I was unclear, I guess. I do agree that Synanon is more extreme than AA, on the whole. But AA is still extreme and fringe, all by itself.
I disagree that AA is a "movement with a spiritual basis." It's not. To quote Orange, AA began as a branch of a cult religion invented by an evil fascist renegade Lutheran minister named Dr. Frank Nathan Daniel Buchman, who actually admired Adolf Hitler and praised the Gestapo leader Heinrich Himmler as a "wonderful lad." It's not at all "mainstream."
So I guess the comparison for me is, AA is the Nazi party, Synanon is the SS. Neither is acceptable, though one is perhaps more obviously unacceptable on its face. So the Synanon members who hang out at AA meetings are like SS members hanging out at boring party meetings since they can't any longer go out and do the 'more exciting' things they used to do.
It sounds like orange has a small axe to grind... that's a very uncharitable description. Like saying christianity was started by a Jewish criminal who was condemned and executed at the insistence of his own community.
I don't argue with fanatics. You're arguing the and hominem fallacy, at any rate. Whatever the case may be you seem to have very strong feelings about aa and let's not waste any more time on it.
For example, Dr. Frank N.D. Buchman in fact did praise Adolf Hitler in a published interview [0], and did in fact meet with Himmler in Germany at the 1936 Olympics [1], and was close friends with Putzi Hanfstaengl, who personally helped Hitler into a car to escape after Hitler fell and dislocated his shoulder during the Beer Hall Putsch and was later his foreign press secretary. [2]
After Buchman was roundly criticized in the U.S. for his support of Hitler, he changed the name of the Oxford Group to Moral Re-Armament. The Oxford Group was, of course, the birthplace of Alcoholics Anonymous, and Bill Wilson attended its meetings for four or five years before breaking off to form AA.
I'm not a fanatic. I'm simply someone who was exposed to AA and discovered what a toxic dump of bad ideas it is. Which is what prompted my original comment that it is no surprise that Synanon was incubated in AA meetings.
I disagree that AA is a "movement with a spiritual basis." It's not. To quote Orange, AA began as a branch of a cult religion invented by an evil fascist renegade Lutheran minister named Dr. Frank Nathan Daniel Buchman, who actually admired Adolf Hitler and praised the Gestapo leader Heinrich Himmler as a "wonderful lad." It's not at all "mainstream."
So I guess the comparison for me is, AA is the Nazi party, Synanon is the SS. Neither is acceptable, though one is perhaps more obviously unacceptable on its face. So the Synanon members who hang out at AA meetings are like SS members hanging out at boring party meetings since they can't any longer go out and do the 'more exciting' things they used to do.