Mother of NYC heiress paid 'deprogrammer' big bucks after daughter 'brainwashed' by college's woke a

[Stevicus]

Mother of NYC heiress paid 'deprogrammer' big bucks after daughter 'brainwashed' by college's woke agenda (msn.com)

I'm not sure what to make of this one.

New York City pharmaceutical heiress Annabella Rockwell is claiming that her mother paid a $300-a-day "deprogrammer" after believing her daughter had been "brainwashed" by attending an all-female elite liberal college that left the young woman "totally indoctrinated" and estranged from the parents who raised her.

I didn't even know there were "deprogrammers" to deprogram people brainwashed by the woke agenda. $300 a day? As Jeff Spicoli would say "Righteous bucks."

"I left school very anxious, very nervous, very depressed and sad," Rockwell, now 29, recently told The New York Post. "I saw everything through the lens of oppression and bias and victimhood. I came to the school as someone who saw everyone equally. I left looking for injustice wherever I could and automatically assuming that all White men were sexist. My thoughts were no longer my own."

Rockwell, a former competitive figure skater who grew up on the Upper East Side, told The Post that at first, she was elated to attend Mount Holyoke College – a $60,000-a-year women’s institution in rural Massachusetts – in 2011.

Unlike other first-year students, she said she did not participate in the "MoHo chop," an initiation ritual meant to shrug off gender roles by cutting one's hair. By her junior year, however, Rockwell told the Post that she noticed a shift in herself after taking a Gender Studies class.

"This professor tells me about the patriarchy," Rockwell said. "I barely knew what the word meant. I didn’t know what she was talking about. I wasn’t someone that into feminism. I just knew that I felt I had always been free to do what I wanted. I never experienced sexism. But I was told there’s the patriarchy, and you don’t even understand it’s been working against you your whole life. You’ve been oppressed, and you didn’t even know it. Now you have to fight it. And I just went down this deep rabbit hole."

That’s when she said her relationship with her mother, whom she once considered a best friend, changed.

"I felt I had to teach her how she was wrong and expose her and to do that with everyone who didn’t see things correctly," Rockwell said. "The professors encouraged alienation [from parents] and even offered their homes to stay in. They’d say, like, don’t go see them, come stay with us for the holiday. Most of my classmates believed all this stuff, too. If you didn’t you were ostracized."

Her mother, Melinda Rockwell, told The Post she believed her daughter had been brainwashed. She admitted that during one heated argument at the family’s Palm Beach, Florida, home, she threw a vase through a window in anger over what had become of her daughter. In addition to the costly "deprogrammer," she also enlisted help from her daughter’s former tennis coach, Scott Williams, but was warned it might take seven years before Annabella would revert to her old ways of thinking.

In addition to the deprogrammer, she enlisted the help from her daughter's former tennis coach. It "might take seven years before Annabella would revert to her old ways of thinking."

"It was like walking a tightrope," Melinda Rockwell said. "I couldn’t push too hard or I’d lose her, but if I let go I felt I might not see her again. It was as bad as trying to get a child off the streets who’s on heroin. Everyone is so sure it won’t happen to their child. But it will. [Professors and older students] tell the students they are special — it’s like they are anointed — then they tell them how oppressed they are and what victims they are and how they have to go out in the world and be activists to stop the oppression."

Another former Mount Holyoke College student, 29-year-old conservative activist Laura Loomer, spoke to The Post about the campus culture, saying she left after just one semester freshman year due to bullying.

"The entire culture there revolved around hating men and being a lesbian," Loomer told The Post. "Mount Holyoke and all the Seven Sisters [schools, including historically women’s colleges Barnard, Bryn Mawr, Smith, Radcliffe, Vassar, and Wellesley] were designed to be these elite institutions for women at a time when places like Harvard just took men. But they’re no longer places for ideas and debate and a well-rounded education. They’re centers for indoctrination."

"If you send your kid there you’re signing them up to hate the patriarchy and White people and the founding stock of our country," she added. "It’s a bastardization of higher education for the sake of weaponizing naive young women for the sake of advancing a toxic agenda."

Annabella Rockwell, who worked for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign after graduating with a history degree, credited her mother’s "relentlessness."

"If my mom had not kept harping at me and not given up I know where I would be right now," Rockwell told The Post. "Mount Holyoke met its match in my mother. If it wasn’t for her, I’d probably be living in Massachusetts, working for some super-progressive politician, hanging out with people I had nothing in common with except ideology and drinking all the time. And I’d be miserable. But I’d be too stubborn to look at myself in the mirror. I had to really humble myself to admit that I was wrong. And that everything I was told was so hypocritical."

She also said her views began to change during the 2020 George Floyd protests.

"My social media feed was an echo chamber of everything I’d been taught at Mt. Holyoke," Rockwell said. "Everyone had the black square and it was all ‘no justice, no peace.’ But I was starting to think to myself, ‘Why are we burning down businesses in the name of empowerment? How is this helping Black people? It just doesn’t make sense.’ It just began to click in that moment about how hypocritical it was."

Rockwell, who now fundraises for conservative advocacy group PragerU, said her intention is not to smear other classmates, recognizing how they were all "young and impressionable" in a campus environment where "diversity of opinion was never allowed."

Fox News Digital reached out to Mount Holyoke College for comment on Sunday, but they did not immediately respond..

Now, she's fundraising for PragerU?

I almost thought this was some kind of parody story, but I guess it's real, at least as far as anything is real. But this whole idea of a "deprogrammer"? I've heard of deprogrammers for people who have been caught up in cults, and I've heard horror stories in relation to that.

I'm not sure if we're getting an accurate glimpse of what goes on at Mount Holyoke.

Thoughts?

 

[Watchmen]

Mother of NYC heiress paid 'deprogrammer' big bucks after daughter 'brainwashed' by college's woke agenda (msn.com)

I'm not sure what to make of this one.



I didn't even know there were "deprogrammers" to deprogram people brainwashed by the woke agenda. $300 a day? As Jeff Spicoli would say "Righteous bucks."





In addition to the deprogrammer, she enlisted the help from her daughter's former tennis coach. It "might take seven years before Annabella would revert to her old ways of thinking."





Now, she's fundraising for PragerU?

I almost thought this was some kind of parody story, but I guess it's real, at least as far as anything is real. But this whole idea of a "deprogrammer"? I've heard of deprogrammers for people who have been caught up in cults, and I've heard horror stories in relation to that.

I'm not sure if we're getting an accurate glimpse of what goes on at Mount Holyoke.

Thoughts?

I think we’re getting an accurate account of what SHE experienced at the college. How the college is overall is hard to say based on this one anecdote. But what she shared rings true to me. My perception as a moderate has been that the left is more interested in indoctrination and blame than in healthy debate. And before all you indoctrinated leftists attack me, please know that I have the same disdain for the Trumpist right.

 

[Sand Dancer]

Mother of NYC heiress paid 'deprogrammer' big bucks after daughter 'brainwashed' by college's woke agenda (msn.com)

I'm not sure what to make of this one.

Mummy's afraid Muffy might give her inheritance to help poor people or something.
I didn't read it but I will.

 

[Revoltingest]

Mother of NYC heiress paid 'deprogrammer' big bucks after daughter 'brainwashed' by college's woke agenda (msn.com)

I'm not sure what to make of this one.



I didn't even know there were "deprogrammers" to deprogram people brainwashed by the woke agenda. $300 a day? As Jeff Spicoli would say "Righteous bucks."





In addition to the deprogrammer, she enlisted the help from her daughter's former tennis coach. It "might take seven years before Annabella would revert to her old ways of thinking."





Now, she's fundraising for PragerU?

I almost thought this was some kind of parody story, but I guess it's real, at least as far as anything is real. But this whole idea of a "deprogrammer"? I've heard of deprogrammers for people who have been caught up in cults, and I've heard horror stories in relation to that.

I'm not sure if we're getting an accurate glimpse of what goes on at Mount Holyoke.

Thoughts?

It's certainly possible that leftist cult members
could benefit from deprogramming as do
religious cult members.

 

[Sand Dancer]

It's certainly possible that leftist cult members
could benefit from deprogramming as do
religious cult members.

Any ideology where people lose sight of reality could benefit.

 

[Subduction Zone]

It appears that she swung from one extreme to another. Perhaps some people like being "brainwashed".

 

[Father Heathen]

Her description sounds like those goofy conservative FB memes that cartoonishly misrepresent things with straw men and stereotypes, so if anything was indoctrination it was probably the "deprogramming" itself.

 

[Twilight Hue]

Mother of NYC heiress paid 'deprogrammer' big bucks after daughter 'brainwashed' by college's woke agenda (msn.com)

I'm not sure what to make of this one.



I didn't even know there were "deprogrammers" to deprogram people brainwashed by the woke agenda. $300 a day? As Jeff Spicoli would say "Righteous bucks."





In addition to the deprogrammer, she enlisted the help from her daughter's former tennis coach. It "might take seven years before Annabella would revert to her old ways of thinking."





Now, she's fundraising for PragerU?

I almost thought this was some kind of parody story, but I guess it's real, at least as far as anything is real. But this whole idea of a "deprogrammer"? I've heard of deprogrammers for people who have been caught up in cults, and I've heard horror stories in relation to that.

I'm not sure if we're getting an accurate glimpse of what goes on at Mount Holyoke.

Thoughts?

Professors offering their own homes for students to stay in?

That sounds rather
...

Creepy.

 

[Father Heathen]

Now, she's fundraising for PragerU?

 

[Revoltingest]

...if anything was indoctrination it was probably the "deprogramming" itself.

You could be a recruiter for cults.

 

[Viker]

Massive typo. They meant to write 'reprogrammer'.

 

[SomeRandom]

Mother of NYC heiress paid 'deprogrammer' big bucks after daughter 'brainwashed' by college's woke agenda (msn.com)

I'm not sure what to make of this one.



I didn't even know there were "deprogrammers" to deprogram people brainwashed by the woke agenda. $300 a day? As Jeff Spicoli would say "Righteous bucks."





In addition to the deprogrammer, she enlisted the help from her daughter's former tennis coach. It "might take seven years before Annabella would revert to her old ways of thinking."





Now, she's fundraising for PragerU?

I almost thought this was some kind of parody story, but I guess it's real, at least as far as anything is real. But this whole idea of a "deprogrammer"? I've heard of deprogrammers for people who have been caught up in cults, and I've heard horror stories in relation to that.

I'm not sure if we're getting an accurate glimpse of what goes on at Mount Holyoke.

Thoughts?

I think too many parents are instinctively offended whenever their child holds even one belief different to them. Or questions their teachings. They just want their child to emulate everything they teach them. And kids just won’t. They need their own individuality.

I can’t say one way or the other as to this college, since I’m not American and the “variations” I hear from US higher education system is a bit “odd” let’s just say.

But it does sound like a leftist parody lol
Life is indeed stranger than fiction

 

[Father Heathen]

You could be a recruiter for cults.

For being skeptical of hyperbolic rhetoric?

 

[fantome profane]

I think there is already a treatment for being woke.

It is called anaesthesia.

 

[Revoltingest]

For being skeptical of hyperbolic rhetoric?

For siding with them doctrinaire lefties.

 

[Father Heathen]

For siding with them doctrinaire lefties.

Yeah, okay.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Mother of NYC heiress paid 'deprogrammer' big bucks after daughter 'brainwashed' by college's woke agenda (msn.com)

I'm not sure what to make of this one.



I didn't even know there were "deprogrammers" to deprogram people brainwashed by the woke agenda. $300 a day? As Jeff Spicoli would say "Righteous bucks."





In addition to the deprogrammer, she enlisted the help from her daughter's former tennis coach. It "might take seven years before Annabella would revert to her old ways of thinking."





Now, she's fundraising for PragerU?

I almost thought this was some kind of parody story, but I guess it's real, at least as far as anything is real. But this whole idea of a "deprogrammer"? I've heard of deprogrammers for people who have been caught up in cults, and I've heard horror stories in relation to that.

I'm not sure if we're getting an accurate glimpse of what goes on at Mount Holyoke.

Thoughts?

Reminds me that Ben Stein flick where he harps on about Intelligent Design not being treated favorably and instead being shunned as if it's a serious assault on something that matters.
Or Christians screaming about how not being able to lead prayer in public schools is an assault on them.
And of many I've met and known who need to build a stronger character. It's not the school, it's not the world, it's her and her own issues of feeling such a way.

 

[Heyo]

"She also said her views began to change during the 2020 George Floyd protests."

Thoughts?

It seems her intrinsic racism ultimately saved her from changing her upper class, white protestant view.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

Interesting reactions in this thread. I think it's at least possible that schools can develop unhealthy cultures. Take the feminist perspective and particulars out for a moment, and leave it there as a general statement. Does anyone disagree with that?

If yes, I'd be interested in why/how. If not, then it would seem at least possible for a school to become toxic to dissenting and non-mainstream views. That's unhealthy, in my opinion.

Now, has that happened with this school? No idea, really. Is this person's perspective valid, transparent and an honest representation of their experience? I don't know. She has 'flipped' back to her apparently original conservatism, which strikes me as strange step to take.
(My general thought being that 'you can never go back')

So, if we're talking specifics, this whole thing strikes me as 'Who knows?'

If we're talking generically, though, the topic is a little more interesting. What should education facilities 'stand for' politically? What does a healthy student culture look like? To what level are schools responsible for that culture?

 

[Stevicus]

I'm still intrigued by the idea of a "deprogrammer" to deprogram someone from "woke" back to conservative. What does that look like? How does it work? Are they locked in a room where they listen to 16 hours of Rush Limbaugh tapes all day?