Episode 120: Emmanuel Goldstein on Surviving Communism, A Gnostic Cult, and A War On His Mind

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This episode was a surprise.

After releasing Episode 119, I received the following message from a listener who goes by the name Emmanuel Goldstein:

Just listened to your podcast with Jerry Barnett and loved it, but now I feel like kinda HAVING to offer to be you next guest (if you are interested). I can mainly talk about socialism and how I experienced it growing up in East Germany and then later through the communes my mother joined afterwards.

The fact that his pseudonym is taken from the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four made it all the more intriguing.

How could I turn that down?

We set up a date and time, and I went in basically blind, with almost no idea of what he would share with me.

The result was a startling, spontaneous, and deeply personal conversation, about the impact of parental ideology on a child’s development, living with trauma, and learning to think independently after dealing with indoctrination.

From being the privileged child of a Communist Party official in East Germany to living on a Gnostic commune in Bavaria, from being forced to live as a girl to growing into a man, what Emmanuel shared is enough for several lifetimes, of both experience and therapy.

I hope you find it as fascinating and as moving as I did.

Enjoy.

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