People ask if I was brainwashed by my own family into doing the unspeakable things I did. But that implies it was manipulation, and that they knew what they were doing was wrong.
Indoctrination is a better word for it, because everyone in the Westboro Baptist Church – myself included – truly believed in what they were doing.
It wasn’t a performance. We were taught to feel and appear unmoved by other people’s pain and even to actually celebrate their anguish.
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