The Caste system in LDS media

I've been writing about the end of M2C and SITH because the Internet has enabled Latter-day Saints to break free of the constraints (chains) of certain dominant LDS scholars. Thanks to the Joseph Smith Papers, everyone (well, every English-speaking person) can read the original historical documents for themselves, without having that content filtered through the M2C and SITH scholars. This transparency empowers Latter-day Saints to make informed decisions, which is why we're seeing the end of M2C and SITH.

One of the most frequent questions people ask me is how M2C and SITH persist, now that Latter-day Saints have access to the teachings of the prophets.

The answer is partly that having access is not the same as actually accessing the material. Thanks to the work of the M2C and SITH scholars, few Latter-day Saints know what the prophets have taught on these topics. I've given lots of examples here: https://www.ldshistoricalnarratives.com/

But the other part of the answer is that LDS social media continues to promote M2C and SITH through certain organizations that control the narratives.

Along these lines, Ward Radio released an important video titled 

Exposing the Mormon Caste System and Their Black-Lists

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qo7a58suLyw

It's worth watching or listening to for lots of reasons. 

They discuss the way certain organizations have used their funding to control LDS content. Back in the day I used to refer to the "citation cartel" which controlled LDS academia by allowing publication only of content that confirmed the M2C and SITH biases of the editors. Some people asked me to stop using the term, deeming it too pejorative. It was a reasonable request, so I stopped using the term in the pursuit of clarity, charity and understanding. 

But the point remains: in our day, people don't want to be told what to think. They prefer transparency and openness. This is why the legacy scholars who were used to having students who believed whatever they said are finding it difficult to adapt.

And this is why they refuse to engage in open dialog, with fair, accurate comparisons of different ideas. I've shown lots of examples of that on this blog and on https://interpreterpeerreviews.blogspot.com/

A good example of the type of comparison the M2C/SITH scholars object to is here:

https://www.lettervii.com/2025/04/simple-comparison-scholars-vs-prophets.html

It will be interesting to see how this plays out now that Ward Radio is making it more public.

Good for them. 

Here are some excerpts:

Understanding 501c3 Organizations and Their Impact

0:00

there are people who work in these 501c3 organizations tangential to the church

0:05

yeah and they have lists of Untouchables I have seen the list they have lists of

0:12

names of people you should not associate with you should not reference you should

0:17

not talk to you pretend they do not exist

...

if you want to be a Latter Day Saint uh content creator just do it and

0:35

you know what you're going to get a call one day from one of these 501 c3s that gets millions and millions and millions

0:40

of dollars in funding and guess what they're going to try to buy you out it's happened to all of my buddies who do

0:45

Mormon content creation but you've got to completely fall in line with everything they want to say and you got to make sure you don't interact with

0:51

people they consider to be bad that's how it is that's your clue you want to know who's getting the the the big bucks

0:57

it's the people that aren't crowdfunded and the people that aren't crowdfunded yes their narratives and what they can

1:04

and can't say are being controlled by a higher-up 501c3 I know because I was one

1:11

okay so that's how it works