Welcome to our cult! Over here, we protect our sources
On cult dynamics, and what interactions we had with Gurprit prior to him doing all of this, and what does information security even mean?
TLDR
1. Practicing information security is not a cop out or cult tactic by us; it is a method used commonly by activist groups, cybersecurity experts, and more. Guarding private details and information is imperative in the face of infiltration and surveillance.
2. There is a stark difference between unhealthy clique dynamic and cult tactics. We outline them below, and state why Gurprit's analysis is factually wrong.
3. Through his expose, Gurprit has framed us into a villain/victim binary; we want to take a principled stand on our objectives, as well as how to untangle harm and violence.
4. We want people to be critical and discerning of both Gurprit's posts and ours; we show what we can show, and we are basing it off of our own lived experiences.What is information security? Why do people use Signal, or other secure messaging platform? Are people who use secret chat on Telegram part of a cult? Who knows?
What the victims of Mercury have done from the start, is practice information security. We use something called the Traffic Light Protocol (TLP), an industry standard in defense and cybersecurity industries.
We thus classify documents and information as TLPs Red, Amber, Green, and White depending on the level of sensitivity.
Some things that might required a TLP:Red, in the context of other radical organising groups, are things like direct action logistics, which are sent to trusted contacts only. Why on earth would such information be put for public disclosure?
In our context, we have cited the need to protect some of our sources; we need to protect them against (for example) Mercury going after them, or being in compromising situations that would not render it easy for them to be named.
We are honestly surprised that the idea of confidentiality has become such a contentious one, as put forth by Gurprit. Does he expect to know every government secret, where employees sign NDAs or are governed by the Official Secrets Act? Are government employees in a cult? We cannot help but wonder.
The importance of InfoSec
To rehash our point about security, some documents should have been kept under virtual lock and key. The document that TJC scanned and kept in their Telegram chat, containing sensitive information like addresses, full names, etc, should have been saved with a password (you can do so easily via Word! Hope this helps!), or held in a secure Google Drive with access ability to only a select few who are heading the petition campaign.
Activism is a challenging process, and there are always cases of infiltration. In the US, Cointelpro surveilled, infiltrated, and killed the movements of many radical organisations. Locally, the Aware Saga in 2009 showed that extremist forces were willing to organise, infiltrate, and take over Aware to further their own agenda and goals.
There is precedent to infiltration, surveillance, and general espionage etc. In Mercury’s cases, anonymising some names of informants, victims, and people who cross paths with her is wise, because she has demonstrated the ability and the energy to track down people and silence them.
There is a reason why I did not come out as a victim until June 2023 when I had officially fled the country, and then saw the benefit of using my story to pressure for a quicker investigation, and justice for all victims of Mercury. There is a reason why some names are redacted and gag-ordered in court, and in news reporting.
Is it a cult, or is it just group identity formation?
Here we take a look at Gurprit Dump’s musing post, and the graphic he used to insinuate that we have a cult dynamic:
If this already sounds odd and familiar, isn’t it because it sounds exactly like a secondary school clique?
We refer to another graphic on group identity formation, which applies to friend cliques, gangs, underground scenes, et cetera, and we will cite our sources.
The formation of an in-group, and the exclusion of an out-group, draws an intergroup comparison. This usually bolsters and affirms the identity of the members of the in-group for being part of a community that they belong to.
Could this model be applied to cults as well, if it comprises almost every form of a group of people? Cults, according to Steven Hassan’s BITE model, exercise some form of mind control on its participants. BITE here refers to behaviour, information, thought, and emotional control — each technique has its role to play to keep members in the cult involved in the cult.
Essentially, cults are an in-group, and members are pressured to remain in the group. It is not merely a problematic friend group, because members of the cult are manipulated, controlled, and forced to toe the line so that the in-group will continue to burgeon.
Here, then, is the question: are we truly a cult, or a “problematic circle of friends”? Why have we banded together as a group? Could it be that (gasp) we were all victimised by the same person and therefore have a common goal to achieve? Gurprit doesn’t seem to believe that we have even faced harm by Mercury, and hilariously enough after he went public with this she now follows his Instagram.
Probably, that’s why he sees our group as having a feeble bond that needs to be reinforced by irrational fear. This is still inconsistent with what we have experienced in the flesh, and any speculation and disbelief teeters close to victim blaming.
Gurprit named several people in a post of his, and hilariously enough some names were listed with (?)s next to their name. These are people in our group chat who are semi-involved, due to being a secondary victim of Mercury, or being our friends who helped us out in our pursuit of justice. They are not as involved as people like me, Carissa, Harvey, etc have been, because they have a secondary (albeit still vital) role to play in the logistics and dramatics of seeking justice for all of us.
Gurprit was a member of this chat group, and is a key example of one such member of the chat who was “tapped out”, or not as active and involved. We have had no issues with this, given that we know his own personal issues, as well as the fact that he is currently pursuing his masters overseas.
Gurprit was one of the earliest supporters of Harvey; when people defected he was there and stood by her. Lune and Gurprit figured out together that it was Mercury that was behind the burner account that doxxed Lune. Since he left to pursue his masters, he’d been uninvolved as a dormant member of our chat group. Is this cult behaviour, where we let him rest and focus on his schoolwork? We did not demand labour from him for months, not when all of us were firefighting, running around trying to save our lives.
With this, information becomes on a need-to-know basis. For victims like Lune and Gurprit, who both left Singapore to pursue masters degrees in September, they became disconnected and their position as victims changed. Lune was also not privy to certain information, as she focused on her mental health in the UK. Why would we distress our friend (sure, a comrade, but a friend first and foremost) with certain information that would (a) burden them (b) make them worried (c) because they can’t do anything about it, because they’re overseas?
Even then, as a supposed member of this cult, I resisted the idea of coming out publicly as a victim. I’ve lashed out at my friends multiple times, over issues both small and big. If you’ve read this newsletter, you get an idea of the tone, except worse. I’ve deleted entire chats with my friends over petty arguments filled with triggers and fury. Harvey and I have been in a spat before, a full out argument that we settled later on as friends. Etc etc. You get the idea.
What our dynamic is as a group of victims working towards the same cause is something that is relevant only to the people affected by said dynamic. Sure, we are not perfect people, and people have tapped in and out and expressed dissatisfaction with how certain victims have handled certain things. How our dynamic is, however, is a private matter, and should only become a matter of public dispute ONLY if it has harmed members with no way of private resolution. Why then, has Gurprit taken this matter public, despite having an open line of communication with us, and springing this news on us completely unannounced?
The Cult Reflects
None of us victims are perfect. This is a point that has been stated multiple times; not only is expecting survivors to be perfect unrealistic and damaging, but it diminishes how harm actually operates in the real world. What is the end goal of the victims of Mercury, Justice 4 Harvey, and Safety 4 Harvey? It’s as simple as this — regardless of how many times she’s antagonised the president on Instagram (lol), regardless of what harms she has done, whether she has made amends for it or not, she deserves justice for her rape; she does not deserve to be sent back to the Institute of Mental Health, the site of her rape; and as a pre-op trans woman she should never have been and should never be at risk of being put in a male ward or cell, no matter what.
What is Gurprit’s end goal by exposing all of this, with as much selective exposure and half truths? (Half truth is being charitable.) He is working on the belief that (a) Harvey is a sexual predator and thus morally wrong, (b) we are helping Harvey, and therefore we are also morally wrong, and (c) we are a cult, which explains (a) and (b) and makes us all even more wrong.
Nevermind the fact that Isabelle, Harvey’s victim, wants nothing to do with Gurprit’s posts, nevermind the fact that Isabelle and Harvey are in the process of making amends. It categorises people into perfect victims and perfect villains, moralising between the two. We reject this — we are taking a principled stand, not a moral one, as people who have experienced sexual assault, as people who have harmed others in our own pasts.
I implore all of you who are reading the Gurprit account - what is his role in the entire Mercury/Harvey saga? Why does he choose certain screenshots, cherrypicking some that makes us look bad without context? Was he privy to certain information, whether from us or not, or was he not?
Could information that lands in our hands be inaccurate due to broken telephone? Possibly so. Would people like Carissa upload her letters to the AGC with half-baked and half true claims? Would I make claims that my grandfather was murdered to be funny?
Please question what you’re reading online. And please do the same for our evidence and screenshots; we can show what we can show, and we know that playing the public game is a dangerous one considering how many people we have to protect. But we know that we are living our truth, and once the truth comes to light, this will all be immaterial.