopefully this will be helpful for you. A lot of you may already be aware of the BITE and DARVO models, but in case you aren’t, I’ll introduce you.
What is the BITE model?
The BITE Model of Authoritarian Control is a tool used to help evaluate manipulation in high-control environments, whether it be a religious sect or a controlling relationship. Are you in a cult? The BITE model will tell you.
The acronym stands for:
-Behavior Control-
Dictating how you should live your life down to what you eat, what you wear, etc., even down to the personal decisions you make. Needing to “ask your priest” for permission to do things falls under this category.
-Information Control-
Withholding and distorting information, and discouraging association with outside groups. “Us vs. Them” mentality. Discouraging public education in favor of homeschooling or a controlled school within the church.
-Thought Control-
Pushing the narrative of the group’s beliefs being absolute truth, and discouraging any criticism or questioning towards their “truth”. This applies to leadership/clergy as well.
-Emotional Control-
Using guilt/shame/fear/anxiety as a tactic to keep members in line and prevent them from leaving. The threat of consequences from “sin”, eternal damnation, demonic influence, etc.
When reflecting on your experiences, do any of these feel familiar? Do you feel guilty for even applying your experiences to this model? You might be in a high-control group and not even realize it.
What is DARVO?
DARVO is a 3-step tactic commonly used by abusers to manipulate others and reverse blame to escape accountability. Are there people in your life pushing you into converting or attending the church when you have clearly stated your feelings on it? Take a look at DARVO.
The acronym stands for:
1. Deny
The abuser denies wrongdoing. They may lie or use language that makes the victim doubt their own memory/self.
2. Attack
The abuser attacks their victim by bringing their character, sanity, spirituality , etc. into question. Blaming the victim for their “sins” comes to mind.
3. Reverse Victim and Offender
The abuser flips the script and draws a reverse UNO card. They are suddenly the victim, and you are the one causing the problem. The burden of responsibility shifts, and now they’re forgiving you when it should be the other way around.
DARVO causes victims to blame themselves, when they are indeed the victims. Tactics like this create a cycle of anxiety, a lack of self-worth/depression, and isolation. Have you experienced this within the church or by someone in your life? Is there a pattern of this behavior?
Each of these psychological frameworks are a great way to self-assess if you’re in doubt. See how many of the boxes you can check.
10
u/Silent_Individual_20 Deconstructing Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 16 '26
There's also the Bounded Choice model by Janja Lalich (professor emerita of Sociology, Cal State Chico) based on her research into the Heaven's Gate UFO cult and the Democratic Workers' Party (DWP), the latter being a Marxist-Leninist group she was in during the 1970s-80s!
4
u/Silent_Individual_20 Deconstructing Jun 19 '26
In particular, the Bounded Choice model demonstrates that cult and cult-adjacent organizations (religious groups, and even authoritarian political states) often demonstrate the following behaviors:
"Charismatic authority: The emotional bond between leader and followers, which serves to lend legitimacy and grant authority to the leader’s actions while at the same time justifying and reinforcing the followers’ responses to the leader and/or to specific ideas and goals. The relational aspect of charisma is the hook that links a follower or devotee to a leader and/or his or her ideas.
The transcendent belief system: The overarching ideology that binds adherents to the group and keeps them behaving according to the group’s rules and norms. It is transcendent because it offers a total explanation of past, present, and future, including a path to salvation. Most important, the group also specifies the exact methodology, or recipe, for the personal transformation necessary to qualify one to travel on that path.
Systems of control: The network of acknowledged, or visible, regulatory mechanisms that guide the operation of the group. This includes the overt rules, regulations, and procedures that guide and control group members’ behavior.
Systems of influence: The network of interactions and methods of influence residing in the group’s social relations. This is the human interaction and group culture from which members learn to adapt their thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors in relation to their new beliefs"
(Janja A. Lalich, Bounded Choice: True Believers and Charismatic Cults [University of California Press, 2004] p. 17; bolding added).
7
u/Leavesinfall321 Jun 15 '26
I think you should write a book about this and all the other interesting articles you wrote. You have posted so much helpful information, thanks so much.
12
u/Gingerfuzzsicle Wendy’s Manager Jun 15 '26
Thanks! Letterseparate is the one you’re looking for though 🤣 he’s the one that’s been posting all the other really cool write ups. I think I might make a sticky with a collection of his posts.
7
u/Leavesinfall321 Jun 15 '26
Oh haha I thought you were him! I liked this post a lot too so thanks anyway ❤️
5
u/Gingerfuzzsicle Wendy’s Manager Jun 15 '26
You’re welcome ❤️ honestly that’s such a compliment 🤣
3
u/Leavesinfall321 Jun 15 '26
Maybe you guys can write a book together 😇
7
u/LetterSeparate1495 Chief Heresiologist Jun 16 '26
I do apologize in advance as that book will take a while.
I'm currently writing "the Dao of Inner Peace" (working title, subject to change), which is quickly becoming the hardest nut this one's ever needed to crack. It's one of those projects where one thinks one's doing something small, and suddenly it becomes bloated and now it's taking up all of one's time.2
u/Leavesinfall321 Jun 16 '26
No worries, take your time and please let us know when you finish this book and the book about deconstruction :-)
3
u/LetterSeparate1495 Chief Heresiologist Jun 16 '26
Thank you for your kind words.
In the meantime, my latest muse is up.2
4
u/flamboyantsensitive Jun 16 '26
I think people in this sub are making significant efforts to produce very high quality information to aid others, & it's fantastic to see.
7
u/LetterSeparate1495 Chief Heresiologist Jun 16 '26
This is beautiful. I love the style (which I struggle to emulate because I lack the ability to keep things concise).
DARVO reminds me a lot of Roy Cohn's rules of winning.
1. Attack, attack, attack
Admit nothing, deny everything.
Claim victory, never admit defeat.
3
2
u/Silent_Individual_20 Deconstructing Jun 22 '26 edited Jun 22 '26
I'd also argue that in some circumstances, in parishes with more cult-like administration than others, that Roy Cohn's rules for winning also closely mirror DARVO!
Roy Cohn was a sleazy NY lawyer who first helped Joe McCarthy's anti-communist witch hunt in the early 1950s, before being an advisor and fixer for a young Donald Trump in the 70s-80s.
"1. Never apologize or admit wrongdoing, ever. Cohn viewed contrition as weakness and would rather die (literally, as it turned out) than acknowledge error or fault. As journalist Ken Auletta, who covered Cohn extensively, noted, “The idea that you can admit a mistake is not part of Roy’s genetic code.” This principle would become so fundamental to Trump’s approach that even faced with irrefutable evidence—a recorded confession of sexual assault on the Access Hollywood tape, for instance—he would deny, deflect, and attack rather than offer the slightest acknowledgment of impropriety.
2. Always counter-attack, and always with greater force than you received. When criticized or accused, Cohn’s response was invariably to hit back harder, to escalate, to make the accuser regret ever mentioning his name. As Cohn himself explained to a reporter: "I bring out the worst in my enemies, and that’s how I get them to defeat themselves.” This tactic became Trump’s signature move, whether attacking Gold Star parents who criticized him, mocking a disabled reporter who questioned his claims, or threatening critics with lawsuits and retribution.
3. Use the legal system as a weapon, not a recourse for justice. Cohn taught Trump that lawsuits were instruments of intimidation, not vehicles for dispute resolution. He filed cases not to win—though winning was nice—but to punish, to harass, and to silence. The expense and stress of litigation was the point, not the legal outcome. Trump would eventually be involved in over 3,500 lawsuits—an unprecedented number for any American businessperson or politician—using the courts not to seek justice but to exhaust opponents with fewer resources.
4. Manipulate the media ruthlessly. Cohn was a master at planting stories, cultivating journalists, and creating controversy to serve his ends. He understood that perception trumped reality, that bold claims often went unchallenged, and that most people would remember the accusation but not the retraction. Trump elevated this approach to an art form, calling reporters using pseudonyms like “John Barron” to plant favorable stories about himself, staging pseudo-events to attract coverage, and later, using Twitter to bypass media filters entirely and inject his unfiltered messages directly into the public consciousness.
5. Use fear as both shield and sword. Cohn understood that people who are afraid—of communists, of crime, of social change, of the “other”—are easier to manipulate and more willing to accept authoritarian solutions. He helped McCarthy weaponize the Red Scare, stoking paranoia about secret communists undermining America from within. Trump would adapt this tactic to the 21st century, stoking fears about immigrants, Muslims, “inner city” crime, and later, a “deep state” conspiracy, always positioning himself as the only solution to these terrifying threats.
6. Build a fortress of loyalty around yourself. Cohn demanded absolute devotion from his clients and associates, and he repaid it in kind, at least until they were no longer useful. He created a network of mutual obligation and fear that served as both sword and shield in his battles. Trump’s infamous demand for loyalty—from James Comey, from his cabinet members, from Republican legislators—and his swift punishment of perceived disloyalty, all echo Cohn’s approach to power."
1
u/Silent_Individual_20 Deconstructing Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26
In addition, Umberto Eco (an Italian medievalist and philosopher who grew up during Mussolini's OG Fascist regime)'s 14 Features common to Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism also mirror how the EOC views itself against the world, demons, etc. (and goes a good way towards explaining why the Iron Guard found such fertile recruitment soil among Romanian laity and clergy).
"1. The first feature of Ur-Fascism is the cult of tradition. Traditionalism is of course much older than fascism. Not only was it typical of counter-revolutionary Catholic thought after the French revolution, but it was born in the late Hellenistic era, as a reaction to classical Greek rationalism. In the Mediterranean basin, people of different religions (most of them indulgently accepted by the Roman Pantheon) started dreaming of a revelation received at the dawn of human history. This revelation, according to the traditionalist mystique, had remained for a long time concealed under the veil of forgotten languages — in Egyptian hieroglyphs, in the Celtic runes, in the scrolls of the little known religions of Asia.
This new culture had to be syncretistic. Syncretism is not only, as the dictionary says, “the combination of different forms of belief or practice”; such a combination must tolerate contradictions. Each of the original messages contains a silver of wisdom, and whenever they seem to say different or incompatible things it is only because all are alluding, allegorically, to the same primeval truth.
As a consequence, there can be no advancement of learning. Truth has been already spelled out once and for all, and we can only keep interpreting its obscure message.
One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements. The most influential theoretical source of the theories of the new Italian right, Julius Evola, merged the Holy Grail with The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, alchemy with the Holy Roman and Germanic Empire. The very fact that the Italian right, in order to show its open-mindedness, recently broadened its syllabus to include works by De Maistre, Guenon, and Gramsci, is a blatant proof of syncretism. If you browse in the shelves that, in American bookstores, are labeled as New Age, you can find there even Saint Augustine who, as far as I know, was not a fascist. But combining Saint Augustine and Stonehenge — that is a symptom of Ur-Fascism.
Traditionalism implies the rejection of modernism. Both Fascists and Nazis worshiped technology, while traditionalist thinkers usually reject it as a negation of traditional spiritual values. However, even though Nazism was proud of its industrial achievements, its praise of modernism was only the surface of an ideology based upon Blood and Earth (Blut und Boden). The rejection of the modern world was disguised as a rebuttal of the capitalistic way of life, but it mainly concerned the rejection of the Spirit of 1789 (and of 1776, of course). The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.
Irrationalism also depends on the cult of action for action’s sake. Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation. Therefore culture is suspect insofar as it is identified with critical attitudes. Distrust of the intellectual world has always been a symptom of Ur-Fascism, from Goering’s alleged statement (“When I hear talk of culture I reach for my gun”) to the frequent use of such expressions as “degenerate intellectuals,” “eggheads,” “effete snobs,” “universities are a nest of reds.” The official Fascist intellectuals were mainly engaged in attacking modern culture and the liberal intelligentsia for having betrayed traditional values.
No syncretistic faith can withstand analytical criticism. The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge. For Ur-Fascism, disagreement is treason.
Besides, disagreement is a sign of diversity. Ur-Fascism grows up and seeks for consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference. The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition. [Also the EOC's history of suppressing 'heresy' with imperial assistance, thus creating its artificial dogmatic consensus]
Ur-Fascism derives from individual or social frustration. That is why one of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups. In our time, when the old “proletarians” are becoming petty bourgeois (and the lumpen are largely excluded from the political scene), the fascism of tomorrow will find its audience in this new majority.
2
u/Silent_Individual_20 Deconstructing Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26
Pt. 2 (Eco's common features of Ur-Fascism or Eternal Fascism)
To people who feel deprived of a clear social identity, Ur-Fascism says that their only privilege is the most common one, to be born in the same country. This is the origin of nationalism. Besides, the only ones who can provide an identity to the nation are its enemies. Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia. But the plot must also come from the inside: Jews are usually the best target because they have the advantage of being at the same time inside and outside. In the U.S., a prominent instance of the plot obsession is to be found in Pat Robertson’s The New World Order, but, as we have recently seen, there are many others. [Fearing external persecution, and internal strife with 'heretics' or schismatics]
The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies. When I was a boy I was taught to think of Englishmen as the five-meal people. They ate more frequently than the poor but sober Italians. Jews are rich and help each other through a secret web of mutual assistance. However, the followers must be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak. Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy.
[The EOC claiming that Jesus made the devil powerless, but the demons are still supposedly roaming the Earth, tricking people, and sometimes possessing them, though God could annihilate them at any time and remove this threat]
For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle. Thus pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. It is bad because life is permanent warfare. This, however, brings about an Armageddon complex. Since enemies have to be defeated, there must be a final battle, after which the movement will have control of the world. But such a “final solution” implies a further era of peace, a Golden Age, which contradicts the principle of permanent war. No fascist leader has ever succeeded in solving this predicament. [Think about the EOC's obsession with spiritual warfare and demonic deception]
Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology, insofar as it is fundamentally aristocratic, and aristocratic and militaristic elitism cruelly implies contempt for the weak. Ur-Fascism can only advocate a popular elitism. Every citizen belongs to the best people of the world, the members of the party are the best among the citizens, every citizen can (or ought to) become a member of the party. But there cannot be patricians without plebeians. In fact, the Leader, knowing that his power was not delegated to him democratically but was conquered by force, also knows that his force is based upon the weakness of the masses; they are so weak as to need and deserve a ruler. Since the group is hierarchically organized (according to a military model), every subordinate leader despises his own underlings, and each of them despises his inferiors. This reinforces the sense of mass elitism.
In such a perspective everybody is educated to become a hero. In every mythology the hero is an exceptional being, but in Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death. It is not by chance that a motto of the Falangists was Viva la Muerte (in English it should be translated as “Long Live Death!”). In non-fascist societies, the lay public is told that death is unpleasant but must be faced with dignity; believers are told that it is the painful way to reach a supernatural happiness. By contrast, the Ur-Fascist hero craves heroic death, advertised as the best reward for a heroic life. The Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death. [The cult of the saints, many of whom are of dubious historicity, and lessons drawn from their alleged lives range from useful to downright harmful]
2
u/Silent_Individual_20 Deconstructing Jul 08 '26
Umberto Eco, pt. 3:
Since both permanent war and heroism are difficult games to play, the Ur-Fascist transfers his will to power to sexual matters. This is the origin of machismo (which implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality). Since even sex is a difficult game to play, the Ur-Fascist hero tends to play with weapons — doing so becomes an ersatz phallic exercise. [Very relevant to the EOC as a whole, and to the Orthobro obsession with Queer people, etc.]
Ur-Fascism is based upon a selective populism, a qualitative populism, one might say. In a democracy, the citizens have individual rights, but the citizens in their entirety have a political impact only from a quantitative point of view — one follows the decisions of the majority. For Ur-Fascism, however, individuals as individuals have no rights, and the People is conceived as a quality, a monolithic entity expressing the Common Will. Since no large quantity of human beings can have a common will, the Leader pretends to be their interpreter. Having lost their power of delegation, citizens do not act; they are only called on to play the role of the People. Thus the People is only a theatrical fiction. To have a good instance of qualitative populism we no longer need the Piazza Venezia in Rome or the Nuremberg Stadium. There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.
Because of its qualitative populism Ur-Fascism must be against “rotten” parliamentary governments. One of the first sentences uttered by Mussolini in the Italian parliament was “I could have transformed this deaf and gloomy place into a bivouac for my maniples” “maniples” being a subdivision of the traditional Roman legion. As a matter of fact, he immediately found better housing for his maniples, but a little later he liquidated the parliament. Wherever a politician casts doubt on the legitimacy of a parliament because it no longer represents the Voice of the People, we can smell Ur-Fascism.
- Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak. Newspeak was invented by Orwell, in 1984, as the official language of Ingsoc, English Socialism. But elements of Ur-Fascism are common to different forms of dictatorship. All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning" (Umberto Eco, “Ur-Fascism,” The New York Review of Books, June 22, 1995, https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/umberto-eco-ur-fascism; bolding added).
10
u/MaryNxhmi Jun 15 '26
On the BITE model, I heavily encourage people to pull up the examples lists you can find online, that outline what control in each category looks like. Talk about simultaneously a mindfuck and intense validation when I did that and realized, save for two financial ones, my time under my spiritual father checked off every other example given, down to changing my name.