Dear Facebook Friend…

Last month, in writing the post ‘If you’re not trolling, and you’re not a bigot, you’ve no reason to ‘like’ “The Mind Unleashed”’, I mentioned that in response to the mentioned woo, conspiracy theory, and anti-Semitism laced Facebook page, people could…

‘Encourage your friends who subscribe to the page to do a little digging for themselves, instead of passively being spoon-fed. Crap like that spread by “The Mind Unleashed” only does as well as it does because the practice of being spoon-fed advice is so well accepted.’

…and that possibly (as a last measure on Facebook)…

‘you explain to “The Mind Unleashed” subscribing friends, why you take anti-Semitism and bigotry seriously, and that this is why you are ‘unfriending’ them. Then proceed to ‘unfriend’ them.’

These will still be options for some folks, should they wish to do so. However what I want to do now is provide people with an alternative; a short, prepared letter they can use to copy, paste and send to their Facebook friends. Not everyone is up for fully confronting people about these kinds of things, and for some, having a proxy do the arguing may ease some of the pressure.

All you have to do, if you want to use this letter, is copy the bit after the separator below, and paste it into a message to the friends you want to reach.

You don’t have to link back to this post. You don’t have to mention any kind of intellectual property rights (I cede all copyright) or mention my name. You can use my name as it appears at the end of the letter if you want, or you can replace my name with your own and alter the content accordingly. Whatever makes it easiest for people to get the message across is best.

(I do insist though, if you substantially alter the letter, that you sign off with your own name).

The letter follows.

***

Dear Facebook Friend,

This letter has been sent to you by your Facebook friend because they’ve noticed that you’ve liked a page called “The Mind Unleashed”.

Pages as popular as “The Mind Unleashed” can generate a lot of advertising revenue, especially when propagated virally over social media – something you help both directly and indirectly whenever you share anything of theirs over Facebook, irrespective of what that content may be.

Have you ever considered where that revenue you are helping raise may go?

Perhaps you could perform a Google search or two? If you were for example, to perform searches on “Michael Tellinger” or “Ubuntu”, with “The Mind Unleashed”, you’d find some interesting material; apparently some of the folks at “The Mind Unleashed” quite like Michael Tellinger and his South African Ubuntu party.

At first glances, the ideas of debt forgiveness features in Ubuntu’s agenda, and that may all be well and good. I won’t try to dissuade you from supporting debt forgiveness.

However, if you dig further into the Ubuntu party, you’ll find people like Stephen Goodson, a candidate for the Ubuntu party in the recent 2014 South African general election. Goodson, incidentally, is a fellow who has claimed that Hitler was a great bloke, that the Holocaust never happened, and that it’s all just been a con by Jewish bankers to extract money from the German economy (info here: http://tinyurl.com/mqolq4f).

Holocaust denial! So much for the Ubuntu party being kind and fuzzy!

In August of last year, “The Mind Unleashed” linked approvingly to an article that in addition to containing a ridiculously fake timeline detailing how The Rothschild family has supposedly been controlling the world from behind the scenes, claimed that Ashkenazi Jews weren’t real Jews (info here: http://tinyurl.com/ms5s5rn). This racist bit of propaganda about the Ashkenazi Jews happens to be, quite unsurprisingly, untrue (info here: http://tinyurl.com/m76w8fg).

If you’re receiving this letter on Facebook, it’s because your friend is concerned that you’re supporting racism against Jews – that you’re enabling anti-Semitism. Remember, likes and shares help earn “The Mind Unleashed” money – where does that money go? It doesn’t matter that you’re sharing pictures of meditation, or words of affirmation – it all helps them raise money.

I hope that this letter encourages you to do a bit of fact checking of your own, if not outright convincing you to unlike “The Mind Unleashed” altogether, and never share their posts again. I suspect that the friend sending you this letter hopes for the same.

Yours faithfully,

Bruce Everett