- Establish a black and white ideology using "us and them" rhetoric
- Demonize the "them" with a tradition of hate speech and misrepresentation
- Manipulate members with the threat of becoming one of "them"
- Scam members with legal and pseudolegal tricks
- Scapegoat anyone else by also defaming them as "them", put up straw men of any potential obstacle to total control and exploitation, using popular scapegoats like "heretics", "the Jews", "atheists", or even "pedophiles", if the tradition includes projecting the organization's abuses against others, falsely calumniating them
- Attack "them" with the tradition of false excuses, weaponing the conditioned hate, plus any new justification for an immediate explicit attack
- Exploit the ignorance, gullibility and fear of members and of the population
- When found to be wrong, blame some members for misunderstanding the propaganda and overreacting, or "them" for being the eternal obstacle to total control
- When crimes are exposed, blame "them", society, the government, etc.
Therefore the frivolous attack above could really be from a complete crackpot who has been indoctrinated with the lie that Satan exists and that those that the group demonizes are really part of a great conspiracy of Satan. That's a very good reason to understand and combat that abusive system.
Atheists are against God and by very definition in league with Satan. They don't KNOW they're in league with Satan, its certainly not intentional, but they are serving Satan's ends by abandoning God and pursuing humanist endeavors.
So reviewing this in the light of the above conspiracy: "atheists" (a potential obstacle to the totalitarian manipulation who will not fall for it) must be "them". Straw men of them are made, outright lies: "this means that they're the ultimate THEM", the demonized "Satanic" them. The abuser dictates who "atheists" should be to the members, no matter how dishonest or ignorant (non-belief is not "worship of the enemy", that's the "black and white" control ideology, why is it different if it's the non-belief in Jupiter?). Plausible denial of malicious hate speech: "they may not really know, it's really pity"...
"Abandoning"? What is there to abandon if it's not actually there and if "them" may not have been a member of your high control group in the first place. The very reason humans speak for it and do the hate speech in its name. "Abandoning" is like the "restoring" of a fascist utopia that was never established, or the straw men of what we already have that it claims was "stolen" from us, to steal it from us.
Anyone who is not with God is against God, and anyone who is against God is in league with Satan, as Satan supports and desires anyone who is against God.
Indoctrination in the initial black and white, "us and them" rhetoric, the false premise that was exposed in my list. But again, there's no evidence for "Satan", so it's put up as a straw man for anything in the path of manipulation.
There's nothing more frustrating to the manipulators than to be exposed and for their deception methods to be taught (and this is ironic as this reflects what they imagine of a frustrated rebellious, exposed "Satan", or the angry "Legion" rushing into pigs and then drowning). But it's the ethical thing to do, expose and defeat human evil. Afterall, "atheist" here that is demonized, is good for humanity. So are secular enterprises and governments, often misconstrued as being atheist as well. And any more open and moderate faith, especially those that aren't concerned with power to a level where they want to corrupt and control governments, other than ruin the life of their members/victims.
A faith that relies on hate speech and demonization is arguably not following the message of Jesus anyway. This means that there also are better Christians than that hateful control cult today. Exposing this propagandist as a polluter of the faith, a hypocrite or someone who fell, falsely claiming to know better.